Who is vfmaddrnd231pd?(purplesyringa.moe)
249 points by pngmangi 1 day ago | 25 comments
tl;dr: The Intel SDM documents vfmaddrnd231pd, an FMA instruction that would allow per-instruction rounding control without needing AVX-512, potentially speeding up rounding-dependent algorithms. However, the instruction doesn't actually work: assemblers don't recognize it, compiler intrinsics are missing, and running the hand-assembled opcode on FMA-capable CPUs raises #UD. The author speculates Intel planned the instruction, pulled it late, but left stale documentation behind—it's now absent from the 2026 SDM.
HN Discussion:
  • •Provides technical documentation context explaining VEX encoding details referenced in the article
  • ↑Confirms the instruction briefly and unintentionally appeared in specific SDM revisions, supporting the stale-doc theory
  • ↑Speculates the instruction was removed due to a hardware issue and never worked
  • ~Claims the instruction was removed when Intel recommitted to AVX-512 on client CPUs
  • •Laments that opaque instruction names reflect a loss of direct interaction with technology