ESP32-S3 SIMD Minimal Example

In my recent blog post, I described the ESP32-S3 SIMD instructions and how I figured out how to use them. This post is to provide the simplest working example to serve as a starting point for your own projects. The code was designed for the Arduino IDE, but will work similarly on Espressif's ESP-IDF. To add assembly language files (.S) to your Arduino project, just place them in the same folder as the .ino file. Here are the 2 files needed for this project, along with the output on the serial terminal of the results when you run it. Simply create an empty project and copy/paste this code into it:

The Arduino sketch

//

// ESP32-S3 minimal SIMD example

// Written by Larry Bank

// Copyright (c) 2024 BitBank Software, Inc.

//

// The purpose of this example is to show how to make use of ESP32-S3 SIMD instructions

// in your Arduino or ESP-IDF projects. The code is not comprehensive and just provides

// a starting point for someone wanting to learn how to use them. I wrote this because

// I couldn't find such an example and thought that people would appreciate saving some

// time with the research I did.

//

// The ADD instruction always saturates the results, so notice what happens to value 7

// in the output

extern "C" {

int s3_add16x8(int16_t *pA, int16_t *pB, int16_t *pC);

}

// 128-bit (16-byte) loads and stores need to be 16-byte aligned

int16_t __attribute__((aligned (16))) u16_A[8] = {0x00, -0x100, 0x00, 0x1111, 0x00, 0x1234, 0x00, 0x7fff};

int16_t __attribute__((aligned (16))) u16_B[8] = {0x00, 0x3000, 0x00, 0x2222, 0x00, 0x4321, 0x00, 0x4000};

int16_t __attribute__((aligned (16))) u16_C[8] = {0};

void setup() {

Serial.begin(115200);

delay(3000); // wait for USB-CDC to start

Serial.println("About to call Asm code");

s3_add16x8(u16_A, u16_B, u16_C);

Serial.println("Returned from Asm code");

for (int i=0; i<8; i++) {

Serial.printf("value %d = 0x%04x\n", i, u16_C[i]);

}

} /* setup() */

void loop() {

} /* loop() */

The s3_simd.S file

// // ESP32-S3 SIMD example // Written by Larry Bank // Copyright (c) 2024 BitBank Software, Inc. // #include "dsps_fft2r_platform.h" #if (dsps_fft2r_sc16_aes3_enabled == 1) .text .align 4 // Simple signed 16-bit x 8 add // registers with the args: A2 A3 A4 // Call as int s3_add16x8(int16_t *pA, int16_t *pB, int16_t *pC); .global s3_add16x8 .type s3_add16x8,@function s3_add16x8: entry a1,16 # prepare windowed registers and reserve 16 bytes of stack ee.vld.128.ip q0,a2,16 # load 8 "A" values into Q0 from A2, then add 16 to A2 ee.vld.128.ip q1,a3,16 # load 8 "B" values into Q1 from A3, then add 16 to A3 ee.vadds.s16 q2,q0,q1 # C = A+B (with saturation) ee.vst.128.ip q2,a4,16 # store the 8 "C" values, then add 16 to A4 movi.n a2,0 # return value of 0 retw.n # restore state (windowed registers) and return to caller #endif // dsps_fft2r_sc16_aes3_enabled

The Serial Terminal Output

About to call Asm code

Returned from Asm code
value 0 = 0x0000
value 1 = 0x2f00
value 2 = 0x0000
value 3 = 0x3333
value 4 = 0x0000
value 5 = 0x5555
value 6 = 0x0000
value 7 = 0x7fff