Development process for i386 machine descriptions

[Ty Smith]

Hello,
   I'm a new developer to GCC and have been tasked with building a 
machine description for an x86 processor.  I have documentation 
regarding the pipeline stages, instruction latency, and even a number of 
special case optimization possibilities.  I have been adding small 
changes to i386.h/i386.c and have created a new machine description 
file.  In building the machine description, I have attempted to model 
the pipeline as best as I understand from the documentation given, but a 
number of aspects of GCC development elude me because I'm new to the 
development process.  Here are a list of questions I have that are 
specific to i386 machine descriptions.
1.) The processor_costs structure seems very limited, but seem very 
easily to "fill in" but are these costs supposed to be best or worst 
case?  For instance, many instructions with different sized operands 
vary in latency.
2.) I don't understand the meaning of the stringop_algs, scalar, vector, 
and branching costs at the end of the processor_cost structure.  Could 
someone give me an accurate description?
3.) The processor I am currently attempting to model is 
single-issue/in-order with a simple pipeline.  Stalls can occasionally 
occur in the fetch/decode/translate, but the core is the latency of 
instructions in the functional units in the execute stage.  What 
recommendations can anyone make to me for designing the DFA?  Should it 
just directly model the functional units latencies for certain insn types?

Because I'm new at this, any recommendations or assistance in this vein 
of development would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Ty Smith