Division
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NEON doesn't have any integer division instructions, because they are expensive to implement in hardware. Luckily, you can often replace divisions by other instructions, like bit shifts and multiplications.
Dividing by powers of two
Unsigned integers
Flooring
To divide an unsigned integer by
uint16_t div_by_16_a(uint16_t x) {
return x / 16;
}
uint16_t div_by_16_b(uint16_t x) {
return x >> 4; // 16 = 2⁴
}
Of course, any half-decent compiler will produce the same instructions for both of the functions above, so it's much
better to write x / 16
, because it clearly shows your intent.
To write the same division for NEON, you can use the vshr_n_u16
intrinsic:
#include <arm_neon.h>
uint16x4_t div_by_16(uint16x4_t x) {
return vshr_n_u16(x, 4); // 16 = 2⁴
}
uint16x8_t div_by_16(uint16x8_t x) {
return vshrq_n_u16(x, 4); // 16 = 2⁴
}
The name is derived from vector shift right, n
indicates a fixed number of bits is
used, and u16
is the type of elements in the vector (16-bit unsigned integers in this example).
There are two versions, the one without the q
suffix operates on double-word vector registers (2×32
bits), and the one with the q
suffix operates on quad-word vector registers (4×32 bits).
Rounding
NEON also has instructions for rounding right shifts, for example, vrshr_n_u16
(note the r
prefix):
Signed integers
Flooring
Dividing signed integers by a power of two is a little bit trickier than dividing unsigned integers, because you
cannot simply use a bit shift.
Consider
To get around this problem, you have to add the divisor minus one if the dividend is negative:
int16_t div_by_16_a(int16_t x) {
return x / 16;
}
int16_t div_by_16_b(int16_t x) {
if (x < 0)
x += 16 - 1;
return x >> 4; // 16 = 2⁴
}
NEON doesn't have any conditional instructions, but it does have compare instructions that can be used to generate
a mask.
The compare instructions return either all zeros (
int16x8_t div_by_16(int16x8_t x) {
int16x8_t negative = vcltzq_s16(x); // compare less than zero
int16x8_t correction = vdupq_n_s16(16 - 1);
correction = vandq_s16(negative, correction); // only add correction if < 0
x = vaddq_s16(x, correction);
return vshrq_n_s16(x, 4); // 16 = 2⁴
}
In this snippet, vdupq_n_s16
is used to duplicate a single value across all lanes of a vector register.
Sadly, we cannot use the correction (
vdupq_n_s16
), and use an
immediate AND instruction instead.
#define vandq_n_u16(a, b) \
__extension__({ \
uint16x8_t a_ = (a); \
uint16_t b_ = ~(b); \
__asm__("bic %0.8h, #%1" : "+w"(a_) : "i"(b_) : /* No clobbers */); \
a_; \
})
int16x8_t div_by_16(int16x8_t x) {
uint16x8_t negative = vcltzq_s16(x); // compare less than zero
uint16x8_t correction = vandq_n_u16(negative, 1 - 16);
x = vsubq_s16(x, vreinterpretq_s16_u16(correction));
return vshrq_n_s16(x, 4); // 16 = 2⁴
}
There is no actual AND instruction, the BIC (bit clear) instruction is used instead. There's no intrinsic for it, so
we have to add a line of inline assembly. A compiler extension is used, because parameter b
should be
a compile-time constant, it is used to compute the immediate field of the instruction, so it cannot change at
run-time.
This trick will only work for divisors less than or equal to 256, since the immediate field of the BIC instruction
is only 8 bits wide. For divisors 512 and larger, the correction term will be 9 bits or more, so it doesn't fit
anymore. Luckily, in that case, the low byte of the correction term will always be
#define vandq_n_high_u16(a, b) \
__extension__({ \
uint16x8_t a_ = (a); \
uint16_t b_ = (~(b)) >> 8; \
__asm__("bic %0.8h, #%1, LSL #8" : "+w"(a_) : "i"(b_) :); \
a_; \
})
int16x8_t div_by_512(int16x8_t x) {
uint16x8_t negative = vcltzq_s16(x); // compare less than zero
uint16x8_t correction = vandq_n_high_u16(negative, 512 - 1);
x = vaddq_s16(x, vreinterpretq_s16_u16(correction));
return vshrq_n_s16(x, 9); // 512 = 2⁹
}
Rounding
For the rounding division by a power of two, we'll again use the rounding right shift. If the dividend is negative, we still need a correction. This time we just have to subtract one as a correction.
int16x8_t div_by_16_round(int16x8_t x) {
uint16x8_t sign = vshrq_n_u16(vreinterpretq_u16_s16(x), 15); // sign bit
x = vqsubq_s16(x, vreinterpretq_s16_u16(sign)); // subtract 1 if < 0
return vrshrq_n_s16(x, 4); // 16 = 2⁴
}
Subtracting one from a negative number has an annoying edge case: if the dividend is
The solution is to use a saturating subtraction, such that q
prefix.
To determine the sign of the dividend, we just extract the sign bit by shifting it 15 bits to the right. It's
important to use an unsigned bit shift, because a signed shift would sign extend the number after shifting,
resulting in
The sign bit is one if the number is negative, zero if it's positive or zero.
Dividing by 255
When working with images, most data is represented by 8-bit bytes, as a value from 0 to 255. For example, when alpha blending two images, you'll often need to multiply two 8-bit values together, and afterwards, you have to re-normalize 16-bit products by dividing by 255.
Approximating by a division by 256
As a first approximation, you could start by dividing by 256, because this is simply a right bit shift by 8, as discussed above. To convert from the 16-bit product back to an 8-bit number, you can use a narrowing bit shift:
Narrowing intrinsics have an n
suffix. You can also realize a rounding division by using
vrshrn_n_u16
.
The main problem with this approach is that it will produce a result that's one unit too low, about 50% of the
time. For example, blending white with white will result in really light gray, but not quite white
(
For most real-time applications, this is not an issue, and speed might be more important than perfect
accuracy.
True division by 255
Flooring
The divisor of
The downside of this approach is that a 32-bit multiplication is required. NEON doesn't have any multiplication
instructions that return the high half of the product. It does have an instruction that can be used to extract
all high half-words from two vector registers and merge them into a single register, as a deinterleaving or
unzip operation.
This is equivalent with a right bitshift of 16 bits. The instruction is uzp2
, we'll use the
vuzp2q_u16
intrinsic.
uint8x8_t div_by_255(uint16x8_t x) {
// Multiply by 0x8081 as 32-bit integers (high and low elements separately)
// 0x800000/0x8081 ≃ 255
uint32x4_t h = vmull_high_n_u16(x, 0x8081);
uint32x4_t l = vmull_n_u16(vget_low_u16(x), 0x8081);
// Extract the 16 high bits of all 32-bit products (division by 0x10000)
x = vuzp2q_u16(vreinterpretq_u16_u32(l), vreinterpretq_u16_u32(h));
// Divide by 0x80 and narrow from 16 bits to 8 bits
return vshrn_n_u16(x, 7);
}
The effect of the uzp2
instruction is visualized in the following diagram. Each cell is a 16-bit
half-word.
The two rows on the left represent the two 128-bit vector registers containing the products of the four high and low
elements respectively (variables h
and l
in the code). Two 16-bit cells make up one of
the eight 32-bit products.
H7 | L7 | H6 | L6 | H5 | L5 | H4 | L4 |
H3 | L3 | H2 | L3 | H1 | L1 | H0 | L0 |
→
H7 | H6 | H5 | H4 | H3 | H2 | H1 | H0 |
H7 L7 = x[7] * 0x8081
,
where x[7]
is the seventh element of the input, 16 bits wide. 0x8081
is the constant
factor and is also 16 bits wide.
Their product will be 32 bits wide, it consists of a high half-word (H7
) and a low
half-word (L7
). The low half-words will be discarded by the unzip operation, effectively
dividing each product by
For this unzip operation to work, the vector registers have to be interpreted as 8×16-bit values (even though they actually contain 4×32-bit values).
Finally, the 16-bit high half-words of the products are narrowed to 8-bit bytes, while shifting them another 7 bits
to the right for the final division by
The result is exact for all possible values of x
.
Rounding
It is tempting to just replace the final shift (vshrn_n_u16
) with a rounding shift
(vrshrn_n_u16
), in an attempt to implement a rounding division by
The correct solution is to add the rounding constant before the multiplication. However, we're adding a
rounding constant of
uint8x8_t div_by_255_round(uint16x8_t x) {
// Add the rounding constant
x = vaddq_u16(x, vdupq_n_u16(1 << 7));
// Multiply by 0x8080 as 32-bit integers (high and low elements separately)
uint32x4_t h = vmull_high_n_u16(x, 0x8080);
uint32x4_t l = vmull_n_u16(vget_low_u16(x), 0x8080);
// Extract the 16 high bits of all 32-bit products (division by 0x10000)
x = vuzp2q_u16(vreinterpretq_u16_u32(l), vreinterpretq_u16_u32(h));
// Divide by 0x80 and narrow from 16 bits to 8 bits
return vshrn_n_u16(x, 7);
}
The result of this function is correct as long as the addition of the rounding constant doesn't cause overflow. This
condition is satisfied if the input is less than