Re: [PATCH 00/10] x86: use gcc 6+ asm flag output feature

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Jun 08 2016 - 04:00:40 EST


On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 04:30:59PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> gcc 6+ has the ability to let flags (actually, conditions, which are
> specific combinations of flags) to be used directly as asm() outputs.
> The syntax for that is "=@cc<cc>" where <cc> is the same set of
> letters that would be used in a j<cc> or set<cc> instruction
> (e.g. "=@ccz" to test the ZF flag.)
>
> This patchset by itself reduces the size of the x86-64 kernel by
> 0.12%, from a baseline of 4.7-rc2 built with gcc 6.1 (first line is
> with the patchset, the second one is without):
>
> text data bss dec hex filename
>
> 68245656 41004339 20533248 129783243 7bc55cb o.i386-allconfig/vmlinux
> 68355716 41008499 20533248 129897463 7be13f7 o.i386-allconfig/vmlinux
>
> 127384005 129742359 38150144 295276508 11998fdc o.x86_64-allconfig/vmlinux
> 127538765 129742295 38150144 295431204 119bec24 o.x86_64-allconfig/vmlinux


Very nice!

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Do you happen to know if GCC plans to support other architectures for
=@cc ?