llvm dev - Nov 2018 - [cfe-dev] [RFC][ARM] -Oz implies -mthumb

My understanding is that whether a gcc toolchain defaults to ARM or
Thumb is a configuration time decision by whomever builds the
toolchain. The linaro arm-linux-gnueabihf toolchain I have defaults to
-mthumb and that doesn't vary for -mcpu or any other command line
option. I haven't got a gcc to hand that defaults to -marm so that I
can test whether -mcpu=cortex-m3 will change that to Thumb. If I try
-marm -mcpu=cortex-m3 I get "error: target CPU does not support ARM
mode".

Can you give us a more concrete example about where GCC is inconsistent?

For clang I'm not particularly fond of -Oz implying a change of
instruction set state. I think that it would be difficult to document
properly, especially how to tell clang that I really did mean -Oz on
ARM. As well as being a bit messy to implement.

I think that most users of clang would prefer to use Thumb(2) than
ARM, although how to make change globally and give people enough
warning could be challenging and we'd need to get a consensus from the
community. I'd also not want to be the person updating all the tests
with -marm.

The reset vectors on some old architectures did need to be ARM state,
although I think they had to be written in assembly. It is possible
though that someone is using clang as the assembler driver and we'd
pass through -mthumb when they weren't expecting it.

Peter
On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:39, Tim Northover via cfe-dev
<cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:25, Bruce Hoult <brucehoult at sifive.com>
wrote:
> > OK, I just checked, and -mcpu=cortex-{m3,m4,m7,a7,a9,a15,a53} gives
Thumb at -O1, -O1, -Os on the following gcc:
>
> If anything I'd be inclined to just default to Thumb always. I
haven't
> checked myself, but rumour has it the icache benefits make it faster
> than ARM code as well as smaller in most cases. My one worry there is
> with reset vectors, which I believe must be implemented in ARM in some
> cases; but since GCC itself appears to be inconsistent here, hopefully
> those people are already explicit about their needs.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Tim.
> _______________________________________________
> cfe-dev mailing list
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev

Sure, none of the cortex-m cores support ARM mode. Try
cortex-a{5,7,8,9,15,53} etc and you'll see it works.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 5:10 AM, Peter Smith <peter.smith at linaro.org>
wrote:
> My understanding is that whether a gcc toolchain defaults to ARM or
> Thumb is a configuration time decision by whomever builds the
> toolchain. The linaro arm-linux-gnueabihf toolchain I have defaults to
> -mthumb and that doesn't vary for -mcpu or any other command line
> option. I haven't got a gcc to hand that defaults to -marm so that I
> can test whether -mcpu=cortex-m3 will change that to Thumb. If I try
> -marm -mcpu=cortex-m3 I get "error: target CPU does not support ARM
> mode".
>
> Can you give us a more concrete example about where GCC is inconsistent?
>
> For clang I'm not particularly fond of -Oz implying a change of
> instruction set state. I think that it would be difficult to document
> properly, especially how to tell clang that I really did mean -Oz on
> ARM. As well as being a bit messy to implement.
>
> I think that most users of clang would prefer to use Thumb(2) than
> ARM, although how to make change globally and give people enough
> warning could be challenging and we'd need to get a consensus from the
> community. I'd also not want to be the person updating all the tests
> with -marm.
>
> The reset vectors on some old architectures did need to be ARM state,
> although I think they had to be written in assembly. It is possible
> though that someone is using clang as the assembler driver and we'd
> pass through -mthumb when they weren't expecting it.
>
> Peter
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:39, Tim Northover via cfe-dev
> <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:25, Bruce Hoult <brucehoult at
sifive.com> wrote:
> > > OK, I just checked, and -mcpu=cortex-{m3,m4,m7,a7,a9,a15,a53}
gives
> Thumb at -O1, -O1, -Os on the following gcc:
> >
> > If anything I'd be inclined to just default to Thumb always. I
haven't
> > checked myself, but rumour has it the icache benefits make it faster
> > than ARM code as well as smaller in most cases. My one worry there is
> > with reset vectors, which I believe must be implemented in ARM in some
> > cases; but since GCC itself appears to be inconsistent here, hopefully
> > those people are already explicit about their needs.
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > Tim.
> > _______________________________________________
> > cfe-dev mailing list
> > cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20181115/8d224e83/attachment.html>

Yes, exactly this:
> Sure, none of the cortex-m cores support ARM mode. Try
cortex-a{5,7,8,9,15,53} etc and you'll see it works.
Sorry for being a bit vague and unclear here: yes, I should have said
cortex-a{5,7,8,9,15,53}.
I was just having a play with this native compiler:

gcc-5 (Ubuntu/Linaro 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.10) 5.4.0 20160609

when I noticed that -Os gives me Thumb on Cortex-A{8,9,17}, which is what I
would expect, but with Clang -Oz I get A32.

I haven't thought about the implementation yet, but I hope passing -mthumb
in the driver is not that difficult when we i) target an A-core and AArch32
state, and ii) we optimise for minimum size. And if I have to update a lot of
tests, then that's what it is I am afraid, if we agree this is a sensible
change that is.

Cheers,
Sjoerd.






________________________________
From: cfe-dev <cfe-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> on behalf of Bruce Hoult
via cfe-dev <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Sent: 15 November 2018 13:31
To: Peter Smith
Cc: llvm-dev; Clang Dev
Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC][ARM] -Oz implies -mthumb

Sure, none of the cortex-m cores support ARM mode. Try cortex-a{5,7,8,9,15,53}
etc and you'll see it works.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 5:10 AM, Peter Smith <peter.smith at
linaro.org<mailto:peter.smith at linaro.org>> wrote:
My understanding is that whether a gcc toolchain defaults to ARM or
Thumb is a configuration time decision by whomever builds the
toolchain. The linaro arm-linux-gnueabihf toolchain I have defaults to
-mthumb and that doesn't vary for -mcpu or any other command line
option. I haven't got a gcc to hand that defaults to -marm so that I
can test whether -mcpu=cortex-m3 will change that to Thumb. If I try
-marm -mcpu=cortex-m3 I get "error: target CPU does not support ARM
mode".

Can you give us a more concrete example about where GCC is inconsistent?

For clang I'm not particularly fond of -Oz implying a change of
instruction set state. I think that it would be difficult to document
properly, especially how to tell clang that I really did mean -Oz on
ARM. As well as being a bit messy to implement.

I think that most users of clang would prefer to use Thumb(2) than
ARM, although how to make change globally and give people enough
warning could be challenging and we'd need to get a consensus from the
community. I'd also not want to be the person updating all the tests
with -marm.

The reset vectors on some old architectures did need to be ARM state,
although I think they had to be written in assembly. It is possible
though that someone is using clang as the assembler driver and we'd
pass through -mthumb when they weren't expecting it.

Peter
On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:39, Tim Northover via cfe-dev
<cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:25, Bruce Hoult <brucehoult at
sifive.com<mailto:brucehoult at sifive.com>> wrote:
> > OK, I just checked, and -mcpu=cortex-{m3,m4,m7,a7,a9,a15,a53} gives
Thumb at -O1, -O1, -Os on the following gcc:
>
> If anything I'd be inclined to just default to Thumb always. I
haven't
> checked myself, but rumour has it the icache benefits make it faster
> than ARM code as well as smaller in most cases. My one worry there is
> with reset vectors, which I believe must be implemented in ARM in some
> cases; but since GCC itself appears to be inconsistent here, hopefully
> those people are already explicit about their needs.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Tim.
> _______________________________________________
> cfe-dev mailing list
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20181115/20652697/attachment.html>