Since we talk about code density from time to time, I'd like to open a thread in this section to collect all information, instead of having it spread around in several threads (which also disappear and are difficult to retrieve).

@matthey: I think that you're the most competent and active expert about this topic. Would you like to contribute?

My idea is to create some comments at the beginning of the thread which covers/collect specific topics, which will get updated from time to time. Example:
- General information (what's code density, why it's important, etc.)
- Benchmarks (state of the art)
- Compilers (which ones are best)
- Literature (book, academic papers, web sites)
- Microprocessors (general information like if the ISA is more or less oriented to code density, if it has specific execution modes for compact code, if it has specific extensions for compact code, etc.)
- Motorola 68K corner (anything which is useful about this family, which is not covered by other topics)
- Intel IA-32/x86 / AMD x86-64/x64 corner (...)
- ARM corner (...)
- RISC-V corner (...)
- SuperH / J2 corner (...)
- Embedded corner (...)
- another 5 empty comments for topics which may pop-up in future.

@matthey can you take care of creating and updating those comments? As I said, you're the most competent and also active, so I think that you can contribute much better than me.

A request from my side: please can you share your updated 68K source about this http://deater.net/weave/vmwprod/asm/ll/ll.html ? Looking at your tables in Google Documents the numbers don't match with what mr. Weaver published in that link.

@cdimauro

wow, are you back:)

nice to see you bro! hope you will supply site with lots of interesting things:)

_________________
nox's in the house!

cdimauro Quote:

Since we talk about code density from time to time, I'd like to open a thread in this section to collect all information, instead of having it spread around in several threads (which also disappear and are difficult to retrieve). @matthey: I think that you're the most competent and active expert about this topic. Would you like to contribute? ... @matthey can you take care of creating and updating those comments? As I said, you're the most competent and also active, so I think that you can contribute much better than me.

The topic is a nice idea but I get the feeling that most people here really don't want to know about code density so I'm not very motivated. I really should stop wasting my time here but the interesting court case lured me in.

cdimauro Quote:

A request from my side: please can you share your updated 68K source about this http://deater.net/weave/vmwprod/asm/ll/ll.html ? Looking at your tables in Google Documents the numbers don't match with what mr. Weaver published in that link.

The last update I sent Dr. Weaver was mostly an improvement of the decompression code by ross on EAB. The assembler files are available on the last 2 pages of the following thread.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=e81df9c472e296778e1c2996bf076333&t=85855&page=8

Notice that ross complains in the last post about the statistics not being updated.

ross Quote:

Just noticed that my 54 byte version is not signaled. http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/asm/ll/ (best is the 56 bytes 8086 version) 68k deserve the throne

TBD

Some benchmarks from the The Totally Unscientific Code Density Competition! (compiling the OSD control module from one of the many Minimig variants):

OpenRISC � 81376
MIPS (f32c) � 71356
RISC-V � 69936
ZPU � 68868
ARM � 67952
X86-64 � 66112
m68k (68000) � 65760
i386 � 64080
832 � 63599
RISC-V compressed � 57780
MIPS16 � 54192
ARM Thumb � 51436

Microblaze LE - 1,223,148 bytes - No target specific settings available
Xtensa - 1,216,228 bytes - fsf target
OpenRISC - 1,133,164 bytes - No target specific settings available
MIPS32 LE - 1,017,196 bytes - P5600 target, no softfloat
SPARC64 - 997,624 bytes - SPARCv9
MIPS64 LE - 989,024 bytes - P6600 target, no softfloat, n32 ABI
PPC64LE - 985,552 bytes - Power8 target
PPC32 - 984,396 bytes - 476FP target
RV64G - 934,368 bytes - RV64G platform defaults
SPARC32 - 931,064 bytes - SPARCv8
S390X - 907,712 bytes - z15 target
Nios II - 892,316 bytes - No target specific settings available
NDS32 - 888,124 bytes - No target specific settings available
SH-4A LE - 842,884 bytes - No target specific settings
ARM64 LE - 779,936 bytes - Cortex-A76 target, FP-ARMv8
x86_64 - 747,224 bytes - Haswell target
RV64GC - 741,856 bytes - ilp64d ABI
RV32GC - 719,916 bytes - ilp32d ABI
x86 - 713,916 bytes - i686 target
m68k - 698,776 bytes - M68040 target
ARM Thumb1 LE - 632,004 bytes - Thumb, softfloat, ARM926T target
ARC LE - 623,912 bytes - 8K pages, HS38 Quad MAC + FPU target
ARM Thumb2 LE - 599,248 bytes - Thumb2, VFPv4-D16, Cortex-A7 target

Last edited by cdimauro on 22-Jun-2025 at 05:00 AM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 03-Oct-2022 at 04:57 PM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 02-Oct-2022 at 07:43 PM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 02-Oct-2022 at 07:24 PM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 19-Sep-2022 at 08:47 PM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 18-Sep-2022 at 05:01 AM.

TBD

TBD

TBD

Some instructions statistics from Kickstart 1.2:

1 word opcodes: 1965 (51.0)
2 word opcodes: 1436 (37.2)
3 word opcodes: 267 (6.9)
4 word opcodes: 92 (2.4)
5 word opcodes: 34 (0.9)
6 word opcodes: 7 (0.2)
7 word opcodes: 17 (0.4)
8 word opcodes: 18 (0.5)
9 word opcodes: 3 (0.1)

Program 'dis' (my disassember, asm)
total insts = 23861
1 word insts = 11050, 46%
2 word insts = 10940, 45%
3 word insts = 1834, 7%

Program 'CMP' (asm)
total insts = 1984
1 word insts = 752, 37%
2 word insts = 943, 47%
3 word insts = 217, 10%
4 word insts = 72, 3%

Program 'MBRTest-2' (asm?)
total insts = 25401
1 word insts = 16664, 65%
2 word insts = 7619, 29%
3 word insts = 965, 3%

Program 'Hex'
total insts = 8730
1 word insts = 2935, 33%
2 word insts = 5120, 58%
3 word insts = 646, 7%

Program 'Redit'
total insts = 23984
1 word insts = 8890, 37%
2 word insts = 12025, 50%
3 word insts = 2880, 12%

Program 'cb' (Sierra game "Colonel's bequest")
total insts = 1093
1 word insts = 454, 41%
2 word insts = 561, 51%
3 word insts = 65, 5%
4 word insts = 13, 1%

Program 'AIBB'
total insts = 49748
1 word insts = 22517, 45%
2 word insts = 20943, 42%
3 word insts = 5574, 11%

Program 'moned'
total insts = 5136
1 word insts = 2894, 56%
2 word insts = 2023, 39%
3 word insts = 208, 4%

Program 'AmiModRadio'
total insts = 43042
1 word insts = 24239, 56%
2 word insts = 11125, 25%
3 word insts = 7587, 17%

Program 'wolf3d'
total insts = 40359
1 word insts = 20901, 51%
2 word insts = 11938, 29%
3 word insts = 5932, 14%
4 word insts = 1398, 3%

Program 'IBrowse' (sasc)
total insts = 222475
1 word insts = 115443, 51%
2 word insts = 88699, 39%
3 word insts = 15854, 7%
4 word insts = 2397, 1%

Program 'python2.4' (gcc?)
total insts = 175669
1 word insts = 98758, 56%
2 word insts = 55819, 31%
3 word insts = 19977, 11%

Last edited by cdimauro on 10-Sep-2022 at 07:22 AM.

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Code density statistics for NEx64T (click on the images for better quality):








Instructions execution statistics for NEx64T (click on the images for better quality):



32-bit Windows applications used:
arm-none-eabi-gdb.exe
cc1.exe
cc1plus.exe
CrashReportClient_32.exe
Discord.exe
ffmpeg_32.exe
FoxitProxyServer_Socket_RD.exe
GalaxyCommunication.exe
GameClient.exe
Kodi.exe
LauncherPrereqSetup_x64.exe
lto1.exe
MassEffect3.exe
Microsoft.VSCode.CPP.Extension.exe
MomodoraRUtM.exe
Neverwinter.exe
OriginER.exe
OriginThinSetupInternal.exe
ovftool.exe
PlanMaker.exe
Presentations.exe
PS32.exe
Skype.exe
sublime_text_32.exe
TextMaker.exe
The Bard's Tale.exe
TOTALCMD.EXE
UE4Game_32.exe
vmware-remotemks.exe
vs_profiler_x86_enu.exe
WinUAE.exe


64-bit Windows applications used:
aswidsagenta.exe
atio6axx.dll
Code.exe
CrashReportClient_64.exe
EpicGamesLauncher.exe
EXCEL.EXE
fdm.exe
ffmpeg_64.exe
GRAPH.EXE
mame64.exe
mkvinfo.exe
MSACCESS.EXE
MSPUB.EXE
node.exe
OfficeC2RClient.exe
PS64.exe
steamwebhelper.exe
sublime_text_64.exe
TOTALCMD64.EXE
UE4Game_64.exe
VirtualBox.exe
vmware-vmx-debug.exe
vmware-vmx.exe
vsinstr.exe
WinUAE64.exe


Decoder information for NEx64T (click on the images for better quality):

Last edited by cdimauro on 10-Sep-2022 at 07:53 AM.

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD