The advantages of using 32bit registers/instructions in x86-64

Question

Sometimes gcc uses 32bit register, when I would expect it to use a 64bit register. For example the following C code:

unsigned long long 
div(unsigned long long a, unsigned long long b){
    return a/b;
}

is compiled with -O2 option to (leaving out some boilerplate stuff):

div:
    movq    %rdi, %rax
    xorl    %edx, %edx
    divq    %rsi
    ret

For the unsigned division, the register %rdx needs to be 0. This can be achieved by means of xorq %rdx, %rdx, but xorl %edx, %edx seems to have the same effect.

At least on my machine there was no performance gain (i.e. speed up) for xorl over xorq.

I have actually more than just one question:

1. Why does gcc prefer the 32bit version?
2. Why does gcc stop at xorl and doesn't use xorw?
3. Are there machines for which xorl is faster than xorq?
4. Should one always prefer 32bit register/operations if possible rather than 64bit register/operations?

Answer 1

Why does gcc prefer the 32bit version?

Mainly code size: no REX prefix needed in the machine-code encoding.

Why does gcc stop at xorl and doesn't use xorw?

Writing an 8 or 16-bit partial register doesn't zero-extend to the rest of the register. (Only writing a 32-bit register implicitly zero-extends to 64)

Besides, xorw requires an operand-size prefix to encode, so it's the same size as xorq, larger than xorl. 32-bit operand-size is the default in x86-64 machine code, no prefixes required. (For most instructions; a few like push/pop and call/jmp default to 64-bit, including memory-indirect call [rdi] = ff 17 with a pointer in memory.) 8-bit operand size uses separate opcodes, not prefixes, but still potentially has partial-register penalties.

See also Why doesn't GCC use partial registers? 32-bit registers are not considered partial registers, because writing them always writes the whole 64-bit register. (And it's writing partial regs that's the main problem, not reading them after a full-width write.)

Are there machines for which xorl is faster than xorq?

Yes, Silvermont / KNL only recognize xor-zeroing as a zeroing idiom (dependency breaking, and other good stuff) with 32-bit operand size. Thus, even though code-size is the same, xor %r10d, %r10d is much better than xor %r10, %r10. (xor needs a REX prefix for r10 regardless of operand-size).

On all CPUs, code size always potentially matters for decode and I-cache footprint (except when a later .p2align directive would just make more padding if the preceding code is smaller¹). There's no downside to using 32-bit operand size for xor-zeroing (or to implicit zero-extending in general instead of explict², including using AVX vpxor xmm0,xmm0,xmm0 to zero AVX512 zmm0.)

Most instructions are the same speed for all operand-sizes, because modern x86 CPUs can afford the transistor budget for wide ALUs. Exceptions include imul r64,r64 is slower than imul r32,r32 on AMD CPUs before Ryzen, and Intel Atom, and 64bit div is significantly slower on all CPUs. AMD pre-Ryzen has slower popcnt r64. Atom/Silvermont have slow shld/shrd r64 vs. r32. Mainstream Intel (Skylake etc.) have slower bswap r64.

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Should one always prefer 32bit register/operations if possible rather than 64bit register/operations?

Yes, prefer 32-bit ops for code-size reasons at least, but note that using r8..r15 anywhere in an instruction (including an addressing mode) will also require a REX prefix. So if you have some data you can use 32-bit operand-size with (or pointers to 8/16/32-bit data), prefer to keep it in the low 8 named registers (e/rax..) rather than high 8 numbered registers.

But don't spend extra instructions to make this happen; saving a few bytes of code-size is usually the least important consideration. e.g. just use r8d instead of saving/restoring rbx so you can use ebx if you need an extra register that doesn't have to be call-preserved. Using 32-bit r8d instead of 64-bit r8 won't help with code-size, but it can be faster for some operations on some CPUs (see above).

This also applies to cases where you only care about the low 16 bits of a register, but it can still be more efficient to use a 32-bit add instead of 16-bit.

See also http://agner.org/optimize/ and the x86 tag wiki.

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Footnote 1: There are rare use-cases for making instructions longer than necessary (What methods can be used to efficiently extend instruction length on modern x86?)

• To align a later branch target without needing a NOP.

• Tuning for the front-end of a specific microarchitecture (i.e. optimizing decode by controlling where instructions boundaries are). Inserting NOPs would cost extra front-end bandwidth and completely defeat the whole purpose.

Assemblers won't do this for you, and doing it by hand is time consuming to re-do every time you change anything (and you may have to use .byte directives to manually encode the instruction).

Footnote 2: I've found one exception to the rule that implicit zero-extension is at least as cheap as a wider operation: Haswell/Skylake AVX 128-bit loads being read by a 256-bit instruction have an extra 1c of store-forwarding latency vs. being consumed by a 128-bit instruction. (Details in a thread on Agner Fog's blog forum.)

Answer 2

In 64bit mode writing to a 32bit register zeros the upper 32 bits => xorl %edx, %edx zeros the upper part of rdx for "free".

On the other hand xor %rdx, %rdx is encoded with an extra byte, because it needs a REX prefix. When trying to zero a 64 bit register, it is a clear win to xor it as 32 bit register.