Re: [PATCH 01/18] flag parameters: helper function

From: Ulrich Drepper
Date: Mon May 05 2008 - 22:40:31 EST


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Andrew Morton wrote:
> hm, that looks expensive. The compiler will need to generate a deref of m
> and rf multiple times around the loop. Copying them into locals does
> improve that a lot.

There really is no problem. The value is in L1d when it is reused.
This is the generated code (%rdi is m):

f: 85 17 test %edx,(%rdi)
11: 74 0b je 1e <flags_remap+0x1e>
13: 8b 47 04 mov 0x4(%rdi),%eax
16: 09 01 or %eax,(%rcx)
18: 8b 07 mov (%rdi),%eax
1a: f7 d0 not %eax
1c: 21 c2 and %eax,%edx

At address 18 the load will be satisfied from L1d. If you would want to
cache the value at address f you'd have to create one more instruction.

This really is the best code sequence. The compiler could have chosen
to move the value into a register because the array is const. But it
didn't.


> Also: sorry, but ugh-at-the-naming. We don't *gain* anything from having
> idenitifers called f, of, m, n and rf. And we lose quite a lot in
> readability and understandability. It would be much nicer to invest a
> little bit more typing-time here, IMO.

That's Davide's code and I didn't change it because it doesn't really
matter. This is a trivial function which doesn't need more than 10
seconds to be understood. If you insist I'll rename the variables and
elements but I consider this just busy work.

- --
â Ulrich Drepper â Red Hat, Inc. â 444 Castro St â Mountain View, CA â
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