asm_book/section_1/float/working.md
2022-06-20 10:56:31 -05:00

1.1 KiB

Section 1 / Working with Floating Point Numbers

Overview

There are four highest level ideas relating to floating point operations on AARCH64.

  • There is another complete register rest for floating point values.

  • There are alternative instructions just for floating point values.

  • There are exotic instructions that operate on sets of floating point values (SIMD).

  • There are instructions to go back and forth to and from the integer registers.

Floating Point Registers

There will be a more detailed discussion of the floating point registers when exotic instructions such as SIMD are discussed. For now, it is sufficient to discuss the less exotic aliases of the floating point registers.

We say aliases because, like the integer registers, how you reference a floating point register determines how it is interpreted. Yet, the different ways you can refer to floating point register 0 (such as s0 or d0) all share the same physical register.

MORE TO COME.

Basic Floating Point Instructions

Exotic Floating Point Instructions

This section will be a teaser for a more thorough discussion yet to be written.

Type Conversion Instructions