Faster way to zero memory than with memset?

Question

I learned that memset(ptr, 0, nbytes) is really fast, but is there a faster way (at least on x86)?

I assume that memset uses mov, however w

Answer 1

x86 is rather broad range of devices.

For totally generic x86 target, an assembly block with "rep movsd" could blast out zeros to memory 32-bits at time. Try to make sure the bulk of this work is DWORD aligned.

For chips with mmx, an assembly loop with movq could hit 64bits at a time.

You might be able to get a C/C++ compiler to use a 64-bit write with a pointer to a long long or _m64. Target must be 8 byte aligned for the best performance.

for chips with sse, movaps is fast, but only if the address is 16 byte aligned, so use a movsb until aligned, and then complete your clear with a loop of movaps

Win32 has "ZeroMemory()", but I forget if thats a macro to memset, or an actual 'good' implementation.