I was reviewing some code from a library for Arduino and saw the following if statement in the main loop:
draw_state++;
if ( draw_state >= 14*8 )
draw_state = 0;
draw_state is a uint8_t.
Why is 14*8 written here instead of 112? I initially thought this was done to save space, as 14 and 8 can both be represented by a single byte, but then so can 112.
I can't see why a compiler wouldn't optimize this to 112, since otherwise it would mean a multiplication has to be done every iteration instead of the lookup of a value. This looks to me like there is some form of memory and processing tradeoff.
Does anyone have a suggestion as to why this was done?
Note: I had a hard time coming up with a clear title, so suggestions are welcome.
Probably to explicitly show where the number 112 came from. For example, it could be number of bits in 14 bytes (but of course I don't know the context of the code, so I could be wrong). It would then be more obvious to humans where the value came from, than wiriting just 112.
And as you pointed out, the compiler will probably optimize it, so there will be no multiplication in the machine code.
Related
I am new to LabVIEW and I am trying to read a code written in LabVIEW. The block diagram is this:
This is the program to input x and y functions into the voltage input. It is meant to give an input voltage in different forms (sine, heartshape , etc.) into the fast-steering mirror or galvano mirror x and y axises.
x and y function controls are for inputting a formula for a function, and then we use "evaluation single value" function to input into a daq assistant.
I understand that { 2*(|-Mpi|)/N }*i + -Mpi*pi goes into the x value. However, I dont understand why we use this kind of formula. Why we need to assign a negative value and then do the absolute value of -M*pi. Also, I don`t understand why we need to divide to N and then multiply by i. And finally, why need to add -Mpi again? If you provide any hints about this I would really appreciate it.
This is just a complicated way to write the code/formula. Given what the code looks like (unnecessary wire bends, duplicate loop-input-tunnels, hidden wires, unnecessary coercion dots, failure to use appropriate built-in 'negate' function) not much care has been given in writing it. So while it probably yields the correct results you should not expect it to do so in the most readable way.
To answer you specific questions:
Why we need to assign a negative value and then do the absolute value
We don't. We can just move the negation immediately before the last addition or change that to a subtraction:
{ 2*(|Mpi|)/N }*i - Mpi*pi
And as #yair pointed out: We are not assigning a value here, we are basically flipping the sign of whatever value the user entered.
Why we need to divide to N and then multiply by i
This gives you a fraction between 0 and 1, no matter how many steps you do in your for-loop. Think of N as a sampling rate. I.e. your mirrors will always do the same movement, but a larger N just produces more steps in between.
Why need to add -Mpi again
I would strongly assume this is some kind of quick-and-dirty workaround for a bug that has not been fixed properly. Looking at the code it seems this +Mpi*pi has been added later on in the development process. And while I don't know what the expected values are I would believe that multiplying only one of the summands by Pi is probably wrong.
I'm relatively new to Verilog and I've been working on a project in which I would, in an ideal world, like to have an assignment statement like:
assign isinbufferzone = a > (packetlength-16384) ? 1:0;
The file with this type of line in it will compile, but isinbufferzone doesn't go high when it should. I'm assuming it's not happy with having subtraction in the conditional. I'm able to make the module work by moving stuff around, but the result is more complicated than I think it should need to be and the latency really starts to add up. Does anyone have any thoughts on what the most concise way to do this is? Thank you in advance for your help.
You probably expect isinbufferzone to go high if packetlength is 16384 or less regardless of a, however this is not what happens.
If packetlength is less than 16384, the value packetlength - 16384 is not a negative number −X, but some very large positive number (maybe 232 − X, or 217 − X, I'm not quite sure which, but it doesn't matter), because Verilog does unsigned arithmetic by default. This is called integer overflow.
You could maybe try to solve this by declaring some signals as signed, but in my opinion the safest way is to explicitly handle the overflow case and making sure the subtraction result is only evaluated for packetlength values of 16384 or greater:
assign isinbufferzone = (packetlength < 16384) ? 1 : (a > packetlength - 16384);
I do something like this to get:
bMRes += MatrixXd(n, n).setZero()
.selfadjointView<Eigen::Upper>().rankUpdate(bM);
This gets me an incrementation of bMRes by bM * bM.transpose() but twice as fast.
Note that bMRes and bM are of type Map<MatrixXd>.
To optimize things further, I would like to skip the copy (and incrementation) of the Lower part.
In other words, I would like to compute and write only the Upper part.
Again, in other words, I would like to have my result in the Upper part and 0's in the Lower part.
If it is not clear enough, feel free to ask questions.
Thanks in advance.
Florian
If your bMRes is self-adjoint originally, you could use the following code, which only updates the upper half of bMRes.
bMRes.selfadjointView<Eigen::Upper>().rankUpdate(bM);
If not, I think you have to accept that .selfadjointView<>() will always copy the other half when assigned to a MatrixXd.
Compared to A*A.transpose() or .rankUpdate(A), the cost of copying half of A can be ignored when A is reasonably large. So I guess you don't need to optimize your code further.
If you just want to evaluate the difference, you could use low-level BLAS APIs. A*A.transpose() is equivalent to gemm(), and .rankUpdate(A) is equivalent to syrk(), but syrk() don't copy the other half automatically.
At http://cr.yp.to/primegen.html you can find sources of program that uses Atkin's sieve to generate primes. As the author says that it may take few months to answer an e-mail sent to him (I understand that, he sure is an occupied man!) I'm posting this question.
The page states that 'primegen can generate primes up to 1000000000000000'. I am trying to understand why it is so. There is of course a limitation up to 2^64 ~ 2 * 10^19 (size of long unsigned int) because this is how the numbers are represented. I know for sure that if there would be a huge prime gap (> 2^31) then printing of numbers would fail. However in this range I think there is no such prime gap.
Either the author overestimated the bound (and really it is around 10^19) or there is a place in the source code where the arithmetic operation can overflow or something like that.
The funny thing is that you actually MAY run it for numbers > 10^15:
./primes 10000000000000000 10000000000000100
10000000000000061
10000000000000069
10000000000000079
10000000000000099
and if you believe Wolfram Alpha, it is correct.
Some facts I had "reverse-engineered":
numbers are sifted in batches of 1,920 * PRIMEGEN_WORDS = 3,932,160 numbers (see primegen_fill function in primegen_next.c)
PRIMEGEN_WORDS controls how big a single sifting is - you can adjust it in primegen_impl.h to fit your CPU cache,
the implementation of the sieve itself is in primegen.c file - I assume it is correct; what you get is a bitmask of primes in pg->buf (see primegen_fill function)
The bitmask is analyzed and primes are stored in pg->p array.
I see no point where the overflow may happen.
I wish I was on my computer to look, but I suspect you would have different success if you started at 1 as your lower bound.
Just from the algorithm, I would conclude that the upper bound comes from the 32 bit numbers.
The page mentiones Pentium-III as CPU so my guess it is very old and does not use 64 bit.
2^32 are approx 10^9. Sieve of Atkins (which the algorithm uses) requires N^(1/2) bits (it uses a big bitfield). Which means in 2^32 big memory you can make (conservativ) N approx 10^15. As this number is a rough conservative upper bound (you have system and other programs occupying memory, reserving address ranges for IO,...) the real upper bound is/might be higher.
Since many of the Project Euler problems require you to do a divisibility check for quite a number of times, I've been trying to figure out the fastest way to perform this task in ZX81 BASIC.
So far I've compared (N/D) to INT(N/D) to check, whether N is dividable by D or not.
I have been thinking about doing the test in Z80 machine code, I haven't yet figured out how to use the variables in the BASIC in the machine code.
How can it be achieved?
You can do this very fast in machine code by subtracting repeatedly. Basically you have a procedure like:
set accumulator to N
subtract D
if carry flag is set then it is not divisible
if zero flag is set then it is divisible
otherwise repeat subtraction until one of the above occurs
The 8 bit version would be something like:
DIVISIBLE_TEST:
LD B,10
LD A,100
DIVISIBLE_TEST_LOOP:
SUB B
JR C, $END_DIVISIBLE_TEST
JR Z, $END_DIVISIBLE_TEST
JR $DIVISIBLE_TEST_LOOP
END_DIVISIBLE_TEST:
LD B,A
LD C,0
RET
Now, you can call from basic using USR. What USR returns is whatever's in the BC register pair, so you would probably want to do something like:
REM poke the memory addresses with the operands to load the registers
POKE X+1, D
POKE X+3, N
LET r = USR X
IF r = 0 THEN GOTO isdivisible
IF r <> 0 THEN GOTO isnotdivisible
This is an introduction I wrote to Z80 which should help you figure this out. This will explain the flags if you're not familiar with them.
There's a load more links to good Z80 stuff from the main site although it is Spectrum rather than ZX81 focused.
A 16 bit version would be quite similar but using register pair operations. If you need to go beyond 16 bits it would get a bit more convoluted.
How you load this is up to you - but the traditional method is using DATA statements and POKEs. You may prefer to have an assembler figure out the machine code for you though!
Your existing solution may be good enough. Only replace it with something faster if you find it to be a bottleneck in profiling.
(Said with a straight face, of course.)
And anyway, on the ZX81 you can just switch to FAST mode.
Don't know if RANDOMIZE USR is available in ZX81 but I think it can be used to call routines in assembly. To pass arguments you might need to use POKE to set some fixed memory locations before executing RANDOMIZE USR.
I remember to find a list of routines implemented in the ROM to support the ZX Basic. I'm sure there are a few to perform floating operation.
An alternative to floating point is to use fixed point math. It's a lot faster in these kind of situations where there is no math coprocessor.
You also might find more information in Sinclair User issues. They published some articles related to programming in the ZX Spectrum
You should place the values in some pre-known memory locations, first. Then use the same locations from within Z80 assembler. There is no parameter passing between the two.
This is based on what I (still) remember of ZX Spectrum 48. Good luck, but you might consider upgrading your hw. ;/
The problem with Z80 machine code is that it has no floating point ops (and no integer divide or multiply, for that matter). Implementing your own FP library in Z80 assembler is not trivial. Of course, you can use the built-in BASIC routines, but then you may as well just stick with BASIC.