From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/8676 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rich Felker Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: Re: status of armhf asm with VFP instructions Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 18:44:25 -0400 Message-ID: <20151015224425.GA8645@brightrain.aerifal.cx> References: <20151015223320.GW10551@port70.net> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1444949085 30276 80.91.229.3 (15 Oct 2015 22:44:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 22:44:45 +0000 (UTC) To: musl@lists.openwall.com Original-X-From: musl-return-8688-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Fri Oct 16 00:44:45 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by plane.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZmrGM-0003qv-Jx for gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org; Fri, 16 Oct 2015 00:44:42 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 30585 invoked by uid 550); 15 Oct 2015 22:44:40 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: Original-Received: (qmail 30567 invoked from network); 15 Oct 2015 22:44:39 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20151015223320.GW10551@port70.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Original-Sender: Rich Felker Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:8676 Archived-At: On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 12:33:20AM +0200, Szabolcs Nagy wrote: > it is not possible to write arm asm in a way that pleases all > assemblers, here is a summary of the problems relevant to musl: > > some instructions can be written in several ways since UAL > (= unified assembler language) was introduced to unify arm > and thumb instruction mnemonics. > > in case of armhf VFP instructions musl uses the following ones > in hand written asm: > > hex ual old > > eeb1XacX vsqrt.f32 fsqrts > eeb1XbcX vsqrt.f64 fsqrtd > eeb0XacX vabs.f64 fabss > eeb0XbcX vabs.f64 fabsd > eef1Xa10 vmrs fpscr mrc p10,7,.. > eee1Xa10 vmsr fpscr mcr p10,7,.. > > the issues: > > (1) binutils gas rejects UAL VFP instructions unless either > the -mfpu= option is passed or the asm source > has '.fpu ' directive, the old names work though > (if the target is hard float). A gcc toolchain built > --with-float=hard but without --with-fpu= does not > pass -mfpu to the assembler. > > (2) Most UAL mnemonics were added in binutils 2.18, older > binutils only supports the old syntax. Some UAL mnemonics were > added later, vmrs and vmsr only appear in binutils 2.21 > (released in 2010). > > (3) The clang assembler does not support old mnemonics in general > but includes a few exceptions (e.g. fabs and fsqrt are supported, > but not the mrc or mcr coprocessor instructions). > > Using UAL asm is the clean solution, but then to fix (1) we > should have .fpu directives in the asm files. > > However the conflict between (2) and (3) means that fenv code > using vmrs and vmsr either drops support for old binutils gas > or the clang assembler. It seems we're already using the new forms vsqrt and vabs in src/math/armhf/*.s. So using vmrs/vmsr presumably will not break support for any toolchains that work now. I think the reason this went unnoticed for so long is that Aboriginal Linux (the only real user of the ancient binutils, due to GPL v2 vs v3 issues) does not use the armhf ABI at all; it only targets standard EABI for which musl does not use any math/fenv asm. So I'm ok with the fpu-related changes proposed, but I'm not sure what to do about UAL issues elsewhere. Right now we have a lot of files with instructions written as .word in them which is a mess and which precludes Cortex-M (thumb2-only) targets. These are files which need to be built even on non-hf, so changing them presumably will break support for old binutils. As a workaround, users needing old binutils could perhaps misuse the ASM_CMD var in the Makefile to run a sed script that replaces UAL with old-syntax asm. Or someone could patch the old binutils to accept UAL... Rich