Re: lwl-lwr

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 09:07:26PM +0200, Kevin D. Kissell wrote:

> I don't remember the discussion in question, but it's a question
> which comes up from time to time, due to the existence of 
> MIPS-like CPUs which lack the (patented) lwl/lwr mechanism
> for dealing with unaligned data.  The Lexra cores, for example.
> 
> There's really no such thing as "disabling" lwl/lwr.  They are part 
> of the base MIPS instruction set.  If one wants to live without them, 
> one can either rig a compiler to emit multi-instruction sequences instead 
> of lwr/lwl to do the appropriate shifts and masks (which is slower on all 
> targets), or you can rig the OS to emulate them, and hope that the processors 
> lacking support will take clean reserved instruction traps, where the function 
> can be emulated (which is "free" for code running  on CPUs with lwl/lwr, 
> but *really* slow for the guys doing emulation).

Technically you're right ...  In reality lwl/lwr are covered by US patent
4,814,976 which would also cover a software implementation.  So unless MIPS
grants a license for the purpose of emulation in the Linux kernel ...

  Ralf