random technical notes

The Visual Studio 2010 integrated development environment (IDE) includes several pre-defined keyboard shortcut schemes. When you start Visual Studio for the first time and select your settings, the associated schemes are automatically set. Thereafter, by using the keyboard options page in the Options dialog box, you can choose from additional schemes and you can also create your own keyboard shortcuts.

Reference posters for the default keybindings in Visual Studio 2010 for Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual F#.

Visual Studio 2008 has supports “Enable Instruction Functions” options (see a project settings -> C/C++ -> Optimization). Note that this option can enlarge code.

Also memcpy function implementation has written with using sse2 (movdqa).

int CopyMemSSE4(int* piDst, int* piSrc, unsigned long SizeInBytes)
{
// Initialize pointers to start of the USWC memory

_asm
{
mov esi, piSrc
mov edx, piSrc

// Initialize pointer to end of the USWC memory
add edx, SizeInBytes

// Initialize pointer to start of the cacheable WB buffer
mov edi, piDst

// Start of Bulk Load loop
inner_start:
// Load data from USWC Memory using Streaming Load
MOVNTDQA xmm0, xmmword ptr [esi]
MOVNTDQA xmm1, xmmword ptr [esi+16]
MOVNTDQA xmm2, xmmword ptr [esi+32]
MOVNTDQA xmm3, xmmword ptr [esi+48]

// Copy data to buffer
MOVDQA xmmword ptr [edi], xmm0
MOVDQA xmmword ptr [edi+16], xmm1
MOVDQA xmmword ptr [edi+32], xmm2
MOVDQA xmmword ptr [edi+48], xmm3

// Increment pointers by cache line size and test for end of loop
add esi, 040h
add edi, 040h
cmp esi, edx
jne inner_start
}
// End of Bulk Load loop

return 0;
}

#define DATA_SIZE 0x01000000

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
int *piSrc = NULL;
int *piDst = NULL;
unsigned long dwDataSizeInBytes = sizeof(int) * DATA_SIZE;

piSrc = (int *)_aligned_malloc(dwDataSizeInBytes, dwDataSizeInBytes);
piDst = (int *)_aligned_malloc(dwDataSizeInBytes, dwDataSizeInBytes);

memset(piSrc, 255, dwDataSizeInBytes);
memset(piDst, 0, dwDataSizeInBytes);

CopyMemSSE4(piDst, piSrc, dwDataSizeInBytes);

_aligned_free(piSrc);
_aligned_free(piDst);
}

Additional links:

• Increasing Memory Throughput With Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (Intel® SSE4) Streaming Load

stdint.h is a header file in the C standard library introduced in the C99 standard library section 7.18 to allow programmers to write more portable code by providing a set of typedefs that specify exact-width integer types, together with the defined minimum and maximum allowable values for each type, using macros. This header is particularly useful for embedded programming which often involves considerable manipulation of hardware specific I/O registers requiring integer data of fixed widths, specific locations and exact alignments. stdint.h (for C), and stdint.h and cstdint (for C++).

stdint.h defines:

int8_t
int16_t
int32_t
uint8_t
uint16_t
uint32_t

stdint.h is not shipped with older C++ compilers and Visual Studio C++ products prior to Visual Studio 2010.

wikipedia

qmake -spec win32-msvc2010 -tp vc <project_file>.pro

Applications that use Windows Automation APIs can significantly decrease Microsoft Visual Studio IntelliSense performance if Windows Automation API 3.0 is not installed. For example, the Windows pen and touch services can significantly decrease Visual Studio IntelliSense performance if Windows Automation API 3.0 is not installed. This article describes how to install the Windows Automation API 3.0 update. This update is available as a stand-alone download for 32-bit editions of Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003. This update is not available for 64-bit editions of Windows XP. The Windows Automation API is a component of the platform update for Windows Vista and of the platform update for Windows Server 2008.

Windows Automation API

The Windows Automation API library enables accessibility tools, test automations, and pen services to access a standard user interface across operating system versions.

More Information (TechNet)

The Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) is a compiler infrastructure, written in C++, which is designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and “idle-time” optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages. Originally implemented for C/C++, the language-independent design (and the success) of LLVM has since spawned a wide variety of front ends, including Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Haskell, Java bytecode, Python, Ruby, ActionScript, GLSL, and others.

LLVM can provide the middle layers of a complete compiler system, taking intermediate form (IF) code from a compiler and outputting an optimized IF that can then be converted and linked into machine-dependent assembler code for a target platform. LLVM can accept the IF from the GCC toolchain, allowing it to be used with a wide array of existing compilers written for that project.

LLVM can also generate relocatable machine code at compile-time or link-time or even binary machine code at run-time.

LLVM supports a language-independent instruction set and type system. Each instruction is in static single assignment form (SSA), meaning that each variable (called a typed register) is assigned once and is frozen. This helps simplify the analysis of dependencies among variables. LLVM allows code to be compiled statically, as it is under the traditional GCC system, or left for late-compiling from the IF to machine code in a just-in-time compiler (JIT) in a fashion similar to Java. The type system consists of basic types such as integers or floats and five derived types: pointers, arrays, vectors, structures, and functions. A type construct in a concrete language can be represented by combining these basic types in LLVM. For example, a class in C++ can be represented by a combination of structures, functions and arrays of function pointers.

Additional links:

• Low Level Virtual Machine (wiki)
• Comparison of application virtual machines
• The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure (llvm.org) – the LLVM Project is a collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies. Despite its name, LLVM has little to do with traditional virtual machines, though it does provide helpful libraries that can be used to build them.
• Getting Started: Building and Running Clang

In the following series, learn all about STL from the great Stephan T. Lavavej, Microsoft’s keeper of the STL cloth (this means he manages the partnership with the owners of STL and Microsoft, including, of course, bug fixes and enhancements to the STL that ships as part of Visual C++).

• Part 1 (sequence containers)
• Part 2 (associative containers)
• Part 3 (smart pointers)
• Part 4 (an extended example of using the STL to solve Nurikabe puzzles)
• etc

• Microsoft Download page
• direct link to download iso

• download latest Boost version
• unpack it
• run “Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt” bat file

build bjam

• go to %BOOST%/tools/jam/src folder
• run build.bat file
• copy bjam.exe file to %BOOST%/bin folder from %BOOST%/tools/jam/src/bin.ntx86 folder

build boost

• go to %BOOST% folder
• compile Boost using bjam.exe:

bin\bjam.exe –build-dir=”C:\Dev\Libs\boost\build-boost” –toolset=msvc –build-type=complete stage