Bitwise division by 10 - bit-manipulation

I was wondering if there was an easy way to divide a number with range [0,99] by 10, by simply doing bit-wise operations such as shift, add, subtract etc. I am looking for a solution that would work in an 8-bit wide register because I saw some solution that involved making an approximation using 32 bits.

Given the limited range (there are only 10 possible results), you might do better with a kind of binary search: if n<50 then if n<30 then if n<10 then return 0 else if n<20 return 1 else return 2 else if n<40 return 3 else return 4 else ...(handle 5..9)

The method specified here can be generalized for any bit width. Basically, find (1/10) * 2**(bit width) then multiply that by the divisor and right shift by the bit width.
Programmatically using javascript, this is:
function bitwiseDivApprox(dividend) {
var divisor = 26; // Math.ceil((1/10) * Math.pow(2, 8))
return (divisor * dividend) >> 8;
}
(this being said, it probably isn't worth it to try to optimize this for very small numbers)

Related

Fast method to multiply integer by proper fraction without floats or overflow

My program frequently requires the following calculation to be performed:
Given:
N is a 32-bit integer
D is a 32-bit integer
abs(N) <= abs(D)
D != 0
X is a 32-bit integer of any value
Find:
X * N / D as a rounded integer that is X scaled to N/D (i.e. 10 * 2 / 3 = 7)
Obviously I could just use r=x*n/d directly but I will often get overflow from the x*n. If I instead do r=x*(n/d) then I only get 0 or x due to integer division dropping the fractional component. And then there's r=x*(float(n)/d) but I can't use floats in this case.
Accuracy would be great but isn't as critical as speed and being a deterministic function (always returning the same value given the same inputs).
N and D are currently signed but I could work around them being always unsigned if it helps.
A generic function that works with any value of X (and N and D, as long as N <= D) is ideal since this operation is used in various different ways but I also have a specific case where the value of X is a known constant power of 2 (2048, to be precise), and just getting that specific call sped up would be a big help.
Currently I am accomplishing this using 64-bit multiply and divide to avoid overflow (essentially int multByProperFraction(int x, int n, int d) { return (__int64)x * n / d; } but with some asserts and extra bit fiddling for rounding instead of truncating).
Unfortunately, my profiler is reporting the 64-bit divide function as taking up way too much CPU (this is a 32-bit application). I've tried to reduce how often I need to do this calculation but am running out of ways around it, so I'm trying to figure out a faster method, if it is even possible. In the specific case where X is a constant 2048, I use a bit shift instead of multiply but that doesn't help much.
Tolerate imprecision and use the 16 MSBits of n,d,x
Algorithm
while (|n| > 0xffff) n/2, sh++
while (|x| > 0xffff) x/2, sh++
while (|d| > 0xffff) d/2, sh--
r = n*x/d // A 16x16 to 32 multiply followed by a 32/16-bit divide.
shift r by sh.
When 64 bit divide is expensive, the pre/post processing here may be worth to do a 32-bit divide - which will certainly be the big chunk of CPU.
If the compiler cannot be coaxed into doing a 32-bit/16-bit divide, then skip the while (|d| > 0xffff) d/2, sh-- step and do a 32/32 divide.
Use unsigned math as possible.
The basic correct approach to this is simply (uint64_t)x*n/d. That's optimal assuming d is variable and unpredictable. But if d is constant or changes infrequently, you can pre-generate constants such that exact division by d can be performed as a multiplication followed by a bitshift. A good description of the algorithm, which is roughly what GCC uses internally to transform division by a constant into multiplication, is here:
http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/labor-of-division-episode-iii.html
I'm not sure how easy it is to make it work for a "64/32" division (i.e. dividing the result of (uint64_t)x*n), but you should be able to just break it up into high and low parts if nothing else.
Note that these algorithms are also available as libdivide.
I've now benchmarked several possible solutions, including weird/clever ones from other sources like combining 32-bit div & mod & add or using peasant math, and here are my conclusions:
First, if you are only targeting Windows and using VSC++, just use MulDiv(). It is quite fast (faster than directly using 64-bit variables in my tests) while still being just as accurate and rounding the result for you. I could not find any superior method to do this kind of thing on Windows with VSC++, even taking into account restrictions like unsigned-only and N <= D.
However, in my case having a function with deterministic results even across platforms is even more important than speed. On another platform I was using as a test, the 64-bit divide is much, much slower than the 32-bit one when using the 32-bit libraries, and there is no MulDiv() to use. The 64-bit divide on this platform takes ~26x as long as a 32-bit divide (yet the 64-bit multiply is just as fast as the 32-bit version...).
So if you have a case like me, I will share the best results I got, which turned out to be just optimizations of chux's answer.
Both of the methods I will share below make use of the following function (though the compiler-specific intrinsics only actually helped in speed with MSVC in Windows):
inline u32 bitsRequired(u32 val)
{
#ifdef _MSC_VER
DWORD r = 0;
_BitScanReverse(&r, val | 1);
return r+1;
#elif defined(__GNUC__) || defined(__clang__)
return 32 - __builtin_clz(val | 1);
#else
int r = 1;
while (val >>= 1) ++r;
return r;
#endif
}
Now, if x is a constant that's 16-bit in size or smaller and you can pre-compute the bits required, I found the best results in speed and accuracy from this function:
u32 multConstByPropFrac(u32 x, u32 nMaxBits, u32 n, u32 d)
{
//assert(nMaxBits == 32 - bitsRequired(x));
//assert(n <= d);
const int bitShift = bitsRequired(n) - nMaxBits;
if( bitShift > 0 )
{
n >>= bitShift;
d >>= bitShift;
}
// Remove the + d/2 part if don't need rounding
return (x * n + d/2) / d;
}
On the platform with the slow 64-bit divide, the above function ran ~16.75x as fast as return ((u64)x * n + d/2) / d; and with an average 99.999981% accuracy (comparing difference in return value from expected to range of x, i.e. returning +/-1 from expected when x is 2048 would be 100 - (1/2048 * 100) = 99.95% accurate) when testing it with a million or so randomized inputs where roughly half of them would normally have been an overflow. Worst-case accuracy was 99.951172%.
For the general use case, I found the best results from the following (and without needing to restrict N <= D to boot!):
u32 scaleToFraction(u32 x, u32 n, u32 d)
{
u32 bits = bitsRequired(x);
int bitShift = bits - 16;
if( bitShift < 0 ) bitShift = 0;
int sh = bitShift;
x >>= bitShift;
bits = bitsRequired(n);
bitShift = bits - 16;
if( bitShift < 0 ) bitShift = 0;
sh += bitShift;
n >>= bitShift;
bits = bitsRequired(d);
bitShift = bits - 16;
if( bitShift < 0 ) bitShift = 0;
sh -= bitShift;
d >>= bitShift;
// Remove the + d/2 part if don't need rounding
u32 r = (x * n + d/2) / d;
if( sh < 0 )
r >>= (-sh);
else //if( sh > 0 )
r <<= sh;
return r;
}
On the platform with the slow 64-bit divide, the above function ran ~18.5x as fast as using 64-bit variables and with 99.999426% average and 99.947479% worst-case accuracy.
I was able to get more speed or more accuracy by messing with the shifting, such as trying to not shift all the way down to 16-bit if it wasn't strictly necessary, but any increase in speed came at a high cost in accuracy and vice versa.
None of the other methods I tested came even close to the same speed or accuracy, most being slower than just using the 64-bit method or having huge loss in precision, so not worth going into.
Obviously, no guarantee that anyone else will get similar results on other platforms!
EDIT: Replaced some bit-twiddling hacks with plain code that actually ran faster anyway by letting the compiler do its job.

C++: Binary to Decimal Conversion

I am trying to convert a binary array to decimal in following way:
uint8_t array[8] = {1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1} ;
int decimal = 0 ;
for(int i = 0 ; i < 8 ; i++)
decimal = (decimal << 1) + array[i] ;
Actually I have to convert 64 bit binary array to decimal and I have to do it for million times.
Can anybody help me, is there any faster way to do the above ? Or is the above one is nice ?
Your method is adequate, to call it nice I would just not mix bitwise operations and "mathematical" way of converting to decimal, i.e. use either
decimal = decimal << 1 | array[i];
or
decimal = decimal * 2 + array[i];
It is important, before attempting any optimisation, to profile the code. Time it, look at the code being generated, and optimise only when you understand what is going on.
And as already pointed out, the best optimisation is to not do something, but to make a higher level change that removes the need.
However...
Most changes you might want to trivially make here, are likely to be things the compiler has already done (a shift is the same as a multiply to the compiler). Some may actually prevent the compiler from making an optimisation (changing an add to an or will restrict the compiler - there are more ways to add numbers, and only you know that in this case the result will be the same).
Pointer arithmetic may be better, but the compiler is not stupid - it ought to already be producing decent code for dereferencing the array, so you need to check that you have not in fact made matters worse by introducing an additional variable.
In this case the loop count is well defined and limited, so unrolling probably makes sense.
Further more it depends on how dependent you want the result to be on your target architecture. If you want portability, it is hard(er) to optimise.
For example, the following produces better code here:
unsigned int x0 = *(unsigned int *)array;
unsigned int x1 = *(unsigned int *)(array+4);
int decimal = ((x0 * 0x8040201) >> 20) + ((x1 * 0x8040201) >> 24);
I could probably also roll a 64-bit version that did 8 bits at a time instead of 4.
But it is very definitely not portable code. I might use that locally if I knew what I was running on and I just wanted to crunch numbers quickly. But I probably wouldn't put it in production code. Certainly not without documenting what it did, and without the accompanying unit test that checks that it actually works.
The binary 'compression' can be generalized as a problem of weighted sum -- and for that there are some interesting techniques.
X mod (255) means essentially summing of all independent 8-bit numbers.
X mod 254 means summing each digit with a doubling weight, since 1 mod 254 = 1, 256 mod 254 = 2, 256*256 mod 254 = 2*2 = 4, etc.
If the encoding was big endian, then *(unsigned long long)array % 254 would produce a weighted sum (with truncated range of 0..253). Then removing the value with weight 2 and adding it manually would produce the correct result:
uint64_t a = *(uint64_t *)array;
return (a & ~256) % 254 + ((a>>9) & 2);
Other mechanism to get the weight is to premultiply each binary digit by 255 and masking the correct bit:
uint64_t a = (*(uint64_t *)array * 255) & 0x0102040810204080ULL; // little endian
uint64_t a = (*(uint64_t *)array * 255) & 0x8040201008040201ULL; // big endian
In both cases one can then take the remainder of 255 (and correct now with weight 1):
return (a & 0x00ffffffffffffff) % 255 + (a>>56); // little endian, or
return (a & ~1) % 255 + (a&1);
For the sceptical mind: I actually did profile the modulus version to be (slightly) faster than iteration on x64.
To continue from the answer of JasonD, parallel bit selection can be iteratively utilized.
But first expressing the equation in full form would help the compiler to remove the artificial dependency created by the iterative approach using accumulation:
ret = ((a[0]<<7) | (a[1]<<6) | (a[2]<<5) | (a[3]<<4) |
(a[4]<<3) | (a[5]<<2) | (a[6]<<1) | (a[7]<<0));
vs.
HI=*(uint32_t)array, LO=*(uint32_t)&array[4];
LO |= (HI<<4); // The HI dword has a weight 16 relative to Lo bytes
LO |= (LO>>14); // High word has 4x weight compared to low word
LO |= (LO>>9); // high byte has 2x weight compared to lower byte
return LO & 255;
One more interesting technique would be to utilize crc32 as a compression function; then it just happens that the result would be LookUpTable[crc32(array) & 255]; as there is no collision with this given small subset of 256 distinct arrays. However to apply that, one has already chosen the road of even less portability and could as well end up using SSE intrinsics.
You could use accumulate, with a doubling and adding binary operation:
int doubleSumAndAdd(const int& sum, const int& next) {
return (sum * 2) + next;
}
int decimal = accumulate(array, array+ARRAY_SIZE,
doubleSumAndAdd);
This produces big-endian integers, whereas OP code produces little-endian.
Try this, I converted a binary digit of up to 1020 bits
#include <sstream>
#include <string>
#include <math.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
long binary_decimal(string num) /* Function to convert binary to dec */
{
long dec = 0, n = 1, exp = 0;
string bin = num;
if(bin.length() > 1020){
cout << "Binary Digit too large" << endl;
}
else {
for(int i = bin.length() - 1; i > -1; i--)
{
n = pow(2,exp++);
if(bin.at(i) == '1')
dec += n;
}
}
return dec;
}
Theoretically this method will work for a binary digit of infinate length

binary comparation

Is there any function in c++ to convert decimal number to binary number without using divide algorithm?
I want to count different bits of binary format of 2 numbers. like diff(0,2) is 1 bit. or diff(3,15) is 2 bit.
I want to write diff function.
thanks
You can find the number of different bits by counting the bits in the xor of the two numbers.
Something like this.
int count_bits(unsigned int n) {
int result = 0;
while(n) {
result += 1;
// Remove the lowest bit.
n &= n - 1;
}
return result;
}
int diff(unsigned int a, unsigned int b) {
return count_bits(a ^ b);
}
You can use XOR on the numbers ( if Z = X XOR Y then each bit which is set differently in X and Y will be set to 1 in Z, each bit that is set the same in X and Y will be set to 0), and count the bits of the result using a simple loop and shift.
Everything is already in binary technically. You just need to start looking at bitwise operators to access the individual bits composing the decimal numbers you're looking at.
For example,
if (15 & 1) would check to see if 15 has its first bit turned on.
if (15 & 3) would check to see if its first 2 bits were turned on.
if (15 & 4) would check to see if its 3rd bit only was turned on.
You can do this with and/or/xor/etc. Google bitwise operators and read up.

Logarithm of the very-very large number

I have to find log of very large number.
I do this in C++
I have already made a function of multiplication, addition, subtraction, division, but there were problems with the logarithm. I do not need code, I need a simple idea how to do it using these functions.
Thanks.
P.S.
Sorry, i forgot to tell you: i have to find only binary logarithm of that number
P.S.-2
I found in Wikipedia:
int floorLog2(unsigned int n) {
if (n == 0)
return -1;
int pos = 0;
if (n >= (1 <<16)) { n >>= 16; pos += 16; }
if (n >= (1 << 8)) { n >>= 8; pos += 8; }
if (n >= (1 << 4)) { n >>= 4; pos += 4; }
if (n >= (1 << 2)) { n >>= 2; pos += 2; }
if (n >= (1 << 1)) { pos += 1; }
return pos;
}
if I remade it under the big numbers, it will work correctly?
I assume you're writing a bignum class of your own. If you only care about an integral result of log2, it's quite easy. Take the log of the most significant digit that's not zero, and add 8 for each byte after that one. This is assuming that each byte holds values 0-255. These are only accurate within ±.5, but very fast.
[0][42][53] (10805 in bytes)
log2(42) = 5
+ 8*1 = 8 (because of the one byte lower than MSB)
= 13 (Actual: 13.39941145)
If your values hold base 10 digits, that works out to log2(MSB)+3.32192809*num_digits_less_than_MSB.
[0][5][7][6][2] (5762)
log2(5) = 2.321928095
+ 3.32192809*3 = 9.96578427 (because 3 digits lower than MSB)
= 12.28771 (Actual: 12.49235395)
(only accurate for numbers with less than ~10 million digits)
If you used the algorithm you found on wikipedia, it will be IMMENSELY slow. (but accurate if you need decimals)
It's been pointed out that my method is inaccurate when the MSB is small (still within ±.5, but no farther), but this is easily fixed by simply shifting the top two bytes into a single number, taking the log of that, and doing the multiplication for the bytes less than that number. I believe this will be accurate within half a percent, and still significantly faster than a normal logarithm.
[1][42][53] (76341 in bytes)
log2(1*256+42) = ?
log2(298) = 8.21916852046
+ 8*1 = 8 (because of the one byte lower than MSB)
= 16.21916852046 (Actual: 16.2201704643)
For base 10 digits, it's log2( [mostSignificantDigit]*10+[secondMostSignifcantDigit] ) + 3.32192809*[remainingDigitCount].
If performance is still an issue, you can use lookup tables for the log2 instead of using a full logarithm function.
I assume you want to know how to compute the logarithm "by hand". So I tell you what I've found for this.
Have a look over here, where it is described how to logarithmize by hand. You can implement this as an algorithm. Here's an article by "How Euler did it". I also find this article promising.
I suppose there are more sophisticated methods to do this, but they are so involved you probably don't want to implement them.

Is there any alternative to using % (modulus) in C/C++?

I read somewhere once that the modulus operator is inefficient on small embedded devices like 8 bit micro-controllers that do not have integer division instruction. Perhaps someone can confirm this but I thought the difference is 5-10 time slower than with an integer division operation.
Is there another way to do this other than keeping a counter variable and manually overflowing to 0 at the mod point?
const int FIZZ = 6;
for(int x = 0; x < MAXCOUNT; x++)
{
if(!(x % FIZZ)) print("Fizz\n"); // slow on some systems
}
vs:
The way I am currently doing it:
const int FIZZ = 6;
int fizzcount = 1;
for(int x = 1; x < MAXCOUNT; x++)
{
if(fizzcount >= FIZZ)
{
print("Fizz\n");
fizzcount = 0;
}
}
Ah, the joys of bitwise arithmetic. A side effect of many division routines is the modulus - so in few cases should division actually be faster than modulus. I'm interested to see the source you got this information from. Processors with multipliers have interesting division routines using the multiplier, but you can get from division result to modulus with just another two steps (multiply and subtract) so it's still comparable. If the processor has a built in division routine you'll likely see it also provides the remainder.
Still, there is a small branch of number theory devoted to Modular Arithmetic which requires study if you really want to understand how to optimize a modulus operation. Modular arithmatic, for instance, is very handy for generating magic squares.
So, in that vein, here's a very low level look at the math of modulus for an example of x, which should show you how simple it can be compared to division:
Maybe a better way to think about the problem is in terms of number
bases and modulo arithmetic. For example, your goal is to compute DOW
mod 7 where DOW is the 16-bit representation of the day of the
week. You can write this as:
DOW = DOW_HI*256 + DOW_LO
DOW%7 = (DOW_HI*256 + DOW_LO) % 7
= ((DOW_HI*256)%7 + (DOW_LO % 7)) %7
= ((DOW_HI%7 * 256%7) + (DOW_LO%7)) %7
= ((DOW_HI%7 * 4) + (DOW_LO%7)) %7
Expressed in this manner, you can separately compute the modulo 7
result for the high and low bytes. Multiply the result for the high by
4 and add it to the low and then finally compute result modulo 7.
Computing the mod 7 result of an 8-bit number can be performed in a
similar fashion. You can write an 8-bit number in octal like so:
X = a*64 + b*8 + c
Where a, b, and c are 3-bit numbers.
X%7 = ((a%7)*(64%7) + (b%7)*(8%7) + c%7) % 7
= (a%7 + b%7 + c%7) % 7
= (a + b + c) % 7
since 64%7 = 8%7 = 1
Of course, a, b, and c are
c = X & 7
b = (X>>3) & 7
a = (X>>6) & 7 // (actually, a is only 2-bits).
The largest possible value for a+b+c is 7+7+3 = 17. So, you'll need
one more octal step. The complete (untested) C version could be
written like:
unsigned char Mod7Byte(unsigned char X)
{
X = (X&7) + ((X>>3)&7) + (X>>6);
X = (X&7) + (X>>3);
return X==7 ? 0 : X;
}
I spent a few moments writing a PIC version. The actual implementation
is slightly different than described above
Mod7Byte:
movwf temp1 ;
andlw 7 ;W=c
movwf temp2 ;temp2=c
rlncf temp1,F ;
swapf temp1,W ;W= a*8+b
andlw 0x1F
addwf temp2,W ;W= a*8+b+c
movwf temp2 ;temp2 is now a 6-bit number
andlw 0x38 ;get the high 3 bits == a'
xorwf temp2,F ;temp2 now has the 3 low bits == b'
rlncf WREG,F ;shift the high bits right 4
swapf WREG,F ;
addwf temp2,W ;W = a' + b'
; at this point, W is between 0 and 10
addlw -7
bc Mod7Byte_L2
Mod7Byte_L1:
addlw 7
Mod7Byte_L2:
return
Here's a liitle routine to test the algorithm
clrf x
clrf count
TestLoop:
movf x,W
RCALL Mod7Byte
cpfseq count
bra fail
incf count,W
xorlw 7
skpz
xorlw 7
movwf count
incfsz x,F
bra TestLoop
passed:
Finally, for the 16-bit result (which I have not tested), you could
write:
uint16 Mod7Word(uint16 X)
{
return Mod7Byte(Mod7Byte(X & 0xff) + Mod7Byte(X>>8)*4);
}
Scott
If you are calculating a number mod some power of two, you can use the bit-wise and operator. Just subtract one from the second number. For example:
x % 8 == x & 7
x % 256 == x & 255
A few caveats:
This only works if the second number is a power of two.
It's only equivalent if the modulus is always positive. The C and C++ standards don't specify the sign of the modulus when the first number is negative (until C++11, which does guarantee it will be negative, which is what most compilers were already doing). A bit-wise and gets rid of the sign bit, so it will always be positive (i.e. it's a true modulus, not a remainder). It sounds like that's what you want anyway though.
Your compiler probably already does this when it can, so in most cases it's not worth doing it manually.
There is an overhead most of the time in using modulo that are not powers of 2.
This is regardless of the processor as (AFAIK) even processors with modulus operators are a few cycles slower for divide as opposed to mask operations.
For most cases this is not an optimisation that is worth considering, and certainly not worth calculating your own shortcut operation (especially if it still involves divide or multiply).
However, one rule of thumb is to select array sizes etc. to be powers of 2.
so if calculating day of week, may as well use %7 regardless
if setting up a circular buffer of around 100 entries... why not make it 128. You can then write % 128 and most (all) compilers will make this & 0x7F
Unless you really need high performance on multiple embedded platforms, don't change how you code for performance reasons until you profile!
Code that's written awkwardly to optimize for performance is hard to debug and hard to maintain. Write a test case, and profile it on your target. Once you know the actual cost of modulus, then decide if the alternate solution is worth coding.
#Matthew is right. Try this:
int main() {
int i;
for(i = 0; i<=1024; i++) {
if (!(i & 0xFF)) printf("& i = %d\n", i);
if (!(i % 0x100)) printf("mod i = %d\n", i);
}
}
x%y == (x-(x/y)*y)
Hope this helps.
Do you have access to any programmable hardware on the embedded device? Like counters and such? If so, you might be able to write a hardware based mod unit, instead of using the simulated %. (I did that once in VHDL. Not sure if I still have the code though.)
Mind you, you did say that division was 5-10 times faster. Have you considered doing a division, multiplication, and subtraction to simulated the mod? (Edit: Misunderstood the original post. I did think it was odd that division was faster than mod, they are the same operation.)
In your specific case, though, you are checking for a mod of 6. 6 = 2*3. So you could MAYBE get some small gains if you first checked if the least significant bit was a 0. Something like:
if((!(x & 1)) && (x % 3))
{
print("Fizz\n");
}
If you do that, though, I'd recommend confirming that you get any gains, yay for profilers. And doing some commenting. I'd feel bad for the next guy who has to look at the code otherwise.
You should really check the embedded device you need. All the assembly language I have seen (x86, 68000) implement the modulus using a division.
Actually, the division assembly operation returns the result of the division and the remaining in two different registers.
In the embedded world, the "modulus" operations you need to do are often the ones that break down nicely into bit operations that you can do with &, | and sometimes >>.
#Jeff V: I see a problem with it! (Beyond that your original code was looking for a mod 6 and now you are essentially looking for a mod 8). You keep doing an extra +1! Hopefully your compiler optimizes that away, but why not just test start at 2 and go to MAXCOUNT inclusive? Finally, you are returning true every time that (x+1) is NOT divisible by 8. Is that what you want? (I assume it is, but just want to confirm.)
For modulo 6 you can change the Python code to C/C++:
def mod6(number):
while number > 7:
number = (number >> 3 << 1) + (number & 0x7)
if number > 5:
number -= 6
return number
Not that this is necessarily better, but you could have an inner loop which always goes up to FIZZ, and an outer loop which repeats it all some certain number of times. You've then perhaps got to special case the final few steps if MAXCOUNT is not evenly divisible by FIZZ.
That said, I'd suggest doing some research and performance profiling on your intended platforms to get a clear idea of the performance constraints you're under. There may be much more productive places to spend your optimisation effort.
The print statement will take orders of magnitude longer than even the slowest implementation of the modulus operator. So basically the comment "slow on some systems" should be "slow on all systems".
Also, the two code snippets provided don't do the same thing. In the second one, the line
if(fizzcount >= FIZZ)
is always false so "FIZZ\n" is never printed.