On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 12:41:04PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Rogier Wolff wrote:
> >>
> >>Bullsh*t. It can legitimately transform it into:
> >>
> >> i = N;
> >
> >
> >Right! But people are confusing "practise", "published interface", and
> >"spec" again.
> >
> >Published interface in this case is that gcc will not optimize an empty
> >loop away, as it is often used to generate a timing loop.
> >
>
> Yes. This is a gcc-specific wart, a bad idea from the start, and
> apparently one which has caught up with them to the point that they've
> had to abandon it.
There would be a solution to tell gcc not to optimize things, which may
not require too much work from gcc people. Basically, we would need to
implement a __builtin_nop() function that would respect dependencies but
not generate any code. This way, we could have :
for (i=0; i<N, i++);
optimized as i=N
and
for (i=0; i<N; i++)
__builtin_nop();
or even
for (i=0; i<N; __builtin_nop(i++));
do the real work.
This way, some loops could be optimized, and the developpers could explicitely
tell the compiler when they need to prevent any optimization.
Cheers,
Willy
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 15 2002 - 22:00:38 EST