mul: Wasm text instruction

The mul instruction, short for multiplication, is used for multiplying one number by another number, similar to the * operator in other languages.

Try it

(module
  (import "console" "log" (func $log (param i32)))
  (func $main
    ;; load `10` and `3` onto the stack
    i32.const 10
    i32.const 3

    i32.mul ;; multiply one number by the other
    call $log ;; log the result
  )
  (start $main)
)
const url = "{%wasm-url%}";
await WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming(fetch(url), { console });

Syntax

value_type.mul
value_type

The type of value the instruction is being run on. The following types support mul:

  • i32
  • i64
  • f32
  • f64
  • i16x8
  • i32x4
  • i64x2
  • f32x4
  • f64x2
mul

The mul instruction. Must always be included after the value_type and a period (.).

Type

[input1, input2] -> [output]
input1

The first input value.

input2

The second input value.

output

The product of the two input values.

For a non-SIMD mul, these will be basic numeric values such as 3 or 3.5.

For a SIMD mul, these will be v128 value interpretations, for example f32x4 0x9 0xa 0xb 0xc.

Binary encoding

Instruction Binary format Example text => binary
i32.mul 0x6c i32.mul => 0x6c
i64.mul 0x7e i64.mul => 0x7e
f32.mul 0x94 f32.mul => 0x94
f64.mul 0xa2 f64.mul => 0xa2
i16x8.mul 0xfd 149:u32 i16x8.mul => 0xfd 0x95 0x01
i32x4.mul 0xfd 181:u32 i32x4.mul => 0xfd 0xb5 0x01
i64x2.mul 0xfd 213:u32 i64x2.mul => 0xfd 0xd5 0x01
f32x4.mul 0xfd 230:u32 f32x4.mul => 0xfd 0xe6 0x01
f64x2.mul 0xfd 242:u32 f64x2.mul => 0xfd 0xf2 0x01

Examples

SIMD multiplication

In this example, we demonstrate multiplying one SIMD value by another and outputting one of the lane values of the resulting product.

JavaScript

In our script, we grab a reference to a <p> element that we will output our result to, then define an object for import into Wasm containing a single function that writes a value to the output <p>. We then compile and instantiate our Wasm module using the WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming() method, importing the object in the process.

js
const outputElem = document.querySelector("p");

const obj = {
  output(val) {
    outputElem.textContent += val;
  },
};

WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming(fetch("{%wasm-url%}"), {
  obj,
});

Wasm

In our Wasm module, we first import the JavaScript output() function, making sure to declare that it has an i32 parameter. We then declare two SIMD i16x8 values, then multiply the first by the second using i16x8.mul. Finally we extract the value stored in lane 7 of the output value using the extract_lane_s instruction, and output it to the DOM by calling the imported output() function.

wat
(module
  ;; Import output function
  (import "obj" "output" (func $output (param i32)))

  (func $main
    ;; load two SIMD values onto the stack
    v128.const i16x8 20 12 15 2 400 2 1 12
    v128.const i16x8 18 34 3 5 9 20 21 9

    i16x8.mul ;; multiply the two values
    i16x8.extract_lane_s 7 ;; Extract a value from the result

    call $output
  )

  (start $main)
)

Result

The output is as follows:

The result is 108, because the value stored in lane 3 of output value is the result of 12 * 9.