Load constant floats into SSE registers

Question

I\'m trying to figure out an efficient way to load compile time constant floats into SSE(2/3) registers. I\'ve tried doing simple code like this,

const __m128 x          


        

Answer 1

If you want to force it to a single load, you could try (gcc):

__attribute__((aligned(16))) float vec[4] = { 1.0f, 1.1f, 1.2f, 1.3f };
__m128 v = _mm_load_ps(vec); // edit by sor: removed the "&" cause its already an address

If you have Visual C++, use __declspec(align(16)) to request the proper constraint.

On my system, this (compiled with gcc -m32 -msse -O2; no optimization at all clutters the code but still retains the single movaps in the end) creates the following assembly code (gcc / AT&T syntax):

    andl    $-16, %esp
    subl    $16, %esp
    movl    $0x3f800000, (%esp)
    movl    $0x3f8ccccd, 4(%esp)
    movl    $0x3f99999a, 8(%esp)
    movl    $0x3fa66666, 12(%esp)
    movaps  (%esp), %xmm0

Note that it aligns the stackpointer before allocating stackspace and putting the constants in there. Leaving the __attribute__((aligned)) out may, depending on your compiler, create incorrect code that doesn't do this, so beware, and check the disassembly.

Additionally:
Since you've been asking for how to put constants into the code, simply try the above with a static qualifier for the float array. That creates the following assembly:

    movaps  vec.7330, %xmm0
    ...
vec.7330:
    .long   1065353216
    .long   1066192077
    .long   1067030938
    .long   1067869798