Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant)

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From	John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth, comp.arch
Subject	Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant)
Date	Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:23:15 -0700
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Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:04:51 GMT
MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

> > The idea I had last time I dabbled with this stuff was to extend the
> > basic add/subtract instructions with an option to save the
> > carry/borrow value in another GPR, instead - but I never gave any
> > thought to how to represent overflow that way. Hmm.  
> 
> That is what CARRY does. The Rd register in CARRY supplies a register
> used to carry the additional values from calculation to calculation.
> The Immediate in CARRY selects which instruction consume Rd {i},
> which instructions generate the next Rd {o} and which do both {io}
> and which do neither {}.
> 
> For ADD, carry Rd contains only 1 bit, but for others, it contains
> "all the bits that did not make it into the standard result". This
> makes CARRY suitable for all integer multiprecision arithmetic and
> for significant quantities of FP arithmetic.
> [...]
> Multi-precisions shifts use carry

Yes, exactly - add/subtract set the designated overflow/carry register
to 1 on a carry/borrow (which can then be added/subtracted from the next
more significant word) but e.g. multiply can set it to the whole most-
significant half of the product, multi-place shifts can catch all the
bits that fall off one end in the other so that rotate becomes shift-
and-OR, etc. Very flexible, especially if you have the capability to
branch on the value of a GPR.

Thread

OT: Epic RISC-V rant Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-08-14 22:22 -0700
  Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant jkn <jkn+nin@nicorp.co.uk> - 2026-08-15 10:10 +0100
  Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 18:23 +0200
    Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-22 16:45 +0000
  Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-08-22 22:36 +0000
    Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-23 13:44 +0200
      Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-08-29 19:49 +0000
    Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-24 07:55 +0000
      adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-01 17:15 -0300
        Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2026-09-01 14:31 -0700
          Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> - 2026-09-01 17:18 -0500
          Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-09-02 02:04 +0000
            Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2026-09-02 08:23 -0700
              Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-11 13:48 -0300
                Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-09-11 18:03 +0000
          Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-09 11:16 +0000
        Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-09-02 01:53 +0000
        Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-09 10:50 +0000
          Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-09 22:10 -0700
          Re: adding overflow and carry to every GPR (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-11 14:28 -0300
    Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-08-29 20:12 +0000
    interrupt handling latency and weird register use (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-01 17:00 -0300
      Re: interrupt handling latency and weird register use (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-01 20:51 +0000
      Re: interrupt handling latency and weird register use (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-09-02 01:43 +0000
    interrupt handling latency and weird register use (was Re: OT: Epic RISC-V rant) Andy Valencia <vandys@vsta.org> - 2026-09-02 08:11 -0700

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