Re: [PATCH] tcg/i386: Check for shorter instruction sequence for ARITH_AND

[Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@linaro.org>]

On 8/7/23 07:28, Helge Deller wrote:
> The tcg uses tgen_arithi(ARITH_AND) during fast CPU TLB lookups,
> which e.g. translates to:
> 
> 0x7ff5b011556a:  48 81 e6 00 f0 ff ff     andq     $0xfffffffffffff000, %rsi
> 
> In case the upper 48 bits are all set, the shorter sequence to operate
> on the lower 16 bits of the target reg (si) can be used, which will then
> be a 2 bytes shorter instruction sequence:
> 
> 0x7f4488097b31:  66 81 e6 00 f0           andw     $0xf000, %si
> 
> Signed-off-by: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>


Current Intel optimization guidelines

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/671488/intel-64-and-ia-32-architectures-optimization-reference-manual.html

Section 3.4.2.3, Length Changing Prefixes, suggests that using 16-byte operands slows 
decode from 1 cycle to 6 cycles.

Section 3.5.2.3, Partial Register Stalls, says that Skylake has fixed the major issues 
that older microarchitectures had with such stalls, but that these operations have two 
additional cycles of delay.

So on balance I don't think this is a good tradeoff.


r~