Basic Principles

Introduction

This post explores a swift technique to count '1's in binary numbers via a merging counter, contrasting with the slower traditional bit-clearing method. It includes code for various integer sizes and demonstrates the method's speed with benchmarks.

Explore two efficient bitwise techniques in C/C++ to check if a number is a power of two: ensuring (number & (number - 1)) == 0, and checking that number & -number equals the number itself, both applied to non-zero numbers for optimized performance.

The blog explores a bit manipulation technique for computing absolute values of integers, presenting a C++ function mabs. It compares performance with std::abs, demonstrating efficiency on various systems.