5.2 Saturation support

One important point of MMX is the support of saturated operations. If a operation would cause an overflow, the value stays at the highest or lowest possible value for the data type: If you use byte values you get normally 250+12=6. This is very annoying when doing color manipulations or changing audio samples, when you have to do a word add and check if the value is greater than 255. The solution is saturation: 250+12 gives 255. Saturated operations are supported by the MMX unit. If you want to use them, you have simple turn the switch saturation on: $saturation+

Here is an example:

 Program SaturationDemo;
 {
   example for saturation, scales data (for example audio)
   with 1.5 with rounding to negative infinity
 }
 uses mmx;
 
 var
    audio1 : tmmxword;
    i: smallint;
 
 const
    helpdata1 : tmmxword = ($c000,$c000,$c000,$c000);
    helpdata2 : tmmxword = ($8000,$8000,$8000,$8000);
 
 begin
    { audio1 contains four 16 bit audio samples }
 {$mmx+}
    { convert it to $8000 is defined as zero, multiply data with 0.75 }
    audio1:=(audio1+helpdata2)*(helpdata1);
 {$saturation+}
    { avoid overflows (all values>$7fff becomes $ffff) }
    audio1:=(audio1+helpdata2)-helpdata2;
 {$saturation-}
    { now mupltily with 2 and change to integer }
    for i:=0 to 3 do
      audio1[i] := audio1[i] shl 1;
    audio1:=audio1-helpdata2;
 {$mmx-}
 end.