Re: arm32 build warnings in workqueue.c

[Nick Desaulniers]

On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 11:52 AM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> [ Adding clang people. See this for background:
>
>     https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wi=eDN4Ub0qSN27ztBAvHSXCyiY2stu3_XbTpYpQX4x7w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
>
>   where that patch not only cleans things up, but seems to make a
> difference to clang ]
>
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 11:24, Linus Torvalds
> <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > So I really think that code needs fixing, and the gcc warning was very valid.
> >
> > Maybe something like the attached. Does this fix the gcc warning?
> > Tejun, comments?
>
> Whee. Inexplicably, that patch also improves code generation with
> clang, with things like this:
>
> -       movabsq $137438953440, %rcx             # imm = 0x1FFFFFFFE0
> -       andq    %rax, %rcx
> -       movabsq $68719476704, %rdx              # imm = 0xFFFFFFFE0
> -       cmpq    %rdx, %rcx
> +       shrq    $5, %rax
> +       cmpl    $2147483647, %eax               # imm = 0x7FFFFFFF
>
> in several places.

Sorry, are those equivalent?  Before looks to me like:

if (0xFFFFFFFE0 - (0x1FFFFFFFE0 & rax))

and after

if (0x7FFFFFFF - (rax >> 5))

>
> Or, even more amusingly, this:
>
> -       movabsq $68719476704, %rax              # imm = 0xFFFFFFFE0
> -       orq     $1, %rax
> +       movabsq $68719476705, %rax              # imm = 0xFFFFFFFE1
>
> where the old code was some truly crazy stuff.

Yeah, that's stupid. Which symbol's disassembly are you looking at? I
couldn't repro with a quick test: https://godbolt.org/z/dz1fEY9Wx.

>
> I have *no* idea what drugs clang is on, but clearly clang does some
> really really bad things with large enums, and doesn't simplify things
> correctly.
>
> That "I can't even do a constant 'or' at compile time when it involves
> an enum" is all kinds of odd.
>
> Does this matter in the big picture? No. But I think the take-away
> here should be that you really shouldn't use enums for random things.
> Compilers know enums are used as small enumerated constants, and get
> pissy and confused when you use them as some kind of generic storage
> pool for values.
>
> My guess is that clang keeps an enum as an enum as long as possible -
> including past some (really) simple simplification phases of the
> optimizer.

I don't think so.
https://godbolt.org/z/M8746c49z
That's LLVM IR as soon as it leaves the front end. Notice the use of
`i32` types. AFAIK, the IR does not contain the notion of enums. Clang
lowers enums to integral values of a specific width in LLVM IR.

>
> With gcc, code generation didn't change from that patch with my
> defconfig on x86-64 (apart from line numbers changing).
>
> Now, clang improving code generation with that patch is obviously a
> good thing for the patch, but it does mean that clang really messed up
> before.
>
>                Linus



-- 
Thanks,
~Nick Desaulniers