我曾经和一个人一起工作过，他说“如果编译器笨到不能弄清楚你要做什么，并且不能优化它，那么你的编译器就坏了，是时候换一个新的了”。我确信在某些情况下汇编程序会打败你的C代码，但是如果你发现自己经常使用汇编程序来“赢得”编译器，那么你的编译器就完蛋了。

对于编写试图强制查询计划器执行操作的“优化”SQL也是如此。如果您发现自己重新安排查询以让计划器执行您想要的操作，那么您的查询计划器就完蛋了——请更换一个新的计划器。

我认为汇编程序更快的一般情况是，当一个聪明的汇编程序员看到编译器的输出并说“这是性能的关键路径，我可以写这个更有效”，然后那个人调整汇编程序或从头重写它。

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.

http://cr.yp.to/qhasm.html有很多例子。

在历史上插话。

当我还年轻的时候(20世纪70年代)，根据我的经验，汇编是很重要的，更重要的是代码的大小，而不是代码的速度。

如果一个高级语言的模块是1300字节的代码，但该模块的汇编版本是300字节，那么当您试图将应用程序装入16K或32K的内存时，这1K字节就非常重要。

那时候编译器还不是很好。

在老式的Fortran中

X = (Y - Z)
IF (X .LT. 0) THEN
 ... do something
ENDIF

当时的编译器在X上执行了一个SUBTRACT指令，然后是一个TEST指令。 在汇编程序中，您只需在减法之后检查条件代码(LT零，零，GT零)。

对于现代系统和编译器来说，这些都不是问题。

我认为理解编译器在做什么仍然很重要。 当您使用高级语言编写代码时，您应该了解什么允许或阻止编译器执行循环展开。

当编译器执行“类似分支”的操作时，使用管道内衬和包含条件的前瞻计算。

当执行高级语言不允许的事情时，仍然需要汇编程序，比如读取或写入处理器特定的寄存器。

但在很大程度上，普通程序员不再需要它，除非对代码如何编译和执行有基本的了解。

C语言常常需要做一些从汇编编码员的角度看来不必要的事情，这只是因为C标准这么说。

例如，整数提升。如果你想在C语言中移动一个char变量，人们通常会期望代码实际上只做一个比特的移动。

然而，标准强制编译器在移位之前将符号扩展为int，然后将结果截断为char，这可能会使代码复杂化，这取决于目标处理器的架构。