better use of disassembly hash table by mep port

better use of disassembly hash table by mep port

[Doug Evans]

I think I understand the MEP port enough to have it starting using the 
disassembly hash table better (rather than hashing every insn to the 
same slot, blech).
The basics have always been there, we just need to extend it a little.
[Another way to go, of course, is to add a simulator-style decoder to 
the disassembler.  There's various reasons why I didn't do that in the 
beginning.  It'll probably be useful to add it some day.]

AIUI, different MEP ISAs use different opcode bits and so the hashing is 
useless ... if one tries to hash *all* insns for *all* ISAs in *one* 
table.  But if one takes the current isa/mach/config into account when 
doing the hashing and ignore insns that don't match it, I think a useful 
hash is possible.  Right?
[I'm assuming the chip doesn't do something excessively funky and that 
for any particular isa/mach/config context there are *some* opcode bits 
common to all relevant instructions for that context.]  I gather the MEP 
port doesn't do that because more parameters are used to decide whether 
an insn is valid for the current context than what cgen currently uses 
(which is isa/mach/endian).  See mep.opc:mep_cgen_insn_supported.

If we enhance the disassembler's instruction recognizer hash table 
builder to let the target record additional parameters to use to decide 
when a new CGEN_CPU_DESC needs to be created, and let the target provide 
routines to access/use that info, I think that's all that's needed.  
Plus , of course, a hash function - I think the code can pick something 
at runtime if the port doesn't provide one.  E.g. pick all the bits that 
are constant in the first instruction word.  An N-stage hash could be 
done for ISAs that have few common bits among all insns, but have more 
common bits among groups of instructions.  Maybe we could even 
use/borrow the simulator's decoder-generator to drive it.

Comments?
Am I missing anything?

Re: better use of disassembly hash table by mep port

[DJ Delorie]

> I think I understand the MEP port enough to have it starting using the 
> disassembly hash table better (rather than hashing every insn to the 
> same slot, blech).

MeP does that too?  I mentioned m32c had that problem, and it was a
problem even with one specific ISA (the chip is weird as far as opcode
encoding goes).  m32c is compounded by the explosion of opcodes caused
by the way cgen does variable-length insns.

My hash thoughts for m32c was to take each opcode, figure out which
bits are decodable for *that* opcode, and use those to put the opcode
into one or more hash entries.  That allows us to use a wider set of
bits, thus fewer entries per bucket, while sidestepping the m32c's
decodable bits problem.

OTOH I've also started working on a non-cgen port of m32c.