There are far too many pages with too little content. What there is could be very confusing. Instructions are mentioned without sufficient explanation (bit string operations? - tell me more! Mentions of x86 strings - are these C-style null terminated strings, or something else? Etc).
Position independent code is mentioned without explaining it.
LAHF/SAHF get mentioned without an explanation. Also the delightfully typo'd CUPID instruction appears in various places.
Tables also appear to have been brain dumped without thought for the end-user, such as in Table 1-10. This has no value as it stands.
Some stuff is over explain, some (rather too much) is under explained. Some just comes out of nowhere, such as zero in a register with XOR. Again, I know exactly why, but if this book is aimed at beginners then it must explain itself.
Also I would expect the registers could be given useful aliases by the assembler. I really got lost in some code because of this. Actual example
; Merge SPFP grayscale values into a single YMM register
vandps ymm4,ymm4,ymm15 ;mask out unneeded SPFP values
vandps ymm5,ymm5,ymm15
vandps ymm6,ymm6,ymm15
vandps ymm7,ymm7,ymm15
vpslldq ymm5,ymm5,4
vpslldq ymm6,ymm6,8
vpslldq ymm7,ymm7,12
vorps ymm0,ymm4,ymm5 ;merge values
vorps ymm1,ymm6,ymm7
vorps ymm2,ymm0,ymm1 ;ymm2 = 8 GS pixel values (SPFP)
That's frustrating and I presume unnecessary.
It's also really unhelpful to refer to 'volatile' without explaining this is not the same 'volatile' as used in C. Volatile here simply means you can trash them.
Also the code given is hugely verbose, quite unnecessarily so, and the description of what's going on (and bless the author, those descriptions are actually often quite reasonable) may be pages away from the code itself, so you have to flip back and forth between them.
As an example of code verbosity, a lot of it is taken up with output of results. Instead of using an old-fashioned printf() we get paragraphs of cout << ... Given that this is not a C++ tutorial, this
cout << "min_vals1: ";
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals1[0] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals1[1] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals1[2] << '\n';
cout << "min_vals2: ";
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals2[0] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals2[1] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)min_vals2[2] << "\n\n";
cout << "max_vals1: ";
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals1[0] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals1[1] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals1[2] << '\n';
cout << "max_vals2: ";
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals2[0] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals2[1] << ' ';
cout << setw(4) << (int)max_vals2[2] << "\n\n";
is not remotely helpful.
There are too many unhelpful brain dumps which don't recognise the beginners are going to get confused by them. Fortunately I'm not a beginner.
The book winds up by giving a very brief overview of AVX512, too little to be of use really.
As others have said, compiler intrinsics are not mentioned. While the book didn't actually promise them, they would have been very welcome to have.
The explanations aren't actually too bad, the code is questionable in its presentation, it's hugely verbose. I came rather close to sending it back but in the end decided to stick with it.
Not recommended.
Added later : I really, really wish for a rationale for a lot of things. There are instructions for what seem to be bitwise and'ing and or'ing of floats. Bitwise ops for floats has almost no rational interpretation I can find (something to do with NaNs perhaps?).
Also type punning is used freely to interface the C++ data structures to the SIMD ASM. As type punning is illegal in C++ as far as I know, some discussion on this is needed, but there's none.
There is a newer edition of this item:
![MODERN X86 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING: COVERS X86 64-BIT, AVX, AVX2, AND AVX-512 [Paperback] Kusswurm](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ctb6cPcML._SR75,75_.jpg)
MODERN X86 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING: COVERS X86 64-BIT, AVX, AVX2, AND AVX-512 [Paperback] Kusswurm
S$41.86
(58)
Usually dispatched within 2 to 3 days.
S$41.86
(58)
Usually dispatched within 2 to 3 days.
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Total Price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Top reviews from other countries
Mr. Jan Tari
A poor book generally
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 25 May 2020Verified Purchase
Mike
In-depth coverage of x86 assembly language
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 August 2022Verified Purchase
Reben
My favorite One
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 5 September 2020Verified Purchase
JonesTheCode
Comprehensive coverage of the 64-bit Intel processor
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 6 August 2022Verified Purchase
Vikram
One of the essential book for X86 code writers
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on 16 May 2021Verified Purchase
