http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47556
Summary: x86: fails to take advantage of high-byte addressing mode Product: gcc Version: 4.5.1 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: c AssignedTo: unassig...@gcc.gnu.org ReportedBy: jer...@goop.org Created attachment 23188 --> http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=23188 Preprocessed file When comparing two bytes in a 16-bit value, gcc introduces an unnecessary temp register rather than just directly comparing the two byte halves. In the attached source, the code generated for if (inc.head == inc.tail) goto out; is movzbl %ah, %edx cmpb %al, %dl rather than simply cmpb %ah, %al If it did, then the code would be identical to the hand-written asm it is intended to replace. I'm compiling with "gcc -S -O2 -Wall halfreg-codegen.i" The gcc version is the standard Fedora 14 package: $ gcc -v Using built-in specs. COLLECT_GCC=/usr/bin/gcc COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.5.1/lto-wrapper Target: x86_64-redhat-linux Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --with-bugurl=http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla --enable-bootstrap --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-checking=release --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-libunwind-exceptions --enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-linker-build-id --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,java,fortran,ada,lto --enable-plugin --enable-java-awt=gtk --disable-dssi --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-1.5.0.0/jre --enable-libgcj-multifile --enable-java-maintainer-mode --with-ecj-jar=/usr/share/java/eclipse-ecj.jar --disable-libjava-multilib --with-ppl --with-cloog --with-tune=generic --with-arch_32=i686 --build=x86_64-redhat-linux Thread model: posix gcc version 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4) (GCC) $ rpm -q gcc gcc-4.5.1-4.fc14.x86_64