Re: [PATCH 02/17] bitops: Add generic parity calculation for u64

[Yury Norov <yury.norov@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 10:29:11PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:27:03 -0500
> Yury Norov <yury.norov@gmail.com> wrote:
> ....
> > +#define parity(val)					\
> > +({							\
> > +	u64 __v = (val);				\
> > +	int __ret;					\
> > +	switch (BITS_PER_TYPE(val)) {			\
> > +	case 64:					\
> > +		__v ^= __v >> 32;			\
> > +		fallthrough;				\
> > +	case 32:					\
> > +		__v ^= __v >> 16;			\
> > +		fallthrough;				\
> > +	case 16:					\
> > +		__v ^= __v >> 8;			\
> > +		fallthrough;				\
> > +	case 8:						\
> > +		__v ^= __v >> 4;			\
> > +		__ret =  (0x6996 >> (__v & 0xf)) & 1;	\
> > +		break;					\
> > +	default:					\
> > +		BUILD_BUG();				\
> > +	}						\
> > +	__ret;						\
> > +})
> > +
> 
> You really don't want to do that!
> gcc makes a right hash of it for x86 (32bit).
> See https://www.godbolt.org/z/jG8dv3cvs

GCC fails to even understand this. Of course, the __v should be an
__auto_type. But that way GCC fails to understand that case 64 is
a dead code for all smaller type and throws a false-positive 
Wshift-count-overflow. This is a known issue, unfixed for 25 years!

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4210
 
> You do better using a __v32 after the 64bit xor.

It should be an __auto_type. I already mentioned. So because of that,
we can either do something like this:

  #define parity(val)					\
  ({							\
  #ifdef CLANG                                          \
  	__auto_type __v = (val);			\
  #else /* GCC; because of this and that */             \
  	u64 __v = (val);			        \
  #endif                                                \
  	int __ret;					\

Or simply disable Wshift-count-overflow for GCC.

> Even the 64bit version is probably sub-optimal (both gcc and clang).
> The whole lot ends up being a bit single register dependency chain.
> You want to do:

No, I don't. I want to have a sane compiler that does it for me.

> 	mov %eax, %edx
> 	shrl $n, %eax
> 	xor %edx, %eax
> so that the 'mov' and 'shrl' can happen in the same clock
> (without relying on the register-register move being optimised out).
> 
> I dropped in the arm64 for an example of where the magic shift of 6996
> just adds an extra instruction.

It's still unclear to me that this parity thing is used in hot paths.
If that holds, it's unclear that your hand-made version is better than
what's generated by GCC.

Do you have any perf test?

Thanks,
Yury