A picture is worth a 1000 words – that also goes for CPU instruction descriptions! So I started doing this for the SPUs in the Cell processor. For the most part it makes it easier for me to see what is going on and helps me remember what an instruction does. Not all instructions needs a diagram and some were really not that easy to visualize but I included them all for completeness.
Also I put instruction timings and whether they execute in the odd or even pipe right there with the instructions – all this info is taken from the “SPU Cheat Sheet” document by Insomniac Games. Thanks for those!
I hope you will find it useful. It really was more work than I anticipated and “Pages” which I used for this is not really suited for this kind of work and it slowed to a crawl. Rather painful actually. It handles PDF import very nice though. I used OmniGraffle for the diagrams and I found it pretty much perfect!
Anyway, enjoy!
Download it here
[...] Visual guide for SPU instructions Jon has put together a fantastic document illustrating the behaviour of most SPU instructions – very enlightening and a wonderful reference. [...]
Awesome document, thanks!
[...] Visual guide for SPU instructions « Some assembly required… jonr.neovanglist.net/?p=41 – view page – cached A picture is worth a 1000 words – that also goes for CPU instruction descriptions! So I started doing this for the SPUs in the Cell processor. — From the page [...]
This document makes SPU assebly as enjoyable as it may be! Thanks.