fastest way to negate a number

Question

I was thinking this morning here, what would be the fastest way to reverse a number of positive to negative and from negative to positive, of course, the simplest way might be:

int a = 10;
a = a*(-1);

or

int a = 10;
a = -a;

But then, I thought, I take that to do this, using commands shift and pointers ... That really would be possible to change the sign of a value, using commands shift operators and memory?

Answer 1

With optimization disabled, gcc for x86 compiles the first to this asm:

    .file   "optimum.c"
    .def    ___main;    .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
    .text
.globl _main
    .def    _main;  .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
_main:
    pushl   %ebp
    movl    %esp, %ebp
    andl    $-16, %esp
    subl    $16, %esp
    call    ___main               # MinGW library init function
    movl    $10, 12(%esp) ;i = 10
    negl    12(%esp)      ;i = -i
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    ret

With optimization disabled, the second one produces:

    .file   "optimum.c"
    .def    ___main;    .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
    .text
.globl _main
    .def    _main;  .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
_main:
    pushl   %ebp
    movl    %esp, %ebp
    andl    $-16, %esp
    subl    $16, %esp
    call    ___main
    movl    $10, 12(%esp)   ;i = 10
    negl    12(%esp)        ;i = -i
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    ret

Same output! No difference in the assembly code produced.

--------------------------EDIT, OP ANSWERS HE USES VC++2012, INTEL ARCH-------------------

Compiled using cl optimum.c /Fa optimum.asm (optimization disabled)

; Listing generated by Microsoft (R) Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.30319.01 

    TITLE   C:\Users\Dell\Downloads\TTH\TTH\TTH\optimum.c
    .686P
    .XMM
    include listing.inc
    .model  flat

INCLUDELIB LIBCMT
INCLUDELIB OLDNAMES

PUBLIC  _main
; Function compile flags: /Odtp
_TEXT   SEGMENT
_a$ = -4                        ; size = 4
_argc$ = 8                      ; size = 4
_argv$ = 12                     ; size = 4
_main   PROC
; File c:\users\dell\downloads\tth\tth\tth\optimum.c
; Line 4
    push    ebp
    mov ebp, esp
    push    ecx
; Line 5
    mov DWORD PTR _a$[ebp], 10          ; 0000000aH
; Line 6
    mov eax, DWORD PTR _a$[ebp]
    neg eax ;1 machine cycle!
    mov DWORD PTR _a$[ebp], eax
; Line 7
    xor eax, eax
; Line 8
    mov esp, ebp
    pop ebp
    ret 0
_main   ENDP
_TEXT   ENDS
END

and with second approach (a = a * -1), optimization disabled MSVC:

; Listing generated by Microsoft (R) Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.30319.01 

    TITLE   C:\Users\Dell\Downloads\TTH\TTH\TTH\optimum.c
    .686P
    .XMM
    include listing.inc
    .model  flat

INCLUDELIB LIBCMT
INCLUDELIB OLDNAMES

PUBLIC  _main
; Function compile flags: /Odtp
_TEXT   SEGMENT
_a$ = -4                        ; size = 4
_argc$ = 8                      ; size = 4
_argv$ = 12                     ; size = 4
_main   PROC
; File c:\users\dell\downloads\tth\tth\tth\optimum.c
; Line 4
    push    ebp
    mov ebp, esp
    push    ecx
; Line 5
    mov DWORD PTR _a$[ebp], 10          ; 0000000aH
; Line 6
    mov eax, DWORD PTR _a$[ebp]
    imul    eax, -1 ;1 instruction, 3 machine/cycles :|
    mov DWORD PTR _a$[ebp], eax
; Line 7
    xor eax, eax
; Line 8
    mov esp, ebp
    pop ebp
    ret 0
_main   ENDP
_TEXT   ENDS
END

So if you care about the performance of your debug-mode asm under MSVC, you could optimize your source accordingly. Normally you only care about performance in optimized builds.