Re: [PATCH 02/17] bitops: Add generic parity calculation for u64

On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:27:03 -0500
Yury Norov <[email protected]> wrote:
....
> +#define parity(val)					\
> +({							\
> +	u64 __v = (val);				\
> +	int __ret;					\
> +	switch (BITS_PER_TYPE(val)) {			\
> +	case 64:					\
> +		__v ^= __v >> 32;			\
> +		fallthrough;				\
> +	case 32:					\
> +		__v ^= __v >> 16;			\
> +		fallthrough;				\
> +	case 16:					\
> +		__v ^= __v >> 8;			\
> +		fallthrough;				\
> +	case 8:						\
> +		__v ^= __v >> 4;			\
> +		__ret =  (0x6996 >> (__v & 0xf)) & 1;	\
> +		break;					\
> +	default:					\
> +		BUILD_BUG();				\
> +	}						\
> +	__ret;						\
> +})
> +

You really don't want to do that!
gcc makes a right hash of it for x86 (32bit).
See https://www.godbolt.org/z/jG8dv3cvs

You do better using a __v32 after the 64bit xor.

Even the 64bit version is probably sub-optimal (both gcc and clang).
The whole lot ends up being a bit single register dependency chain.
You want to do:
	mov %eax, %edx
	shrl $n, %eax
	xor %edx, %eax
so that the 'mov' and 'shrl' can happen in the same clock
(without relying on the register-register move being optimised out).

I dropped in the arm64 for an example of where the magic shift of 6996
just adds an extra instruction.

	David