Most efficient way to find the greatest of three ints

Question

Below is my pseudo code.

function highest(i, j, k)
{
  if(i > j && i > k)
  {
    return i;
  }
  else         


        

Answer 1

I like to eliminate conditional jumps as an intellectual exercise. Whether this has any measurable effect on performance I have no idea though :)

#include 
#include 

inline int max(int a, int b)
{
    int difference = a - b;
    int b_greater = difference >> std::numeric_limits::digits;
    return a - (difference & b_greater);
}

int max(int a, int b, int c)
{
    return max(max(a, b), c);
}

int main()
{
    std::cout << max(1, 2, 3) << std::endl;
    std::cout << max(1, 3, 2) << std::endl;
    std::cout << max(2, 1, 3) << std::endl;
    std::cout << max(2, 3, 1) << std::endl;
    std::cout << max(3, 1, 2) << std::endl;
    std::cout << max(3, 2, 1) << std::endl;
}

This bit twiddling is just for fun, the cmov solution is probably a lot faster.