Integer Multiply/Divide on Sparc

[David Chapman]

In article <84768 at linus.UUCP> bs at linus.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) writes:
>Does any have, of know of software for the SPARC [SUN-4] that will
>perform the following:
>
> [standard multiply and divide]
>
>The SPARC is brain dead [as were its designers] when it comes to doing
>integer arithmetic. It can't multiply and it can't divide.

There should be instructions on the order of "multiply step" and "divide 
step", each of which will do one of the 32 adds/subtracts and then shift.  
I'm not particularly fond of the SPARC architecture (don't like register 
windows), but this is a theoretical viewpoint and is not based on any 
direct exposure to assembly-language programming for it (translation:
sorry, I can't give you any more help).

Neither SPARC nor its designers were brain-dead when it was built.  It's just
that it is difficult to get multiplication and division (especially the 
latter) to run in 1 or 2 clock cycles.  All instructions are supposed to
execute in the ALU in 1 cycle; if the multiply and divide instructions take
more time then the front of the processor pipeline has to be able to stall
and this added complexity will slow down the entire processor.

Thus they provide you with the tools to do your own multiply and divide.  
One of the benefits is that a compiler can optimize small multiplies and 
divides to make them execute quicker (i.e. multiply by 10 takes 4 steps 
instead of 32).

It is important that you understand this if you are to write assembly
language programs for a SPARC.  If your instructions are not carefully
optimized, the result could be slower than if you write in a high-level
language and compile with its optimizer!  (Unless the SPARC assembler
performs instruction reordering.)

P.S.  Don't write a loop on the order of "MULSTEP, DEC, BNZ" or it will be
      incredibly slow.  Unroll the loop 4 or 8 times (MULSTEP, MULSTEP,
      MULSTEP, MULSTEP, SUB 4, BNZ).  Branches are expensive.
-- 
		David Chapman

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