Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Instruction counting instrumentation for ARM, 2nd version

[Laurent Desnogues <laurent.desnogues@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Sami Kiminki<sami.kiminki@tkk.fi> wrote:
[...]
>
> There are also other ways to implement instruction counting (see
> responses to our previous patch [1]). As to our approach, I believe this
> is the cleanest way to implement this specific instrumentation. However,
> from the general point of view, I'm not so sure. I'd like to ask for
> more comments and options.

Apart from the fact your patch doesn't contain instrumentation.[ch]
it is bogus in several places and shows why I think the approach
is probably not the best.

E.g.:

@@ -6300,6 +6809,7 @@ static void disas_arm_insn(CPUState * en
                         if (insn & (1 << 20)) {
                             gen_helper_mark_exclusive(cpu_env, cpu_T[1]);
                             switch (op1) {
+                            instr_count_inc(ARM_INSTRUCTION_LDREX);
                             case 0: /* ldrex */
                                 tmp = gen_ld32(addr, IS_USER(s));
                                 break;

This is misplaced.

-            if (op1 & 2)
+            if (op1 & 2) {
                 gen_helper_double_saturate(tmp2, tmp2);
-            if (op1 & 1)
+                if (op1 & 1) instr_count_inc(ARM_INSTRUCTION_QDSUB);
+                else instr_count_inc(ARM_INSTRUCTION_QDADD);
+            }
+            if (op1 & 1) {
                 gen_helper_sub_saturate(tmp, tmp, tmp2);
-            else
+                instr_count_inc(ARM_INSTRUCTION_QSUB);
+            }
+            else {
                 gen_helper_add_saturate(tmp, tmp, tmp2);
+                instr_count_inc(ARM_INSTRUCTION_QADD);
+            }

Here your two last instr_count_inc will overwrite the first two ones.
So you don't distinguish between QDADD/QDSUB and
QADD/QSUB.

I also would like to see a more general instrumentation framework
but your approach is too intrusive and so it's too easy to introduce
hard to detect bugs.

Cheers,

Laurent