SPARC: unsigned vs. signed int loads

[Christian Thalinger]

On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 11:41 -0500, Paul Hohensee wrote:
> Signed loads require a shifter or mux in the load path, so they can cost 
> an extra cycle.
> 
> I think we also use ldub for boolean loads.

Ahh, I see.  So it seems that lduw is used to "optimize" the load, but
that's not possible for byte and short loads because they have to be
sign-extended and there is no ldsb-up-to-32-bit.  But I doubt that would
be faster than a shift to 64-bit.

-- Christian