Re: [PATCHSET][2.6-test4][0/6]Support for HPET based timer - Take 2

[Erik Andersen <andersen@codepoet.org>]

On Fri Aug 29, 2003 at 11:23:47AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> "Pallipadi, Venkatesh" <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com> wrote:
> >
> > Resending the patch.
> 
> Thanks, I'll include these in the next -mm kernel.
> 
> Reading the code, the only thing which leaps out is:
> 
> +/* Use our own asm for 64 bit multiply/divide */
> +#define ASM_MUL64_REG(eax_out,edx_out,reg_in,eax_in) 			\
> +		__asm__ __volatile__("mull %2" 				\
> +				:"=a" (eax_out), "=d" (edx_out) 	\
> +				:"r" (reg_in), "0" (eax_in))
> +
> +#define ASM_DIV64_REG(eax_out,edx_out,reg_in,eax_in,edx_in) 		\
> +		__asm__ __volatile__("divl %2" 				\
> +				:"=a" (eax_out), "=d" (edx_out) 	\
> +				:"r" (reg_in), "0" (eax_in), "1" (edx_in))
> 
> We seem to keep on proliferating home-grown x86 64-bit math functions.
> 
> Do you really need these?  Is it possible to use do_div() and the C 64x64
> `*' operator instead?


The fundamental reason these are proliferating is that given
some random bit of code such as:

    u64 foo=9, bar=3, baz;
    baz = foo / bar;
    baz = foo % bar;

gcc then generates code calling __udivdi3 and __umoddi3.  Since
the kernel does not provide these, people keep reinventing them.
Perhaps it is time to kill off do_div and all its little friends
and simply copy __udivdi3 and __umoddi3 from libgcc.....

 -Erik

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Erik B. Andersen             http://codepoet-consulting.com/
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