Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

Summary

This chapter has contained several types of interwoven material, concepts, and methods of analysis of assembly language programs. We began with a general discussion about control of flow in programs, which has formed an underlying theme throughout the chapter.

We then introduced the simplest forms of the Itanium integer compare instructions, their completers for testing equality and signed or unsigned inequality, and their use for setting Boolean predicate register values both normally and “unconditionally.”

We also introduced two forms of the Itanium branch instructions, predicated conditional branches (with the unconditional branch as a special case using predicate register Pr₀) and a special unpredicated form that operates in conjunction ...