Re: Microprocessor Optimization Primer

2016-04-03 Thread Steve Smith
I was referring to the last bullet on page 44, "Regular register 
clearing instructions are fast-pathed in the pipeline; and their results 
do not use any physical registers (since zEC12)".  The sub-bullets 
mention XR (& XGR), but not SR, SLR, etc.  So I may have assumed too much.


On the other hand, I can't imagine any reason why SLR would "stall the 
pipeline" all by itself; or act any differently than SR in particular.  
And those are "regular register-clearing instructions" in my mind.  But, 
I'm not by any means an expert on the processor architecture.


There are a few oddities in the architecture, such as BR 0 (and now BCR 
14,0) that cause the CPU to do odd things, but those are particular 
instructions that have no other use, and are documented.


sas

On 4/2/2016 14:13, John P. Hartmann wrote:

Are you speaking from knowledge?

Last I heard SLR was seriously discouraged. because it stalls the 
pipeline where the others don't.


On 04/02/2016 06:43 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

All the same (and they're all optimized),




Re: Microprocessor Optimization Primer

2016-04-03 Thread Gord Tomlin

On 2016-04-02 14:13, John P. Hartmann wrote:

Last I heard SLR was seriously discouraged. because it stalls the
pipeline where the others don't.


I hadn't heard that one, but would be quite interested to hear whether 
it is true.


--

Regards, Gord Tomlin
Action Software International
(a division of Mazda Computer Corporation)
Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507