Strength Reduction of Integer Division and Modulo Operations

Abstract

Integer division, modulo, and remainder operations are expressive and useful operations. They are logical candidates to express complex data accesses such as the wrap-around behavior in queues using ring buffers, array address calculations in data distribution, and cache locality compiler-optimizations. Experienced application programmers, however, avoid them because they are slow. Furthermore, while advances in both hardware in both hardware and software have improved the performance of many parts of a program, few are applicable to division and modulo operations. This trend makes these operations increasingly detrimental to program performance.