Programming in high-level languages like C# often presents the illusion that the CPU is only capable of a few primitive operations like “add,” “multiply,” “push,” “pop,” and “move.” After all, those are the primitive operations that we write all of our C# code with. The reality is quite different. Modern CPUs have hundreds of instructions for tons of special-purpose operations. Entire algorithms in C# are built right into the CPU and can be executed with one instruction. Today we’ll look at some of these exotic instructions as a reminder of what CPUs can really do and see how we can tap into this potential.
Posts Tagged instruction
Flash Player 11’s new Stage3D hardware-accelerated graphics API not only allows you to write shaders (custom code to position vertices and color pixels), it downright requires you to do so. To get the lowest level access (and therefore most power) out of your shaders, you write them in an assembly language called AGAL. Read on for a test app that compares the speed of these shader instructions, the fundamental building blocks of all Stage3D apps.