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Index > Compiler Internals > The XCHG instruction is not fully optimized

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CandyMan



Joined: 04 Sep 2009
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CandyMan 31 Jul 2020, 19:28
Code:
use64
xchg eax,eax ;-> assembled: 87h C0h, it could be like in 32-bit mode: 90h    

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Tomasz Grysztar



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Tomasz Grysztar 31 Jul 2020, 20:57
In long mode opcode 90h is treated specially in order to be a true NOP, therefore it does not clear the upper portion of the 64-bit register, while "xchg eax,eax" does.

On these forums you may even find my post from the time when I was adding 64-bit support to fasm and it was one of the issues that I needed to test on actual hardware to make sure that I interpreted the manuals correctly. And the tests confirmed that it was behaving this way.
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CandyMan



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CandyMan 31 Jul 2020, 21:40
I forgot that in 64-bit mode the upper portion of general purpose registers is cleared when operations on 32-bit registers (surely except for the TEST instruction).

Thanks for the clarification.

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revolution
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revolution 31 Jul 2020, 22:29
CandyMan wrote:
I forgot that in 64-bit mode the upper portion of general purpose registers is cleared when operations on 32-bit registers (surely except for the TEST instruction).
Zeroing of the upper bits is only on register write. TEST does not write to anything except flags, so no zeroing. Same with CMP.
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