He's right about assembly vs inline assembly (gcc asm). But something well done like Intel Intrinsics [1] specializes an intrinsic for target platforms. It's (a

He's right about assembly vs inline assembly (gcc asm). But something well done like Intel Intrinsics [1] specializes an intrinsic for target platforms. It's (a lot) more work on the intrinsic writer's part but then provides something of a cross platform abstraction for the programmer. [1] https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide/ https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide... I think intrinsics are like C++ templates. Maybe you shouldn't be writing them unless you really know what you're doing.