On 11/17/14 06:13, Ajit Kumar Agarwal wrote:
Hello All:
I was looking at the optimized usage and allocation to argument registers.
There are two aspects to it as follows.
1. We need to specify the argument registers as followed by ABI in the target
specific code. Based on the function
argument registers defined in the target dependent code the function argument
registers are passed. If the
number of argument registers defined in the Architecture is large say 6/8
function argument registers.
Most of the time in the benchmarks we don't pass so many arguments and the
number of arguments passed
is quite less. Since we reserve the function arguments as specified in the
target specific code for the given
architecture, leads to unoptimized usage as this function argument registers
will not be used in the function.
Thus we need to steal some of the arguments registers and have the usage of
those in the function depending
on the support of the number of function argument registers. The stealing of
function argument registers will
lead more number of registers available that are to be used in the function
and leading to less spill and fetch.
2. The other aspect of the function argument registers is not spill and fetch
the argument registers as they are
live across the function call. But the liveness is limited to certain point of
the called function after that point the
function argument registers are not live and can be used inside the called
function. Other aspect is if there is a
shortage of registers than can the function argument registers should be used
as spill candidate? Will this lead
to the optimized code.
Please let me know what do you think.
Typically GCC ports do not reserve the function argument/return
registers, they are allocatable just like any other call clobbered register.
In essence arguments for function calls are set up at each call site by
copying values out of pseudo registers, memory, constant
initializations, etc to the appropriate outgoing argument register. The
allocator will, when possible and profitable try to assign the pseudo
register to the appropriate argument register to eliminate the copies.
Similarly, GCC copies values out of the incoming argument registers and
into pseudos at the start of a function. The allocator, again when
possible and profitable, will try to allocate the pseudos to the
incoming argument registers to avoid the copy.
So in summary, there is no reason to reserve registers for argument
passing in GCC and doing so would be wasteful. Treat the argument
registers as any other call clobbered register and allow the register
allocator to make appropriate decisions based on liveness, expected
uses, call-crossing liveness, related copies, etc etc.
jeff
