gcc and 128-bit compare/exchange

Brian Inglis Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca
Tue Mar 10 20:35:42 GMT 2020


On 2020-03-08 20:59, Eliot Moss wrote:
> On 3/8/2020 10:29 PM, Eliot Moss wrote:
>> This is probably to the gcc maintainer ...
>>
>> I am running on a processor that has compare/exchange 128-bit (cx16 capability),
>> and I compiler with -mcx16 and -latomic.  I'm on the latest release cygwin gcc
>> (9.2.0-3, I believe) and the corresponding libatomic.  I have a program with
>> this in it:
>>
>> __atomic_compare_exchange((__int128 *)&s1, (__int128 *)&z, (__int128 *)&s2, 0,
>> __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST, __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST);
>>
>> This compiles to a call (nice if it would inline, but ...) to
>> __atomic_compare_exchange_16, which uses mutex's, not the CMPXCHG16B
>> instruction I was hoping for.  Note I am doing dynamic linking,
>> which on at least one other platform results in dynamic selection
>> of a lib_at implementation of the compare/exchange, which does use
>> the desired instruction.
>>
>> Is this a limitation of cygwin gcc, or should I be doing something
>> different to achieve the desired effect?
>>
>> Obviously it would be best not to going an asm inline if I can avoid it,
>> but I suppose I can dig into the libatomic source to get the right
>> incantation for it if need be ...
> 
> A quick followup: I was able to get __sync_val_compare_and_swap_16 to work
> (and its bool form).  That will do for now, though of course it's deprecated.

You just needed to go to the next info page:

	$ info gcc __atomic

and use:

	#include <stdatomic.h>
	extern bool __atomic_compare_exchange ( TYPE *ptr,
						TYPE *expected,
						TYPE *desired,
						bool weak,
						int success_memorder,
						int failure_memorder);

or higher level macro:

	atomic_compare_exchange_strong(PTR, VAL, DES)

defined in /lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/*/include/stdatomic.h

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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