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Fastest way to reverse nibbles? — Parallax Forums

Fastest way to reverse nibbles?

For a PSRAM memory driver I am working on I need to be able to reverse the 8 nibbles in the command+address phase so it can be sent least significant nibble first (streamer assumes this):

What would be the fastest way to do this on the P2..?

E.g.
input is $89ABCDEF
output is $FEDCBA98

REV doesn't help much as it reverses bits.
MOVBYTS doesn't help much unless there is a good way to swap nibbles in each byte first.

Something do to with SPLIT/MERGE perhaps?
I'd prefer not to do 8 ROLNIBs if it can be avoided but I might have to. :(

Comments

  • roglohrogloh Posts: 5,722
    edited 2021-02-27 13:18

    I think I can brute force it in 7 instructions like this:

    movbyts data, #%%0123
    mov temp, data
    and data, mask1
    and temp, mask2
    shl temp, #4
    shr data, #4
    or  data, temp 
    
    mask1 long $f0f0f0f0
    mask2 long $0f0f0f0f
    

    Can it be done faster?

  • Wuerfel_21Wuerfel_21 Posts: 4,984
    edited 2021-02-27 13:43

    how about

    splitb data
    rev data
    movbyts data,#%%0123
    mergeb data
    

    not sure if that actually works though.

  • Also, isn't there a bit in the streamer config that swaps the nibbles in a byte? Then you could just do one MOVBYTS

  • @Wuerfel_21 said:
    Also, isn't there a bit in the streamer config that swaps the nibbles in a byte? Then you could just do one MOVBYTS

    You'd think so, but unfortunately it's not the case for the P2 when sending immediates with the LUT for translating 4 nibbles into 16 bits (4 memory devices ganged in parallel, ie. 4 copies of 4 bits). There is no "a" bit in those streamer commands.

    @Wuerfel_21 said:
    how about

    splitb data
    rev data
    movbyts data,#%%0123
    mergeb data
    

    not sure if that actually works though.

    I'll take a look at that, that stuff typically does my head in.

  • TonyB_TonyB_ Posts: 2,176
    edited 2021-02-27 14:08

    deleted

  • roglohrogloh Posts: 5,722
    edited 2021-02-27 14:13

    Wow, it seems to work! Wuerfel_21's solution. Thank you!!!

    Here's it working on the bus (address is ABCDFC, QPI read command is EB). It is in the correct bus order, streaming nicely.

  • Will Wuerfel_21's piece of brilliance be forgotten then lost in a couple of weeks, like the pixel doubling tricks?

  • It'll be in my code and is captured in the forum so it won't be lost. The trick will be finding it later. But this forum title is at least relevant for searching perhaps.

  • Rogloh: what tool are you using to capture that data?

  • Just my logic analyzer. An original Saleae Logic 8 bit one.

    Very limited capture rate over USB (~12M samples/s or so) but does the trick for many projects when you underclock the P2.

  • @rogloh said:
    Just my logic analyzer. An original Saleae Logic 8 bit one.

    Very limited capture rate over USB (~12M samples/s or so) but does the trick for many projects when you underclock the P2.

    It looked sorta like my Saleae display does, but the buttons were on the wrong side and I couldnt figure out how you did that. That explains it. Thanks!

  • BTW, fastest way to swap nibbles of each byte (streamer "alternate" bit emulation):

    mergeb data
    rol data,#16
    splitb data
    

    input is $89ABCDEF
    output is 98BADCFE

  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,134
    edited 2024-01-29 20:11

    Here's an easy way to test it.

    CON     _clkfreq = 10_000_000
    
    PUB go() : i
    
      i := $89ABCDEF
    
            org
            mergeb  i               'reverse nibble order within bytes
            rol     i,#16
            splitb  i
            movbyts i,#%%0123       'reverse byte order within long 
            end
    
      debug(uhex_long(i))
    
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,828

    Huh, intriguing, MERGB and SPLITB are exchanged from Ada's code. So two different ways to swap nibbles in a byte.

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