Re: [patch 4/21] fix ARCH_HAS_PREFETCH

From: Willy Tarreau (willy@w.ods.org)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 15:45:56 EST


On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 12:41:04PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Rogier Wolff wrote:
> >>
> >>Bullsh*t. It can legitimately transform it into:
> >>
> >> i = N;
> >
> >
> >Right! But people are confusing "practise", "published interface", and
> >"spec" again.
> >
> >Published interface in this case is that gcc will not optimize an empty
> >loop away, as it is often used to generate a timing loop.
> >
>
> Yes. This is a gcc-specific wart, a bad idea from the start, and
> apparently one which has caught up with them to the point that they've
> had to abandon it.

There would be a solution to tell gcc not to optimize things, which may
not require too much work from gcc people. Basically, we would need to
implement a __builtin_nop() function that would respect dependencies but
not generate any code. This way, we could have :

        for (i=0; i<N, i++);

optimized as i=N
and
        for (i=0; i<N; i++)
                __builtin_nop();
or even
        for (i=0; i<N; __builtin_nop(i++));
do the real work.

This way, some loops could be optimized, and the developpers could explicitely
tell the compiler when they need to prevent any optimization.

Cheers,
Willy

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