This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

A8/9 NEON 128bit registers, 64bit alu's

Note: This was originally posted on 1st December 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

Hi,

I've been reading a lot about the neon architecture for a project but there is still this one thing I'm not entirely sure about. If I understand correctly the 128bit-view is more of an aid for the programmer since the alu's in the neon engine are only 64bit wide instructions working on a  qx register will just take double the time. I was going over the timing tables trying my best to understand them :-) and saw this confirmed in some instruction timings but in other the operation on 128bit would also just take one cycle ( add for example ).

Did I read the table wrong? If not: how is this achieved? Is this divided over 2 64bit adders which are coupled ( carry ) then?

Thanks in advance
Parents
  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th December 2011 at http://forums.arm.com


    It's true that NEON has 128-bit registers but nearly always operates on just 64-bits at a time.


    This is NOT true, please read my post. For integer operations 128-bit operation is more the rule than the exception, at least on Cortex-A8 and A9. If you're targeting these devices it's important to know what operations do and don't operate on 128-bits in one cycle.
Reply
  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th December 2011 at http://forums.arm.com


    It's true that NEON has 128-bit registers but nearly always operates on just 64-bits at a time.


    This is NOT true, please read my post. For integer operations 128-bit operation is more the rule than the exception, at least on Cortex-A8 and A9. If you're targeting these devices it's important to know what operations do and don't operate on 128-bits in one cycle.
Children
No data