Re: [PATCH 1/2] x86: optimize XCHG to MOV for same-register forms

Jan Beulich via Valgrind-developers <valgrind-developers-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.debugging.valgrind.devel,gmane.comp.gnu.binutils
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 03.07.2026 13:39, H.J. Lu wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 6:04 PM Sam James <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Jan Beulich <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>>> On 03.07.2026 08:09, Paul Floyd wrote:
>>>> On 2026-07-03 08:00, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>>> On 03.07.2026 06:55, Paul Floyd wrote:
>>>>>> Would it be possible for gas to only do this transformation if the source and destination registers are different?
>>>>> When the registers are different, this transformation is invalid to do.
>>>>
>>>> OK so you are optimising a no-op. Does GCC use it as a no-op?
>>>
>>> I don't expect so. In fact, my take is that -O... should not be used on
>>> compiler generated code. The compiler should do whatever optimizations
>>> are possible / sensible, and it should not emit code which can (easily)
>>> further be optimized. (Easily because the assembler really only does
>>> very simple and pretty obvious transformations.)
>>
>> Yes, that's reasonable. We should document it though.
> 
> -O should be safe for compiler generated codes.

The question isn't about "being safe". -O should be safe on whatever input.
If it's not, it's a bug.

The question is whether it is plausible to use -O... at all for compiler
generated code. I causes extra overhead in the assembler, after all. If the
compiler did a decent job, all of that extra overhead is going to be in
vein. (As said elsewhere, the situation is different for code coming from
asm() - that's not really compiler generated code.)

Jan


_______________________________________________
Valgrind-developers mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/valgrind-developers
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.