BMI2

Home * Hardware * x86-64 * BMI2

BMI2, an x86-64 expansion of bit-manipulation instructions by Intel. Like BMI1, BMI2 employs VEX prefix encoding to support three-operand syntax with non-destructive source operands on 32- or 64-bit general-purpose registers. Along with AVX2, BMI2 was expected to be part of Intel's Haswell architecture planned for 2013, but was not yet available in one of the first tested Haswell generations of mid 2013 as reported by Andreas Stiller from the German c't magazine. BMI2 requires bit 8 set in EBX of CPUID with EAX=07H, ECX=0H. In 2017, BMI2 was further incorporated in AMD's Zen-architecture but until Zen 3 in November 2020 with a slow implementation of critical instructions such as PDEP and PEXT .

=Instructions= Beside the instructions explained in more detail below, there is MULX, Unsigned Multiply, and RORX, SARX/SHLX/SHRX, that is rotate and shifts without affecting processor flags. PEXT and PDEP allow for an alternative of kindergarten- or magic bitboards, and clearly makes maintaining rotated bitboards obsolete.

BZHI
Zero High Bits Starting with Specified Bit Position. dest ::= src & ((1 << index)-1);

unsigned __int64 _bzhi_u64(unsigned __int64 src, unsigned __int32 index);

PDEP
Parallel Bits Deposit. May be used to map first rank attacks to any rank, file, or diagonal on the chess board.

Intrinsic Prototype
unsigned __int64 pdep_u64(unsigned __int64 src, unsigned __int64 mask);

Sample
SRC1  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │S63│S62│S61│S60│S59│....│ S7│ S6│ S5│ S4│ S3│ S2│ S1│ S0│ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

SRC2  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ (mask) │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │0...│ 1 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │ 0 │ (f.i. 4 bits set) └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

DEST  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ S3│ 0 │0...│ S2│ 0 │ S1│ 0 │ 0 │ S0│ 0 │ 0 │ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

Serial Implementation
in C : U64 _pdep_u64(U64 val, U64 mask) { U64 res = 0; for (U64 bb = 1; mask; bb += bb) { if (val & bb) res |= mask & -mask; mask &= mask - 1; } return res; }

PEXT
Parallel Bits Extract. Great to get the inner six bit occupancy of any rank, file, or diagonal as index of six consecutive lower bit, or the up to 12 bits for a magic attack lookup.

Intrinsic Prototype
unsigned __int64 _pext_u64(unsigned __int64 src, unsigned __int64 mask);

Sample
SRC1  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │S63│S62│S61│S60│S59│....│ S7│ S6│ S5│ S4│ S3│ S2│ S1│ S0│ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

SRC2  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ (mask) │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │0...│ 1 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │ 0 │ 1 │ 0 │ 0 │ (f.i. 4 bits set) └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

DEST  ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐ │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │0...│ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │ 0 │S60│ S7│ S5│ S2│ └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘   └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

Serial Implementation
in C, quite similar to PDEP in traversing the mask, and only two expressions, "mask & -mask" and "bb" swapped: U64 _pext_u64(U64 val, U64 mask) { U64 res = 0; for (U64 bb = 1; mask; bb += bb) { if ( val & mask & -mask ) res |= bb; mask &= mask - 1; } return res; } =Applications=

PEXT Bitboards
Fancy PEXT Bitboards as replacement for Fancy Magic Bitboards. The relevant up to four ray occupancies are mapped to a dense index range by using the PEXT instruction: U64 arrAttacks [...]; // ~840 KByte all rook and bishop attacks U64 arrRookMask [64]; // 10..12 relevant occupancy bits per rook square U64 arrBishopMask[64]; // 5.. 9 relevant occupancy bits per bishop square U32 arrRookBase [64]; // arrAttacks base offset per rook square U32 arrBishopBase[64]; // arrAttacks base offset per bishop square

U64 rookAttack(U64 occ, enumSquare sq) { return arrAttacks[arrRookBase[sq] + _pext_u64(occ, arrRookMask[sq])]; }

U64 bishopAttack(U64 occ, enumSquare sq) { return arrAttacks[arrBishopBase[sq] + _pext_u64(occ, arrBishopMask[sq])]; }

PEXT/PDEP Bitboards
An idea for denser sliding attack tables is also using PDEP, dividing the table size of the PEXT Bitboards by four but some trailing computation. Looking up 16-bit words instead of bitboards - to get the scattered bits of the up to four ray attacks per square in an extracted form mapped to a 16-bit word, which then becomes the attack bitboard by performing a deposit instruction with an appropriate second mask per square. The technique was introduced by Zach Wegner in CCC and implemented by Ronald de Man with a table of slightly more than 210 KiB. Ronald's code was tested by Jean-Francois Romang using Stockfish as testbed, giving promising results.

Syzygy Generator
Ronald de Man's generator for Syzygy Bases can take profit of PDEP and PEXT instructions, or to use their serial implementations to further reduce the size of his already compact endgame tablebases. =Early PEXT/PDEP Proposal= In late 2006, Michael Sherwin already proposed a PEXTPDEP instruction, Parallel Bits Extract controlled by a source mask followed by Parallel Bits Deposit controlled by a destination mask. However, it is not known whether his proposal was recognized by Intel engineers and had any influence on the design of the BMI2 PEXT and PDEP instructions.

=See also=
 * AVX
 * AVX2
 * BitScan
 * Bit-Twiddling
 * BMI1
 * General Setwise Operations
 * TBM

=Forum Posts=

2006

 * New instruction that intel/amd should add by Michael Sherwin, Winboard Forum, December 05, 2006 » Early PEXT/PDEP Proposal

2011 ...

 * Haswell New Instructions by Zach Wegner, CCC, September 09, 2011
 * Bit manipulations using BMI2 by Jack Lloyd, / :: bitbashing, June 22, 2012
 * PEXT Bitboards by Gerd Isenberg, CCC, June 07, 2013
 * 152k rook and bishop attacks using PEXT and PDEP by Lasse Hansen, CCC, October 06, 2013
 * Stockfish haswell optimized build by Jean-Francois Romang, CCC, April 06, 2014 » Stockfish

2015 ...

 * smaller tables for PEXT-style attack getters by Wylie Garvin, CCC, January 13, 2016
 * BMI2 intrinsics in gcc by Álvaro Begué, CCC, May 14, 2017
 * Ryzen Fritz Chess Benchmarks ? by ralunger, Rybka Forum, March 03, 2017
 * Ryzen and BMI2: Strange behavior and high latencies by DonnieTinyHands, Reddit, March 20, 2017 » AMD, BMI2 PEXT
 * BMI2 PEXT idea for attacks generation by Mark Lefler, CCC, September 16, 2017
 * Re: Komodo 11.3 by Mark Lefler, CCC, March 04, 2018 » AMD, BMI2 PEXT, Komodo 11.3
 * Ryzen 2 and BMI2? by Steve Maughan, CCC, May 13, 2018 » AMD
 * Re: Ryzen 2 and BMI2? by Joost Buijs, CCC, May 18, 2020 » AVX2


 * AMD BMI2 question by Leo, CCC, March 10, 2019 » AMD
 * PEXT/PDEP are even slower than you think on Zen by Gian-Carlo Pascutto, CCC, December 09, 2019 » AMD

2020 ...

 * Re: Ryzen 2 and BMI2? by Joost Buijs, CCC, May 18, 2020 » AMD, AVX2
 * New AMD Zen 3 and Ryzen processors by mmt, CCC, October 09, 2020
 * Re: New AMD Zen 3 and Ryzen processors by Mike Sherwin, CCC, October 11, 2020 » Early PEXT/PDEP Proposal


 * Zen3 supports fast PEXT aka BMI2 by Alayan Feh, CCC, November 05, 2020 » AMD
 * FEN compression by lucasart, CCC, March 17, 2021 » Forsyth-Edwards Notation, NNUE Training

=External Links=
 * Bit Manipulation Instruction Sets from Wikipedia
 * Bit manipulations using BMI2 — bitbashing, June 22, 2012
 * Haswell Instructions Latency
 * Intel Intrinsics Guide

=References= Up one Level