combiner and paradoxical subreg question....

combiner and paradoxical subreg question....

[Marcus Shawcroft]

I'm working on a new target port currently based on 3.0.4. I'm looking
into a problem in which a sign extension is inappropriately optimised
away.I suspect the problem originates in the combiner, can anyone shed
some light on whats going on here??? This is what I have so far:

The combiner eventually gets around to expanding {sign,zero}_extends in:

combine.c:expand_compound_operation ()

In this scenario it performs the following rewrite:

(sign_extend:SI (mem:QI (reg/f:SI 168) 0)) => (subreg:SI (mem:QI
(reg/f:SI 168) 0) 0)

The relevant code fragment is something like:

combine.c:9662ish:gen_lowpart_for_combine ()

      /* If we want to refer to something bigger than the original
memref,
      generate a perverse subreg instead.  That will force a reload
      of the original memref X.  */
      if (GET_MODE_SIZE (GET_MODE (x)) < GET_MODE_SIZE (mode))
     return gen_rtx_SUBREG (mode, x, 0);

I'm slightly confused by this, my understanding of paradoxical subreg's
is that they are used to refer to something in  a wider mode where we
don;t care about the value of the additional bits. Are there situations
where a paradoxical subreg implies zero or sign extension rather than
undefined???

Subsequently when we get around to 'splitting' the above fragment, back
in:
combine.c:2277ish:do_try_combine ()

#ifdef INSN_SCHEDULING
   /* If *SPLIT is a paradoxical SUBREG, when we split it, it should
      be written as a ZERO_EXTEND.  */
   if (split_code == SUBREG && GET_CODE (SUBREG_REG (*split)) == MEM)
     SUBST (*split, gen_rtx_combine (ZERO_EXTEND, split_mode,
         XEXP (*split, 0)));
#endif

This performs the rewrite:
(subreg:SI (mem:QI (reg/f:SI 168) 0) 0) => (zero_extend:SI (mem:QI
(reg/f:SI 168) 0))

This code fragment switches the paradoxical subreg for a zero_extend, so
the combiner has now managed the overall rewrite:

(sign_extend:SI (mem:QI (reg/f:SI 168) 0))
=>
(subreg:SI (mem:QI (reg/f:SI 168) 0) 0)
=>
(zero_extend:SI (mem:QI (reg/f:SI 168) 0))

So can someone explain:
* What does a paradoxial subreg really represent.
* Is it ever safe to rewrite a sign_extend to a paradoxical subreg.

Thanks
/Marcus

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ms@siroyan.com,                                Marcus Shawcroft
200 Brook Drive, Green Park,                   Siroyan Limited
Reading, RG2 6UB, United Kingdom               0118 925 6374/Fx949 7228





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Re: combiner and paradoxical subreg question....

[Richard Henderson]

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 02:52:10PM +0100, Marcus Shawcroft wrote:
> * What does a paradoxial subreg really represent.
> * Is it ever safe to rewrite a sign_extend to a paradoxical subreg.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-01/msg01830.html


r~