Re: Promoting Crusoe and Geode Processors to i686 Status

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Wed Sep 08 2010 - 18:15:55 EST


On 09/08/2010 03:14 PM, Nick Lowe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here goes...
>
> -mtune tunes the binary for given architecture. This as opposed to
> defining the baseline architecture, and thus available instruction
> set, which -march does.
>
> I believe that -mtune is predominantly used for instruction
> scheduling. GCC uses it when it's reordering instructions to optimise
> for specific micro-architecture over others.
>
> With -mtune=i686, I am of the opinion that you instruct the compiler,
> and give it the opportunity, to deliver a better ordering of the
> instructions. In this case, better ordering for i686 than you would
> get with -mtune=generic32.
>
> I'm probably wrong somehow, it's probably marginal, and I'll concede
> to your infinitely better knowledge any day! That's why I phrased it
> as a question! :)
>

We don't pass -mtune=generic32 to gcc. We pass -Wa,-mtune=generic32 to
gcc, which affects binutils only.

-hpa
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