On 2025/10/9 22:45, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 7:15 AM Leon Hwang <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The verifier can rewrite 'bpf_reg_aux()' into the following instructions:
>>
>> dst_reg = BPF_REG_AUX;
>> BPF_REG_AUX = 0; /* clear BPF_REG_AUX */
>>
>> As for the architecture-specific implementation, BPF_REG_AUX can be
>> mapped to an appropriate register per arch — for example, r11 on x86_64.
>
> it's taken. There are no free registers.
Understood.
It would certainly be beneficial if there were available registers on
x86_64, as that would enable certain optimizations and improvements.
In a similar direction, I have been exploring the idea of introducing a
dedicated BPF_REG_TAIL_CALL register to unify the handling of
tail_call_cnt in the verifier. This could help standardize the logic
across architectures, particularly for those that already employ a
dedicated register for tail calls, and allow JIT backends to simplify
their tail call implementations accordingly.
Thanks,
Leon
