Bithacks

Bithacks are optimization tricks that utilize information in bits and bit manipulation to accomplish their tasks. Usually they work in a slightly non-obvious way, (the most famous being the fast inverse sqrt), and bit manipulation in general is harder on the 65c816. To that end here is a collection of some useful tricks.

Math Bithacks

Signed Division By 2 (5 bytes / 10 cycles)
inputs: A
outputs: A

STA $00
ASL $00
ROR

Signed Division By 2ⁿ (6+2n bytes / 5+2n cycles)
inputs: A, n
outputs: A

; signed division by two, n times
macro SignedDiv_2N(n)
	BMI ?negative
	LSR #!n
	BRA ?end
?negative:
	LSR #!n
	ORA #($FF<<(8-!n))	; sign extension
?end:
endmacro