Re: [PATCH 1/1] x86: fix text_poke

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Sun May 04 2008 - 12:34:58 EST


Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:

I am not saying that the standard marker will have to inhibit
optimizations. Actually, it's the contrary : a well-thought marker
should _not_ modify that kind of optimization, and we should put markers
in code locations less likely to inhibit gcc optimizations. However, in
the case where we happen to be interested in information otherwise
optimized away by GCC, it makes sense to inhibit this optimization in
order to have the information available for tracing.

I expect this to happen rarely, but I think we must deal with
optimizations to make sure we never trace garbage due to some unexpected
gcc optimization. I think it's a small (e.g. undetectable at the
macrobenchmark level) price to pay to get correct tracing information.


That's a pretty flippant reply... liveness causes register pressure which can cause rapid degradation in code quality on a register-starved architecture like x86.

-hpa
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