[Valgrind-developers] [PATCH 1/2] x86: optimize XCHG to MOV for same-register forms

[H.J. Lu]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 3:22 PM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
>
> On 06.07.2026 09:11, H.J. Lu wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 2:16 PM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
> >> On 03.07.2026 15:32, H.J. Lu wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 8:28 PM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
> >>>> On 03.07.2026 13:39, H.J. Lu wrote:
> >>>>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 6:04 PM Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >>>>>> Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> writes:
> >>>>>>> On 03.07.2026 08:09, Paul Floyd wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On 2026-07-03 08:00, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On 03.07.2026 06:55, Paul Floyd wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> Would it be possible for gas to only do this transformation if the source and destination registers are different?
> >>>>>>>>> When the registers are different, this transformation is invalid to do.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> OK so you are optimising a no-op. Does GCC use it as a no-op?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I don't expect so. In fact, my take is that -O... should not be used on
> >>>>>>> compiler generated code. The compiler should do whatever optimizations
> >>>>>>> are possible / sensible, and it should not emit code which can (easily)
> >>>>>>> further be optimized. (Easily because the assembler really only does
> >>>>>>> very simple and pretty obvious transformations.)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, that's reasonable. We should document it though.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -O should be safe for compiler generated codes.
> >>>>
> >>>> The question isn't about "being safe". -O should be safe on whatever input.
> >>>> If it's not, it's a bug.
> >>>>
> >>>> The question is whether it is plausible to use -O... at all for compiler
> >>>> generated code. I causes extra overhead in the assembler, after all. If the
> >>>> compiler did a decent job, all of that extra overhead is going to be in
> >>>> vein. (As said elsewhere, the situation is different for code coming from
> >>>> asm() - that's not really compiler generated code.)
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> From what we have learned so far, "XCHG REG,REG" has been done
> >>> on purpose and compilers never generate them automatically.   Assembler
> >>> should leave them alone even with encoding optimization.
> >>
> >> No, why? Optimization is specifically for hand-coded assembly, so what a
> >> compiler emits doesn't matter here. Following this argumentation of yours,
> >> we should remove all optimization again from gas. People can use any
> >> particular encoding "on purpose", after all. As said elsewhere, if you're
> >> after particular encodings, don't engage optimization in the first place.
> >
> > When we are informed that an assembler optimization breaks the
> > application, we should consider disabling such optimization.
>
> While on the surface this may look like a pragmatic approach, it really
> doesn't scale: One could then artificially construct uses in applications,
> just for the (really: all) optimizations to then be disabled.

This should be done on a case by case basis.  For each issue like
this, we should investigate and decide what to do.

> Hence my earlier suggestion: Give them half a year to sort things by
> reverting the change from the branch, once that was created.
>

VALGRIND_GET_NR_CONTEXT is defined in /usr/include/valgrind/valgrind.h.
It will take a long time to get it changed in both valgrind source as
well as all
its users.   I don't think half a year is sufficient.

-- 
H.J.