[klibc] Slow XCHG in arch/i386/libgcc/__ashrdi3.S and arch/i386/libgcc/__lshrdi3.S

[Stefan Kanthak]

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> wrote  August 20, 2019 12:51 AM:

> On 8/14/19 9:42 PM, Stefan Kanthak wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> both
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/klibc/klibc.git/plain/usr/klibc/arch/i386/libgcc/__ashldi3.S
>> and
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/klibc/klibc.git/plain/usr/klibc/arch/i386/libgcc/__lshrdi3.S
>> use the following code sequences for shift counts greater 31:
>> 
>> 1:                         1:
>>      xorl  %edx,%edx            shrl  %cl,%edx
>>      shl   %cl,%eax             xorl  %eax,%eax
>>         ^
>>      xchgl %edx,%eax            xchgl %edx,%eax
>>      ret                        ret
>> 
>> At least and especially on Intel processors XCHG was and
>> still is a rather slow instruction and should be avoided.
>> Use the following better code sequences instead:
>> 
>> 1:                         1:
>>      shll  %cl,%eax             shrl  %cl,%edx
>>      movl  %eax,%edx            movl  %edx,%eax
>>      xorl  %eax,%eax            xorl  %edx,%edx
>>      ret                        ret
>> 
>> regards
>> Stefan Kanthak
>> 
> 
> XCHG is slow for register-memory operations due to implicit locking, but
> should be fine for register-register.

"but should be fine" is not enough: XCHG is of course slow for register-
register operations too, otherwise I would not have spend time to write in.
See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45766444/why-is-xchg-reg-reg-a-3-micro-op-instruction-on-modern-intel-architectures
or Agner Fogs http://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf 

> Remember, too, that klibc is optimized for size.

Remember that the linker aligns functions on 16 byte boundaries!
With XCHG, these functions have a code size of 29 bytes; with MOV
they grow by 1 byte.

>> PS: I doubt that a current GCC emits calls of the routines
>>     in the /usr/klibc/arch/i386 subdirectory any more.
> 
> Which, of course, is even better.

... and means that you can get rid of this subdirectory!

regards
Stefan