Re: [PATCH] riscv: avoid enabling vectorized code generation

[Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org>]

On 16 December 2022 12:56:23 GMT-08:00, Saleem Abdulrasool <abdulras@google.com> wrote:
>On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 11:54 AM Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 16 Dec 2022 11:45:21 PST (-0800), ben.dooks@codethink.co.uk wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On 2022-12-16 18:50, Saleem Abdulrasool wrote:
>> >> The compiler is free to generate vectorized operations for zero'ing
>> >> memory.  The kernel does not use the vector unit on RISCV, similar to
>> >> architectures such as x86 where we use `-mno-mmx` et al to prevent the
>> >> implicit vectorization.  Perform a similar check for
>> >> `-mno-implicit-float` to avoid this on RISC-V targets.
>> >
>> > I'm not sure if we should be emitting either of the vector or floating
>> > point instrucitons in the kernel without explicitly marking the section
>> > of code which is using them such as specific accelerator blocks.
>>
>> Yep, we can't let the compiler just blindly enable V or F/D.  V would
>> very much break things as we have no support, but even when that's in
>> we'll we at roughly the same spot as F/D are now where we need to handle
>> the lazy save/restore bits.
>>
>> This looks like an LLVM-only option, I see at least some handling here
>>
>> https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/a72883b7612f5c00b592da85ed2f1fd81258cc08/clang/lib/Driver/ToolChains/Clang.cpp#L2098
>>
>> but I don't really know LLVM enough to understand if there's some
>> default for `-mimplicit-float` and I can't find anything in the docs.
>> If it can be turned on by default and that results in F/D/V instructions
>> then we'll need to explicitly turn it off, and that would need to be
>> backported.
>
>Yes, this is an LLVM option, but I think that the `cc-option` wrapping
>should help ensure that we do not break the gcc build.  This only
>recently was added to clang, so an older clang would also miss this
>flag.  The `-mimplicit-float` is the default AFAIK, which is why we
>needed to add this flag in the first place.  Enabling V exposed this,
>which is why the commit message mentions vector.

You've said "enabling V" in the comment and here.
By that, do you mean when V support is enabled in clang or when it is enabled in Linux?