Locality Issues/Short Displacements.

["Naveen Sharma, Noida" <naveens at noida dot hcltech dot com>]

Hi,

This is with reference to my earlier message 

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-04/msg00379.html


1. I earlier said the way gcc treated stack variables 
   led to intorduction of lot of code whose sole purpose
   was to reach desired offset on stack in "reg+offset"
   addressing mode.(Refer earlier message)

   Now consider the scenario when there are two variables 
   far apart on the function stack.If they are accessed
   adjacently too often in code (beyond displacement provided
   on the target) we have too many instructions wasted to reach
   them.
   Put it in another words, "locality" is not taken care of while 
   assigning stack offsets.

2. Most of stack allocations are called from reload.Here lies a 
   complex problem.While stack offset assignments would be most 
   beneficial  before register allocation, the picture of the 
   stack isn't clear untill reload.

   I want that register allocation should benefit from 
   offset assignments.

   Currently I see code segments like this for sh-elf

 some_local_var = 0; /* at offset (124+56) from frame pointer)

    mov     #0,r0    
    mov     #124,r3; Using a extra reg.  
    add     r14,r3 ; r14 is frame pointer 
    mov.l   r0,@(56,r3)

If somehow the offset to local_var is less than 64 (Max displacement on
sh-elf)
(say offset 40)  we would get code something like
    
   mov     #0,r0
   mov.l   r0,@(40,r14)

r3 would be freed and it would reduce register pressure resulting 
in better code overall.

If I do stack offset assignment after register allocation, 
I might get reduction in code size but that would be not be as good
as it won't reduce register pressure during register allocation.

Thoughts and ideas ??

Regards,
  Naveen Sharma.