In this lab, we inspect an open source project that uses in-line assembly language in C files. The open source project I have selected is ardour.
This project contains 43 instances of assembly code used in-line (in .c, .h, .ccp files). In some this file, behaviors are defined on x86, ia64, s390, i386 i586 systems. The file uses assembly to get a count of CPU cycles. For each architecture, this is done in a different way and it decides which to use based on if/else logic. On platforms not included, such as sparc, arm, and m68k it gives a warning that the project does not support the platform yet.
Example of in-line assembly for x86_64
Since the information being accessed here is related to CPU itself, I think it makes sense to use assembly (which depends on the architecture of the CPU). However, I did find one source that said that this particular use is out of date. Nowadays, there are ways to do this that are built-in to compilers. If this is true then perhaps the project is simply old enough that it was useful to use assembly at the time.
