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Subject: Re: Beating Bitscan to Death -- yet again

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 19:30:20 12/31/02

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On December 31, 2002 at 20:21:38, Dave Gomboc wrote:

>On December 31, 2002 at 14:16:47, Matt Taylor wrote:
>
>>On December 31, 2002 at 04:44:27, Matt Taylor wrote:
>>
>>>On December 30, 2002 at 18:12:29, Walter Faxon wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 24, 2002 at 23:28:27, Matt Taylor wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>http://65.186.75.165/~mtaylor/bitscan/bitscan.html
>>>>>
>>>><snip>
>>>>>
>>>>>-Matt
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hi, Matt.
>>>>
>>>>Well, here is Yet Another Bit Scanner (yabs), this time based on my 32-bit
>>>>folding code.  Logically this one shouldn't require use of more than three
>>>>general purpose registers, and thus it should be about as fast as anything I've
>>>>posted before.  Just for fun, I tried to be super-pedantic and thus guide any
>>>>reasonable late-Pentium compiler into producing near-optimal code.
>>>>Consequently, you should be able to hand-translate this into assembler in about
>>>>3 minutes, ignoring register choices and scheduling issues.
>>
>>Eek. VC chose a branch again. It also did something rather funny:
>>
>>	...
>>	mov	ecx, DWORD PTR [esi]
>>	test	ecx, ecx
>>	sete	dl
>>	test	ecx, ecx
>>	mov	DWORD PTR _index$[esp+8], 0
>>	push	edi
>>	mov	BYTE PTR _index$[esp+12], dl
>>	jne	SHORT $L73441
>>	...
>>
>>Note the duplication of the "test ecx, ecx" sequence. I guess it didn't realize
>>that the flags don't get trashed by setcc.
>>
>>Anyway, you might have been too pedantic, if there is such a thing. The VC 7
>>compiler with full optimization targetted to Pentium Pro and beyond did not
>>recognize the cmov possibility here. Since cmov is cheap (1 clock
>>latency/throughput just like ALU instructions), I'm going to tweak the code a
>>bit.
>>
>>Oh, and FYI: either because of your rigorous attempt to point out optimization
>>potential or because of the different sequence to mask out the LSB, the 32-bit
>>version of the routine is now faster by 2 clocks than the bsf instruction on my
>>Athlon. I'm not really sure how much of a speed-up it is %-wise because I ran
>>into issues with the timing code. Things were executing in negative time on
>>Intel (P6/P7) chips when I tried to subtract out the timing bias, so I finally
>>gave up and left it in. (Amusingly this was after I replaced my timing code with
>>Intel's timing code.)
>>
>>-Matt
>
>AFAIK, VC never generates code that can't be run on a 386.  What it will do is
>choose an instruction order that runs fastest on the processor being optimized
>for.
>
>Dave

Probably true, though I thought I had seen it would generate the cmovcc
instructions. I don't see why they care about a 386, though. It's not like Win32
will actually run on a 386...

-Matt



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