Intel SSE: Why does `_mm_extract_ps` return `int` instead of `float`?

Question

Why does _mm_extract_ps return an int instead of a float?

What\'s the proper way to read a single float from an X

Answer 1

From the MSDN docs, I believe you can cast the result to a float.

Note from their example, the 0xc0a40000 value is equivalent to -5.125 (a.m128_f32[1]).

Update: I strongly recommend the answers from @doug65536 and @PeterCordes (below) in lieu of mine, which apparently generates poorly performing code on many compilers.