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Subject: Re: Expert Assembler Question

Author: Gerd Isenberg

Date: 11:08:30 08/27/05

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On August 27, 2005 at 08:42:09, Ed Schröder wrote:

>On August 27, 2005 at 05:36:51, Gerd Isenberg wrote:
>
>>On August 27, 2005 at 04:34:03, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>
>>>On August 27, 2005 at 00:43:29, Tony Werten wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 26, 2005 at 18:12:30, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I am no longer up-to-date regarding the newest processors (such as the AMD-64)
>>>>>and the internal working concerning speed, hence my question:
>>>>>
>>>>>Which (similar) code is faster?
>>>>>
>>>>>       test    byte ptr xxx,1    |        test    byte ptr xxx,1
>>>>>       je      label             |        mov     AL,[ECX]
>>>>>       mov     AL,[ECX]          |        je      label
>>>>>       mov     BL,[EDX]          |        mov     BL,[EDX]
>>>>>       ...     ........          |        ...     ........
>>>>>       ...     ........          |        ...     ........
>>>>>label:                           | label:
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks in advance,
>>>>
>>>>Hi Ed,
>>>
>>>Hey Tony,
>>>
>>>
>>>>probably not what you wanted to know, but the code is quite different from each
>>>>other.
>>>>
>>>>If the jump condition is met 50% of the time, then the left code will execute
>>>>the 2 moves 50% of the time for an average of 1 move per loop and the right side
>>>>100%+50% is 1.5 moves per loop on average.
>>>>
>>>>Did you mean something else ?
>>>
>>>Yep :)
>>>
>>>The background of my question is the processor's capability to do 2 instructions
>>>at the same time. Following this logic the code on the right (in principle) is
>>>supposed to be faster.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>2 BTW's:
>>>>
>>>>1 Depending on what you do with AL and BL, you might want to use the full
>>>>registers by doing movzx eax,[ecx] and movzx ebx,[edx] (No penalty on new
>>>>processors)
>>>
>>>That's good to know, thank you.
>>
>>
>>Yes, reading bytes to partial registers is expensive anyway, 4 cycles latency.
>>
>>MOV reg8, mem8 8Ah mm-xxx-xxx DirectPath 4
>>MOV AL, mem8   A0h            DirectPath 4
>
>Are you saying Gerd that:
>
> mov EAX, mem32 is faster than mov AL,mem8 ?

Yes, slightly - accordind to the optimization manual three (not 1!) cycles
instead of four (both in 32-bit as well in 64-bit mode):

MOV reg8, mem8 8Ah mm-xxx-xxx DirectPath 4
MOV reg16, mem16 8Bh mm-xxx-xxx DirectPath 4
MOV reg32/64, mem32/64 8Bh mm-xxx-xxx DirectPath 3

I confused it with the one cycle one because of mregxx,

MOV reg16/32/64, mreg16/32/64 8Bh 11-xxx-xxx DirectPath 1

which latency reflects mov reg32, reg32.

>
>
>
>>Tony is right - zero extending to ax,eax,rax is also 4 cycles.
>>
>>MOVZX reg16/32/64, mem8 0Fh B6h mm-xxx-xxx DirectPath 4
>
>This is clear, not much has changed.
>
>
>
>>If you have some "global", very often used array[eg. 64], it might be worth to
>>waste some memory (eg. four cachelines instead of one) and switch to native
>>32-bit int size:
>>
>>MOV reg16/32/64, mreg16/32/64 8Bh 11-xxx-xxx DirectPath 1
>>
>>Also, avoid the shorter but redundant EAX-Move encoding:
>>
>>MOV AX/EAX/RAX, mem16/32/64 A1h DirectPath 4/3/3
>
>Right, never us it.

Nope, A1h mem16/32/64 move has the same latency (4/3/3) than the one byte longer
8Bh opcode for all gp-registers. Sorry for confusing. Anyway it is usually the
choice of the assembler or compiler, unless you code directly in machine
language ;-)

>
>Ed



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