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Re: MMU Off / Strict Alignment


On Dec 17 21:06, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> At the risk of sticking my nose in, this isn't a startup code issue.
> It's a contract issue.
> 
> First, I don't buy Richard's argument about memcpy() startup costs and
> hard-to-predict branches. We do those tests on essentially every
> *other* RISC platform without complaint, and it's very easy to order
> those branches so that the currently efficient cases run well. Perhaps
> more to the point, I haven't seen anybody put forward quantitative
> data that using the MMU for unaligned references is any better than
> executing those branches. Speaking as a recovering processor
> architect, that assumption needs to be validated quantitatively. My
> guess is that the branches are faster if properly arranged.
> 
> Second, this is a contract issue. If newlib intends to support
> embedded platforms, then it needs to implement algorithms that are
> functionally correct without relying on an MMU. By all means use
> simpler or smarter algorithms when an MMU can be assumed to be
> available in a given configuration, but provide an algorithm that is
> functionally correct when no MMU is available. "Good overall
> performance in memcpy" is a fine thing, but it is subject to the
> requirement of meeting functional specifications. As Jochen Liedtke
> famously put it (read this in a heavy German accent): "Fast, ya. But
> correct? (shrug) Eh!"
> 
> So: we need a normative statement saying what the contract is. The
> rest of the answer will fall out from that.
> 
> I do agree with Richard that startup code is special. I've built
> deeply embedded runtimes of one form or another for 25 years now, and
> I have yet to see a system where optimizing a simplistic byte-wise
> memcpy during bootstrap would have made any difference in anything
> overall. That said, if the specification of memcpy requires it to
> handle incompatibly aligned pointers (and it does), and the contract
> for newlib requires it to operate in MMU-less scenarios in a given
> configuration (which, at least in some cases, it does), it's
> completely legitimate to expect that bootstrap code can call memcpy()
> and expect behavior that meets specifications.
> 
> So what's the contract?

I don't know anything about this contract, but what keeps people
from extending memcpy for aarch to contain two sets of instructions,
one with MMU-less instructions and one with MMU?


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Maintainer
Red Hat

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