https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115756
Roger Sayle <roger at nextmovesoftware dot com> changed:
What |Removed |Added
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CC| |roger at nextmovesoftware dot
com
--- Comment #1 from Roger Sayle <roger at nextmovesoftware dot com> ---
I'm surprised that the difference in performance is (so) observable. The
sal/sub/sal sequence (which admittedly has a long dependency chain) consists of
three single-cycle latency instructions, whereas the imul is documented by
Agner Fog to also have a latency of 3. The biggest difference may be the
number of instructions and bytes (a decoder bottleneck?).
Interestingly, if you specify -Os gcc uses the imul.
Is the register value being multiplied by 240 always 1 or 0, allowing the
hardware to invoke some form of bypass? The constant 240 has (popcount) 4 set
bits, so implementing this in only three instructions (which may be scheduled
concurrently with other operations) is pretty impressive. Perhaps someone can
post a microbenchmark?
