Quoting David Brown <david.br...@hesbynett.no>:
Take an example using a processor I know well, the AVR (it is an 8-bit
device, which is a little unusual for gcc). It has an instruction will
multiply two "1.7" signed 8-bit integers to get a single 1.15 signed
16-bit integer - basically combining an 8-bit x 8-bit to 16-bit
multiply with a left shift. So to do a "signed short _Fract" multiply,
you have a single instruction and discard the least significant byte.
Simulating the same operation in generic C would be something like :
int8_t multShortFract(int8_t a, int8_t b) {
int16_t c = (int16_t) a * b;
return (c >> 7);
}
If you can make up your mind if the result is 8 or 16 bit, generating the
instruction should be standard fare for the combiner pass.
