Common type of ubyte and const ubyte is int

[Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole]

On 03/05/2024 6:52 PM, Dom DiSc wrote:
> On Thursday, 2 May 2024 at 17:30:12 UTC, user1234 wrote:
> 
>     Just remembered, one argument that was once exposed by Walter is be
>     that arithmetic instructions for 32 bits registers would be faster
>     than the ones let's say for 16 or 8.
> 
> Working on the processor word size is always the fastest. But that is 
> totally independent of the result type. Calculation can always be done 
> extended to word-size (or may need multiple words for large operands), 
> but the result should have the common type. To say 32bit is always the 
> best is only true for 32bit architectures. And having no promotion is 
> not an option. If two operands are to be combined, we need some common 
> type for the result, no matter how this result is produced.

Normally for x86 32/64bit are equal in speed but 8/16bit are not very 
far behind these days.

Due to C its pretty safe to assume that 32bit registers will be pretty 
heavily optimized for 32bit or above processes.

Consider the Ice Lake series, which last had releases in 2020.

DIV IDIV	r8	4	4
DIV IDIV	r16	4	4
DIV IDIV	r32	4	4
DIV IDIV	r64	4	4

Now compare that to Haswell architecture from 10 years ago:

DIV	r8	9	9
DIV	r16	11	11
DIV	r32	10	10
DIV	r64	36	36
IDIV	r8	9	9
IDIV	r16	10	10
IDIV	r32	9	9
IDIV	r64	59	59

If you don't know the exact target CPU sticking with 32bit is still a 
good recommendation for CPU's that are 32bit or above.

On the other hand if you know its more recent (say running Windows 11), 
just use whatever you need and don't worry about it.