Re: powerpc: Discard ffs() function and use builtin_ffs instead

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 04:16:57PM +1000, Michael Ellerman wrote:

On Thu, 2016-12-05 at 15:32:22 UTC, Christophe Leroy wrote:

quoted

With the ffs() function as defined in arch/powerpc/include/asm/bitops.h
GCC will not optimise the code in case of constant parameter, as shown
by the small exemple below.

int ffs_test(void)
{
	return 4 << ffs(31);
}

c0012334 <ffs_test>:
c0012334:       39 20 00 01     li      r9,1
c0012338:       38 60 00 04     li      r3,4
c001233c:       7d 29 00 34     cntlzw  r9,r9
c0012340:       21 29 00 20     subfic  r9,r9,32
c0012344:       7c 63 48 30     slw     r3,r3,r9
c0012348:       4e 80 00 20     blr

With this patch, the same function will compile as follows:

c0012334 <ffs_test>:
c0012334:       38 60 00 08     li      r3,8
c0012338:       4e 80 00 20     blr

But what code does it generate when it's not a constant?

And which gcc version first added the builtin version?

It already existed in gcc-2.95, which you do not want to use to compile
anything today but I have in a corner of a chroot environment to maintain
~1997 vintage embedded stuff, running a 2.2.12 kernel!

Hopefully this clears up your concerns :-)

    Cheers,
    Gabriel