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Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming • Daniel Kusswurm & Matt Godbolt

Jan 16, 2026
Guest
Daniel Kusswurm
Daniel Kusswurm, a software developer and author of 'Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming', teams up with Compiler Explorer creator Matt Godbolt. They dive into the compelling world of assembly language, dissecting its significance in modern software development. Kusswurm unveils the power of SIMD for performance boosts, shares real-world optimization tales from image analysis, and discusses the challenges of crafting efficient vectorized algorithms. The conversation also explores when to opt for manual assembly over compiler intrinsics, making technical insights accessible and engaging.
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ANECDOTE

Real Project That Sparked The Book

  • Daniel Kusswurm describes optimizing microscope image analysis by hand‑coding SIMD for hotspot functions.
  • He rewrote about a dozen functions in assembly to accelerate pre‑AI image processing workloads.
INSIGHT

What SIMD Actually Does

  • SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) runs the same operation on many values in one instruction using wide registers.
  • This packs multiple elements into 128/256/512-bit registers to compute 8–16 floats or dozens of bytes at once.
INSIGHT

Control Flow Shifts To Masks

  • Writing SIMD changes how you express control flow: you operate on masks rather than branching per element.
  • You produce boolean masks and use selection/Boolean ops to keep or discard elements in parallel.
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