我已经阅读了所有的答案(超过30个)，并没有找到一个简单的原因:如果你读过并练习过Intel®64和IA-32架构优化参考手册，汇编程序比C更快，所以汇编程序可能更慢的原因是编写这种慢汇编程序的人没有阅读优化手册。

In the good old days of Intel 80286, each instruction was executed at a fixed count of CPU cycles. Still, since Pentium Pro, released in 1995, Intel processors became superscalar, utilizing Complex Pipelining: Out-of-Order Execution & Register Renaming. Before that, on Pentium, produced in 1993, there were U and V pipelines. Therefore, Pentium introduced dual pipelines that could execute two simple instructions at one clock cycle if they didn't depend on one another. However, this was nothing compared with the Out-of-Order Execution & Register Renaming that appeared in Pentium Pro. This approach introduced in Pentium Pro is practically the same nowadays on most recent Intel processors.

Let me explain the Out-of-Order Execution in a few words. The fastest code is where instructions do not depend on previous results, e.g., you should always clear whole registers (by movzx) to remove dependency from previous values of the registers you are working with, so they may be renamed internally by the CPU to allow instruction execute in parallel or in a different order. Or, on some processors, false dependency may exist that may also slow things down, like false dependency on Pentium 4 for inc/dec, so you may wish to use add eax, 1 instead or inc eax to remove dependency on the previous state of the flags.

如果时间允许，您可以阅读更多无序执行和注册重命名。因特网上有大量的信息。

There are also many other essential issues like branch prediction, number of load and store units, number of gates that execute micro-ops, memory cache coherence protocols, etc., but the crucial thing to consider is the Out-of-Order Execution. Most people are simply not aware of the Out-of-Order Execution. Therefore, they write their assembly programs like for 80286, expecting their instructions will take a fixed time to execute regardless of the context. At the same time, C compilers are aware of the Out-of-Order Execution and generate the code correctly. That's why the code of such uninformed people is slower, but if you become knowledgeable, your code will be faster.

除了乱序执行之外，还有很多优化技巧和技巧。请阅读上面提到的优化手册:-)

However, assembly language has its own drawbacks when it comes to optimization. According to Peter Cordes (see the comment below), some of the optimizations compilers do would be unmaintainable for large code-bases in hand-written assembly. For example, suppose you write in assembly. In that case, you need to completely change an inline function (an assembly macro) when it inlines into a function that calls it with some arguments being constants. At the same time, a C compiler makes its job a lot simpler—and inlining the same code in different ways into different call sites. There is a limit to what you can do with assembly macros. So to get the same benefit, you'd have to manually optimize the same logic in each place to match the constants and available registers you have.

很多年前，我教别人用c语言编程。练习是将图形旋转90度。他得到了一个花了几分钟才能完成的解，主要是因为他使用了乘法和除法等。

我向他展示了如何使用位移位重定义问题，在他拥有的非优化编译器上，处理时间缩短到大约30秒。

我刚刚得到了一个优化编译器，相同的代码在< 5秒内旋转图形。我看着编译器生成的汇编代码，从我所看到的，我决定我写汇编程序的日子结束了。

使用SIMD指令的矩阵操作可能比编译器生成的代码更快。

Walter Bright的《optimization Immutable and Purity》可能值得一看，它不是一个概要测试，但向您展示了手写和编译器生成ASM之间的区别。Walter Bright写优化编译器，所以值得一看他的其他博客文章。

CP/M-86版本的PolyPascal (Turbo Pascal的兄弟)的一个可能性是用机器语言例程取代“使用生物将字符输出到屏幕上”的功能，本质上是给定x、y和字符串放在那里。

这使得更新屏幕的速度比以前快得多!

二进制文件中有足够的空间来嵌入机器代码(几百个字节)，也有其他的东西，所以尽可能多地压缩是必要的。

事实证明，由于屏幕是80x25，这两个坐标都可以容纳每个字节，所以都可以容纳两个字节的单词。这允许在更少的字节内完成所需的计算，因为单个添加可以同时操作两个值。

据我所知，没有C编译器可以在一个寄存器中合并多个值，对它们执行SIMD指令，然后再将它们分开(而且我不认为机器指令会更短)。

如果您没有查看编译器生成的内容的反汇编，您实际上无法知道编写良好的C代码是否真的很快。很多时候你会发现“写得好”是主观的。

因此，没有必要用汇编程序来获得最快的代码，但出于同样的原因，了解汇编程序当然是值得的。