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Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles
book

Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

by James S. Evans - Lawrence University, Gregory L. Trimper - viika
April 2003
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
576 pages
15h 13m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

8.6. Predication Based on Floating-Point Values

Comparisons between pairs of data values lie close to the heart of truly useful CPU operations from a programmer's perspective, as we said in Chapter 5. The outcome of a comparison is a Boolean true or false condition that directs the selective execution of portions of an algorithm that require choices, or branching.

We saw that there is a close relationship between comparisons and the concept called predication. The Itanium architecture implements predication by storing the Boolean result of a comparison in a pair of predicate registers. In general, the first predicate register is set to 1 and the other to 0; the logically opposite outcome would instead set the first to 0 and the second to 1. In ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0131013726Purchase book