[U-Boot] [PATCH 2/3] string: Provide a slimmed-down memset()

Heiko Stuebner
2017-03-27T15:17:08Z

Am Montag, 27. MÃ¤rz 2017, 09:14:47 CEST schrieb Alexander Graf:
>
> On 27/03/2017 01:38, Simon Glass wrote:
> > Most of the time the optimised memset() is what we want. For extreme
> > situations such as TPL it may be too large. For example on the 'rock'
> > board, using a simple loop saves a useful 48 bytes. With gcc 4.9 and
> > the rodata bug, this patch is enough to reduce the TPL image below the
> > limit.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
> > ---
> >
> > lib/Kconfig | 9 +++++++++
> > lib/string.c | 6 ++++--
> > 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/lib/Kconfig b/lib/Kconfig
> > index 65c01573e1..5bf512d8c0 100644
> > --- a/lib/Kconfig
> > +++ b/lib/Kconfig
> > @@ -52,6 +52,15 @@ config LIB_RAND
> > help
> > This library provides pseudo-random number generator functions.
> >
> > +config FAST_MEMSET
> > + bool "Use an optimised memset()"
> > + default y
> > + help
> > + The faster memset() is the arch-specific one (if available) enabled
> > + by CONFIG_USE_ARCH_MEMSET. If that is not enabled, we can still get
> > + better performance by write a word at a time. Disable this option
> > + to reduce code size slightly at the cost of some speed.
>
> The comment sounds slightly confused - it took me a few times of reading
> it until I grasped what it was trying to tell me :).
>
> > +
> > source lib/dhry/Kconfig
> >
> > source lib/rsa/Kconfig
> > diff --git a/lib/string.c b/lib/string.c
> > index 67d5f6a421..159493ed17 100644
> > --- a/lib/string.c
> > +++ b/lib/string.c
> > @@ -437,8 +437,10 @@ char *strswab(const char *s)
> > void * memset(void * s,int c,size_t count)
> > {
> > unsigned long *sl = (unsigned long *) s;
> > - unsigned long cl = 0;
> > char *s8;
> > +
> > +#ifdef CONFIG_FAST_MEMSET
> > + unsigned long cl = 0;
> > int i;
> >
> > /* do it one word at a time (32 bits or 64 bits) while possible */
> > @@ -452,7 +454,7 @@ void * memset(void * s,int c,size_t count)
> > count -= sizeof(*sl);
> > }
> > }
> > - /* fill 8 bits at a time */
> > +#endif /* fill 8 bits at a time */
>
> So while this is all neat, a few ideas:
>
> 1) Would having memset in a header improve things even more? After all,
> each external function call clobbers registers that you need to
> save/restore...

I'd guess it really depends on the size constraints. The regular
libgeneric memset compiles on my rk3188 tpl to a total of
64bytes on both gcc-4.9 and gcc-6.3 while Simon's fast-memset
comes down to 14bytes on my rk3188.

On the rk3188 the only memset user is board_init_f, so here memset
is called only once without needing to save registers and I'd guess if an
implementation really is that size-constrained to worry about 50bytes
this one caller will probably always be the only one?

> 2) How much would GOLD save you? Have you tried? U-Boot is small enough
> of a code base that global optimizations should be able to give
> significant size savings.

I think the issue that this is trying to solve is to allow more
toolchains to be used and thus make rebuilds on changes work on a lot
of boards at the same time with random toolchains.

gcc-6.3 already produces way smaller results (well within the size
constraints the rk3188 has) than for example the gcc-4.9 used by
buildman as baseline toolchain.