Compute fast log base 2 ceiling

Question

What is a fast way to compute the (long int) ceiling(log_2(i)), where the input and output are 64-bit integers? Solutions for signed or unsigned integers are ac

Answer 1

This algorithm has already been posted, but the following implementation is very compact and should optimize into branch-free code.

int ceil_log2(unsigned long long x)
{
  static const unsigned long long t[6] = {
    0xFFFFFFFF00000000ull,
    0x00000000FFFF0000ull,
    0x000000000000FF00ull,
    0x00000000000000F0ull,
    0x000000000000000Cull,
    0x0000000000000002ull
  };

  int y = (((x & (x - 1)) == 0) ? 0 : 1);
  int j = 32;
  int i;

  for (i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
    int k = (((x & t[i]) == 0) ? 0 : j);
    y += k;
    x >>= k;
    j >>= 1;
  }

  return y;
}


#include 
#include 

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  printf("%d\n", ceil_log2(atol(argv[1])));

  return 0;
}