# src/ntzgaudet.leo ## Build Guide To compile and run this Leo program, run: ```bash leo run ``` ## The Algorithm This algorithm is described in "Hacker's Delight, 2nd edition" by Henry S. Warren, section 5-4, section 5-24, as interesting due to being branch-free, not using table lookups, and having parallelism. It is attributed to Dean Gaudet in private communication to Henry S. Warren. First we isolate the rightmost `1` bit in the 32-bit input by using the C idiom `x & (-x)`. In Leo, the `-x` is written as `0u32.sub_wrapped(x)`. The result is stored in `y`. Then we compute six intermediate variables that count different numbers of trailing zeros. The first variable, `bz`, just counts 1 if `y` is completely zero. To get the other five variables, we do binary search in parallel, using 5 masks, each looking at a different symmetric pattern of 16 bits. For example, `b4` counts 16 if the low 16 bits are zero and counts zero otherwise. Then `b3` uses a mask `y & 0x00FF00FF` to count eight 0-bits if the result is zero and zero 0-bits otherwise. The masks for `b2`, `b1`, and `b0` can count four, two, and one 0-bits similarly. The varables `bz, b4, .., b0` are all independent, and their values are added up for the result.