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authorKen Raeburn <raeburn@cygnus>1994-03-02 22:43:28 +0000
committerKen Raeburn <raeburn@cygnus>1994-03-02 22:43:28 +0000
commit74a88e8b27dbd777b7634882dc3732f9061da2e6 (patch)
tree8ea880276a9c6d9b3fe36eae389106a65406f20b /gas
parent98ecc94548f2b98fc65627958853a27b78185911 (diff)
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Add some notes from tege on .align for alpha and i386 that I want to deal with
sometime, when I've got time.
Diffstat (limited to 'gas')
-rw-r--r--gas/NOTES31
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diff --git a/gas/NOTES b/gas/NOTES
index 7d61599..c1cd559 100644
--- a/gas/NOTES
+++ b/gas/NOTES
@@ -99,6 +99,37 @@ easier to maintain, instead of having code in most of the back ends.
PIC support.
+Torbjorn Granlund <tege@cygnus.com> writes, regarding alpha .align:
+
+ Please make sure the .align directive works as in digital's assembler.
+ They fill the space with a sequence of "bis $31,$31,$31;ldq_u $31,0($30)"
+ since these two instructions can dual-issue. Since .align is ued a lot by
+ gcc, it is an important optimization.
+
+Torbjorn Granlund <tege@cygnus.com> writes, regarding i386/i486/pentium:
+
+ In a new publication from Intel, "Optimization for Intel's 32 bit
+ Processors", they recommended code alignment on a 16 byte boundary if that
+ requires less than 8 bytes of fill instructions. The Pentium is not
+ affected by such alignment, the 386 wants alignment on a 4 byte boundary.
+ It is the 486 that is most helped by large alignment.
+
+ Recommended nop instructions:
+ 1 byte: 90 xchg %eax,%eax
+ 2 bytes: 8b c0 movl %eax,%eax
+ 3 bytes: 8d 76 00 leal 0(%esi),%esi
+ 4 bytes: 8d 74 26 00 leal 0(%esi),%esi
+ 5 bytes: 8b c0 8d 76 00 movl %eax,%eax; leal 0(%esi),%esi
+ 6 bytes: 8d b6 00 00 00 00 leal 0(%esi),%esi
+ 7 bytes: 8d b4 26 00 00 00 00 leal 0(%esi),%esi
+
+ Note that `leal 0(%esi),%esi' has a few different encodings...
+
+ There are faster instructions for certain lengths, that are not true nops.
+ If you can determine that a register and the condition code is dead (by
+ scanning forwards for a register that is written before it is read, and
+ similar for cc) you can use a `incl reg' for a 3 times faster 1 cycle nop...
+
(From old "NOTES" file to-do list, not really reviewed:)
fix relocation types for i860, perhaps by adding a ref pointer to fixS?