Re: no-op delay loops

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Friday 27 November 2015 09:53:50 Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
> 
> It seems that gcc happily compiles
> 
> for (i = 0; i < 1000000000; ++i) ;
> 
> into simply
> 
> i = 1000000000;
> 
> (which is then usually eliminated as a dead store). At least at -O2, and
> when i is not declared volatile. So it would seem that the loops at
> 
> arch/mips/pci/pci-rt2880.c:235
> arch/mips/pmcs-msp71xx/msp_setup.c:80
> arch/mips/sni/reset.c:35
> 
> actually don't do anything. (In the middle one, i is 'register', but
> that doesn't change anything.) Is mips compiled with some special flags
> that would make gcc actually emit code for the above?
> 

I remember that gcc used to not optimize code that looked like a
delay loop such as the above, and my tests show that this was still
the case in gcc-4.0.3, but starting with gcc-4.1 it opimtized away
that loop.

	Arnd