[RFC PATCH v5] RISC-V: Add support for the Zfa extension

[Jeff Law]

On 6/29/23 09:37, Palmer Dabbelt wrote:

>>> > So my understanding is that this needs to wait for ratification and is
>>> > not blocked by the mentioned PR.
>>> Is there something special about Zfa that makes it desirable to wait for
>>> ratification as opposed to standard practice of gating things as the
>>> specs get to a Frozen state?
>>
>> Not to my knowledge.
> 
> Waiting for ratification is probably a bad idea, there's really no way 
> to schedule around it.  That's a big part of the reason we've just 
> waited for frozen.
Exactly.  ISTM that frozen is the right point to trigger.

> 
> IIUC we're just waiting on the assembler syntax to be accepted, it's not 
> an ISA problem right now.
And I think enough of it is settled that we can move forward. If RVI 
changes the set of forms allowed, then we can adjust.


> 
> It's not all that hard to just add more flavors of assembler syntax 
> later, so maybe we just merge this and stop bothering to wait for all 
> these other non-ISA specs to resolve?
I'd be more worried about them removing a supported form as that would 
result in hand-coded assembly might needing to be adjusted.  But I 
wouldn't expect there's much hand-coded Zfa code out there.

Jeff