Re: Setting precision for a PSImode type

[Richard Sandiford <rdsandiford@googlemail.com>]

Bernd Schmidt <bernds@codesourcery.com> writes:
> On 04/11/2012 07:31 PM, Peter Bigot wrote:
>> The biggest one is that widening from 20-bit to 32-bit is an extremely
>> expensive operation: it was a 16-bit ISA, but some newer MCUs support
>> an extension with 20 bits in each register and a set of new
>> instructions that must be used to preserve the upper 4 bits.  Getting
>> bits 19..16 of a 20-bit register down into the low bits of a 16 bit
>> register requires a five-position rotate-through-carry.  The 20-bit
>> enhancement to the ISA was really intended only to support a larger
>> address space; to simplify validation of the machine description I've
>> chosen to allow it to be used for any integer operation, but I have no
>> reason to think that'll be common.
>
> Ok. So these are pointer modes, essentially? For the target I'm working
> on, I'm using the following patch, see if that helps you any. It seems
> to apply to trunk, so I might as well ask for an OK if it bootstraps and
> tests ok (but it has little use while these ports remain out-of-tree).

Not that I can approve this anyway, but: what are the properties of
MODE_POINTER vs. MODE_PARTIAL_INT?

It seems odd on the face of it for POINTER_MODE_P (Pmode) to be false
on the majority of targets.  But that's probably just a naming thing.

Richard