i386 assembly timing issue

From: David Howells (dhowells@cambridge.redhat.com)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 07:36:02 EST


I've attached two slightly different bits of i386 assembly that achieve the
same end, but in slightly different ways. Can some one tell me why Case 1 is
faster than Case 2? Case 1 involves an extra CALL instruction.

        * Case 1 has a little wrapper function that saves ECX and EDX before
          calling rwsem_wake().

        * Case 2 merges the contents of the wrapper with the caller.

Case 1 is what's generated by the rw-semaphore inline assembly code as of
2.4.4-pre5. Case 2 looks like it ought to be a faster version of the same
thing.

David

###############################################################################
#
# CASE 1: registers saved in the rwsem_wake register saving stub
#
.text
        .align 16

#
# void test_up_read(struct rw_semaphore *sem)
# {
# up_read(sem);
# }
#
.globl test_up_read
        .type test_up_read,@function
test_up_read:
        movl 4(%esp), %eax
        movl $-1, %edx
        xadd %edx,(%eax)
        js test_up_read_contention
test_up_read_done:
        ret

#
# Register saving stub for rwsem_wake
#
.globl __rwsem_wake
__rwsem_wake:
        pushl %edx
        pushl %ecx
        call rwsem_wake
        popl %ecx
        popl %edx
        ret

#
# Contention handler stub for up_read
#
.section .text.lock,"ax"
test_up_read_contention:
        decl %edx
        testl $65535,%edx
        jnz test_up_read_done
        call __rwsem_wake
        jmp test_up_read_done

###############################################################################
#
# CASE 2: registers saved in the contention handler stub
#
.text
        .align 16

#
# void test_up_read(struct rw_semaphore *sem)
# {
# up_read(sem);
# }
#
.globl test_up_read
        .type test_up_read,@function
test_up_read:
        movl 4(%esp), %eax
        movl $-1, %edx
        xadd %edx,(%eax)
        js test_up_read_contention
test_up_read_done:
        ret

#
# Contention handler stub for up_read
#
.section .text.lock,"ax"
test_up_read_contention:
        decl %edx
        testl $65535,%edx
        jnz test_up_read_done
        pushl %edx
        pushl %ecx
        call __rwsem_wake
        popl %ecx
        popl %edx
        jmp test_up_read_done
-
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 23 2001 - 21:00:36 EST