RE: [PATCH, ARM] Suppress Redundant Flag Setting for Cortex-A15

["Ian Bolton" <ian.bolton@arm.com>]

> Hi,
> 
> On 28 January 2014 13:10, Ramana Radhakrishnan
> <ramana.gcc@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Ian Bolton <ian.bolton@arm.com>
> wrote:
> >> Hi there!
> >>
> >> An existing optimisation for Thumb-2 converts t32 encodings to
> >> t16 encodings to reduce codesize, at the expense of causing
> >> redundant flag setting for ADD, AND, etc.  This redundant flag
> >> setting can have negative performance impact on cortex-a15.
> >>
> >> This patch introduces two new tuning options so that the conversion
> >> from t32 to t16, which takes place in thumb2_reorg, can be
> suppressed
> >> for cortex-a15.
> >>
> >> To maintain some of the original benefit (reduced codesize), the
> >> suppression is only done where the enclosing basic block is deemed
> >> worthy of optimising for speed.
> >>
> >> This tested with no regressions and performance has improved for
> >> the workloads tested on cortex-a15.  (It might be beneficial to
> >> other processors too, but that has not been investigated yet.)
> >>
> >> OK for stage 1?
> >
> > This is OK for stage1.
> >
> > Ramana
> >
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Ian
> >>
> >>
> >> 2014-01-24  Ian Bolton  <ian.bolton@arm.com>
> >>
> >> gcc/
> >>         * config/arm/arm-protos.h (tune_params): New struct members.
> >>         * config/arm/arm.c: Initialise tune_params per processor.
> >>         (thumb2_reorg): Suppress conversion from t32 to t16 when
> >>         optimizing for speed, based on new tune_params.
> 
> This causes
> gcc.target/arm/negdi-1.c
> gcc.target/arm/negdi-2.c
> to FAIL when GCC is configured as:
> --with-mode=ar
> --with-cpu=cortex-a15
> --with-fpu=neon-vfpv4
> 
> both tests used to PASS.
> (see http://cbuild.validation.linaro.org/build/cross-
> validation/gcc/209561/report-build-info.html)

Hi Christophe,

I don't recall the failure when I did the work, but I see now that
the test is looking for negs when my patch is specifically trying to
avoid flag-setting operations.

So we are now getting an rsb instead of a negs, as intended, and the
test needs fixing!

Open question: Should I look for either rsb or negs in a single
scan-assembler or look for different ones dependent on the cpu in
question or just not run the test for cortex-a15?

Cheers,
Ian