Date:   Fri, 25 Aug 2023 20:17:52 -0700
From:   Fangrui Song <maskray@...gle.com>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>,
        Bill Wendling <morbo@...gle.com>, Helge Deller <deller@....de>,
        Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Chanho Min <chanho.min@....com>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@...ux-m68k.org>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        clang-built-linux <llvm@...ts.linux.dev>,
        "maintainer:X86 ARCHITECTURE (32-BIT AND 64-BIT)" <x86@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] lib/clz_ctz.c: Fix __clzdi2() and __ctzdi2() for 32-bit
 kernels

On 2023-08-25, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>On Fri, 25 Aug 2023 at 17:52, Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com> wrote:
>>
>> So 2 concerns where "I'll do it in inline asm" can pessimize codegen:
>> 1. You alluded to this, but what happens when one of these functions
>> is called with a constant?
>
>This is why our headers have a lot of __builtin_constant_p()'s in them..
>
>In this particular case, see the x86 asm/bitops.h code:
>
>    #define ffs(x) (__builtin_constant_p(x) ? __builtin_ffs(x) :
>variable_ffs(x))

For the curious (like me),

__builtin_ffs
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Other-Builtins.html#index-_005f_005fbuiltin_005fffs says

     Returns the number of leading 0-bits in x, starting at the most significant bit position. If x is 0, the result is undefined.

The hangling of 0 seems the cause that __builtin_ffs codegen is not as
well as inline asm.  Clang implemented the builtin in 2008 and took the
same constraint (penalty).



GCC compiles __builtin_ctzl(x) to xorl    %eax, %eax; tzcntq  %rdi, %rax
on most Intel processors (AMD -march= values are unaffected). The extra
xor is due to a false dependency issue
https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=commit;h=73543b2286027da1de561902440b53f775a03a86

Inline asm wins here as well since we know the argument 0 is undefined.

In May 2023, https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=cc6eb8b51f9568ae0caf46b80e2a0aff050030ce
"Disable avoid_false_dep_for_bmi for atom and icelake(and later) core processors."
removed the extra xor for icelake (and later) core processors.

>but this is actually quite a common pattern, and it's often not about
>something like __builtin_ffs() at all.
>
>See all the other __builtin_constant_p()'s that we have in that same
>file because we basically just use different code sequences for
>constants.
>
>And that file isn't even unusual. We use it quite a lot when we care
>about code generation for some particular case.
>
>> 2. by providing the definition of a symbol typically provided by libc
>> (and then not building with -ffreestanding) pessimizes libcall
>> optimization.
>
>.. and this is partly why we often avoid libgcc things, and do certain
>things by hand.
>
>The classic rule is "Don't do 64-bit divisions using the C '/' operator".
>
>So in the kernel you have to use do_div() and friends, because the
>library versions are often disgusting and might not know that 64/32 is
>much much cheaper and is what you want.
>
>And quite often we simply use other names - but then we also do *not*
>build with -freestanding, because -freestanding has at least
>traditionally meant that the compiler won't optimize the simple and
>obvious cases (typically things like "memcpy with a constant size").
>
>So we mix and match and pick the best option.
>
>The kernel really doesn't care about architecture portability, because
>honestly, something like "ffs()" is entirely *trivial* to get right,
>compared to the real differences between architectures (eg VM and IO
>differences etc).
>
>             Linus
>

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