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tcg/ppc: Improve unaligned load/store handling on 64-bit backend

RFC PATCH Superseded Benjamin Herrenschmidt 2 participants 2 messages Jul 20, 2015

v2 of 3 Superseded Latest is v3 →

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RFC PATCH v2 1/1 tcg/ppc: Improve unaligned load/store handling on 64-bit backend

Currently, we get to the slow path for any unaligned access in the backend, because we effectively preserve the bottom address bits below the alignment requirement when comparing with the TLB entry, so any non-0 bit there will cause the compare to fail.

For the same number of instructions, we can instead add the access size - 1 to the address and stick to clearing all the bottom bits.

That means that normal unaligned accesses will not fallback (the HW will handle them fine). Only when crossing a page boundary well we end up having a mismatch because we'll end up pointing to the next page which cannot possibly be in that same TLB entry.

---

v2. This is the correct version of the patch, the one that actually works :-)

Note: I have verified things still work by booting an x86_64 ubuntu installer on ppc64. I haven't noticed a large performance difference, going to the full xubuntu installer took 5:45 instead of 5:51 on the test machine I used, but I felt this is still worthwhile in case one hits a worst-case scenario with a lot of unaligned accesses.

Note2: It would be nice to be able to pass larger load/stores to the backend... it means we would need to use a higher bit in the TLB entry for "invalid" and a bunch more macros in the front-end, but it could be quite helpful speeding up things like memcpy which on ppc64 use vector load/stores, or speeding up the new ppc lq/stq instructions.

Anybody already working on that ?

Note3: Hacking TCG is very new to me, so I apologize in advance for any stupid oversight. I also assume other backends can probably use the same trick if not already...

tcg/ppc/tcg-target.c +11 -5
index 2b6eafa..5ed8b58 100644
@@ -1426,13 +1426,19 @@ static TCGReg tcg_out_tlb_read(TCGContext *s, TCGMemOp s_bits,
     if (TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS == 32 || TARGET_LONG_BITS == 32) {
         tcg_out_rlw(s, RLWINM, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo, 0,
                     (32 - s_bits) & 31, 31 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
-    } else if (!s_bits) {
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
+    } else if (s_bits) {
+       /* Alignment check trick: We add the access_size-1 to the address
+        * before masking the low bits. That will make the address overflow
+        * to the next page if we cross a page boundary which will then
+        * force a mismatch of the TLB compare since the next page cannot
+        * possibly be in the same TLB index.
+        */
+        tcg_out32(s, ADDI | TAI(TCG_REG_R0, addrlo, (1 << s_bits) - 1));
+        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, TCG_REG_R0,
                     0, 63 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
     } else {
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICL, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
-                    64 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS, TARGET_PAGE_BITS - s_bits);
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICL, TCG_REG_R0, TCG_REG_R0, TARGET_PAGE_BITS, 0);
+        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
+                    0, 63 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
     }
 
     if (TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS < TARGET_LONG_BITS) {
#1 lore raw
Quoted 56 lines · Benjamin Herrenschmidt

Currently, we get to the slow path for any unaligned access in the backend, because we effectively preserve the bottom address bits below the alignment requirement when comparing with the TLB entry, so any non-0 bit there will cause the compare to fail.

For the same number of instructions, we can instead add the access size - 1 to the address and stick to clearing all the bottom bits.

That means that normal unaligned accesses will not fallback (the HW will handle them fine). Only when crossing a page boundary well we end up having a mismatch because we'll end up pointing to the next page which cannot possibly be in that same TLB entry.

---

v2. This is the correct version of the patch, the one that actually works :-)

Note: I have verified things still work by booting an x86_64 ubuntu installer on ppc64. I haven't noticed a large performance difference, going to the full xubuntu installer took 5:45 instead of 5:51 on the test machine I used, but I felt this is still worthwhile in case one hits a worst-case scenario with a lot of unaligned accesses.

Note2: It would be nice to be able to pass larger load/stores to the backend... it means we would need to use a higher bit in the TLB entry for "invalid" and a bunch more macros in the front-end, but it could be quite helpful speeding up things like memcpy which on ppc64 use vector load/stores, or speeding up the new ppc lq/stq instructions.

Anybody already working on that ?

Note3: Hacking TCG is very new to me, so I apologize in advance for any stupid oversight. I also assume other backends can probably use the same trick if not already...

tcg/ppc/tcg-target.c +9 -2
index 2b6eafa..5ed8b58 100644
@@ -1426,13 +1426,19 @@ static TCGReg tcg_out_tlb_read(TCGContext *s, TCGMemOp s_bits,
     if (TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS == 32 || TARGET_LONG_BITS == 32) {
         tcg_out_rlw(s, RLWINM, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo, 0,
                     (32 - s_bits) & 31, 31 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
-    } else if (!s_bits) {
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
+    } else if (s_bits) {
+       /* Alignment check trick: We add the access_size-1 to the address
+        * before masking the low bits. That will make the address overflow
+        * to the next page if we cross a page boundary which will then
+        * force a mismatch of the TLB compare since the next page cannot
+        * possibly be in the same TLB index.
+        */
+        tcg_out32(s, ADDI | TAI(TCG_REG_R0, addrlo, (1 << s_bits) - 1));
+        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, TCG_REG_R0,

tcg/ppc/tcg-target.c static TCGReg tcg_out_tlb_read(TCGContext *s, TCGMemOp s_bits, · line 1444

Quoted 10 lines
tcg/ppc/tcg-target.c +2 -3
                     0, 63 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
     } else {
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICL, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
-                    64 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS, TARGET_PAGE_BITS - s_bits);
-        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICL, TCG_REG_R0, TCG_REG_R0, TARGET_PAGE_BITS, 0);
+        tcg_out_rld(s, RLDICR, TCG_REG_R0, addrlo,
+                    0, 63 - TARGET_PAGE_BITS);
     }
 
     if (TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS < TARGET_LONG_BITS) {

It looks like the same trick I posted here for x86 [1]. At a first look your patch seems fine, but you need to check if the access is an aligned or not, by checking the MO_AMASK. Some emulated architectures only support aligned accesses, so unaligned accesses must still go through the slow path to be trapped.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2015-07/msg02492.html

Signature · 2 lines
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
[email protected]                 http://www.aurel32.net