Re: [doc, testsuite, libgfortran] Avoid use of SSE/SSE2/SSE3 on Solaris 8/9 x86

["H.J. Lu" <hjl dot tools at gmail dot com>]

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 6:22 AM, Rainer Orth <ro@cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:
> My first attempts to build mainline for Solaris 8/9 x86 have just been
> using the Solaris 8 and 9 assemblers on Solaris 11. ?While a couple of
> problems could be sorted out this way, actually bootstrapping found a
> couple of others. ?The most pressing one is that before Solaris 9 4/04,
> the Solaris kernel doesn't save and restore SSE and SSE2 registers, so
> any attempt to execute SSE/SSE2 instructions causes the program to
> receive SIGILL, even if the CPU supports the insns:
>
> Solaris/IA32 should save/restore SSE/SSE2 register set on context switch
> http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4783204
>
> To avoid the problem, I globally default -march to pentiumpro on Solaris
> 8 and 9, not only for Solaris 8 with Sun as as in this patch:
>
> ? ? ? ?http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-05/msg01267.html
>
> but there are still two areas that must be fixed because they use
> SSE/SSE2 instructions regardless:
>
> * libgfortran determines if the CPU is capable of executing SSE
> ?instructions at runtime and uses them if so. ?This check is not
> ?enough and caused all Fortran exectution tests both in
> ?gcc/testsuite/gfortran.* and libgomp to fail.
>
> * Similarly, the SSE/SSE2/SSE3 testcases in gcc.target/i386 use the same
> ?technique (cf. gcc.target/sse{, 2, 3}-check.h), and fail the same way.
>
> Unfortunately, this problem cannot easily be detected at runtime, as
> would be possible on Solaris 10+ with getisax(2), but we need to set up
> a signal handler, try some instruction, and act accordingly.
> Unfortunately, this is more involved than it may seem at first: you
> cannot simply return from a SIGILL handler after setting some flag
> variable, since the faulting instruction will be executed again, leading
> to an infinite loop. ?My solution was inspired by the way GNU libsigsegv
> handles SEGV: they return from the signal handler with setcontext(2). ?I
> can do the same here, provided I set set PC to the next instruction
> after the faulting one. ?Therefore, I need to know exact insn lengths
> and preferably use insns with side effects that don't hurt.
>
> The meat of the patch which implements this can be found in
> libgfortran/config/fpu-387.h and gcc.target/i386/sol2-check.h. ?The
> former takes care of libgfortran, the latter of all tests using
> sse-check{, 2, 3}.h. ?For the few remaining testcases that hardcode
> -msse or -msse2, I need some new effective-target keywords: sse for the
> ability to compile/assemble sse insns, sse_runtime and sse2_runtime for
> the ability to execute them.
>
> With this in place, I've been able to reduce testsuite failures from
> ca. 13000 to just a handful. ?There will a few unrelated followup
> patches that bring Solaris 8/9 x86 testsuite results practically en par
> with Solaris 10 and 11.
>
> Bootstrapped without regressions on i386-pc-solaris2.{8, 9, 10, 11},
> both with Sun as and GNU as.
>
> At the moment, the 4.5 branch is broken on Solaris 8/9 x86, since it
> won't even bootstrap without --with-arch=pentiumpro on Solaris 8 and 9,
> which is a regression from 4.4. ?Like this patch
>
> ? ? ? ?http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-05/msg01276.html
>
> I'd like to backport the current one to the 4.4 and 4.5 branches after
> some soak time on mainline.
>
> Ok for mainline now and the 4.4 and 4.5 branches later?
>
> ? ? ? ?Rainer
>
>
> 2010-06-14 ?Rainer Orth ?<ro@CeBiTec.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>
>

I don't think we should make testsuite so much complex to support
old and broken Solaris. I'd rather to remove support for broken
Solaris 8/9 x86.


-- 
H.J.