you can reduce the final few serially dependent instructions to a single integer multiply. Consider d to be 3 8-bit values d3, d2, d1 and d0, each in the range 0..8. The multiply forms the partial products: d3 d2 d1 d0 d3 d2 d1 d0 d3 d2 d1 d0 + d3 d2 d1 d0 ---------------------- e3 e2 e1 e0 Where e3 = d3 + d2 + d1 + d0. e2, e1 and e0 obviously cannot generate any carries. Signed-off-by: Akinobu Mita Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds \ÕY½•'x