Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > The assembler doesn't use nops for alignment -- it inserts longer
> > instructions that are effectively nops, either 1 or two. For larger
> > stretches, the assembler inserts a jmp itself for alignment.
>
> Note that some of them are not very good no-ops. At least at some point
> the "long" no-op was
>
> lea 0x00000000(%esi),%esi
>
> and you could cause AGI stalls and non-pairing with two of them in a row -
> making the long no-op sequence potentially quite slow.
When it must emit two no-ops in a row, it uses %esi and then %edi so
there's no AGI from that. However, the assembler doesn't check
preceding instructions to pick a decent register for the no-op
instruction. Solution: avoid writing to %esi before an alignment op.
> It may be that the special "lea" no-op is also recognized as such in newer
> CPU's, but it wasn't in the early ones.
Does Crusoe recognise that? :-)
-- Jamie
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