[Cbe-oss-dev] [PATCH] force -mno-string option on cell

Segher Boessenkool segher at kernel.crashing.org
Mon Mar 26 22:33:07 EST 2007


>>> strings instructions suck, get away with it.
>>
>> No they don't.
>>
>> End of this particular subthread I suppose, heh.
>
> Really? `They suck!' 'They don't!'...
>
> Ben: Why do they suck?
> Segher: Why don't they suck?

On most CPUs, they perform just fine, microcoded or not,
in most circumstances (hint: the bottleneck is not at the
decode stage).  They can actually help because of improved
code density.

For CPUs where they do suck, GCC knows (or should know)
preferably not to generate them.  Like on CBE, where lswi
causes a lovely 11-cycle bubble.  But guess what, many
more insns do so -- and we're not going to unconditionally
add a compiler flag to every kernel build that prevents
the compiler from generating "andi." insns I hope :-)


Segher




More information about the cbe-oss-dev mailing list