I'm trying to write a back-end for an architecture (s12z - the ISA you can
download from [1]). This arch accepts indirect memory addresses. That is to
say, those of the form (mem (mem (...))) and although my TARGET_LEGITIMATE_ADDRESS
function returns true for such addresses, LRA insists on reloading them out of
existence.
For example, when compiling a code fragment:
volatile unsigned char *led = 0x2F2;
*led = 1;
the ira dump file shows:
(insn 7 6 8 2 (set (mem/f/c:PSI (reg/f:PSI 9 y) [3 led+0 S4 A8])
(const_int 754 [0x2f2])) "/home/jmd/MemMem/memmem.c":15:27 96 {movpsi}
(nil))
(insn 8 7 14 2 (set (mem/v:QI (mem/f/c:PSI (reg/f:PSI 9 y) [3 led+0 S4 A8]) [0 *led_7+0 S1 A8])
(const_int 1 [0x1])) "/home/jmd/MemMem/memmem.c":16:8 98 {movqi}
(nil))
which is a perfectly valid insn, and the most efficient assembler for it is:
mov.p #0x2f2, y
mov.b #1, [0,y]
However the reload dump shows this has been changed to:
(insn 7 6 22 2 (set (mem/f/c:PSI (reg/f:PSI 9 y) [3 led+0 S4 A8])
(const_int 754 [0x2f2])) "/home/jmd/MemMem/memmem.c":15:27 96 {movpsi}
(nil))
(insn 22 7 8 2 (set (reg:PSI 8 x [22])
(mem/f/c:PSI (reg/f:PSI 9 y) [3 led+0 S4 A8])) "/home/jmd/MemMem/memmem.c":16:8 96 {movpsi}
(nil))
(insn 8 22 14 2 (set (mem/v:QI (reg:PSI 8 x [22]) [0 *led_7+0 S1 A8])
(const_int 1 [0x1])) "/home/jmd/MemMem/memmem.c":16:8 98 {movqi}
(nil))
and ends up as:
mov.p #0x2f2, y
mov.p (0,y) x
mov.b #1, (0,x)
So this wastes a register (which leads to other issues which I don't want to go
into in this email).
After a lot of debugging I tracked down the part of lra which is doing this
reload to the function process_addr_reg at lra-constraints.c:1378
if (! REG_P (reg))
{
if (check_only_p)
return true;
/* Always reload memory in an address even if the target supports such addresses. */
new_reg = lra_create_new_reg_with_unique_value (mode, reg, cl, "address");
before_p = true;
}
Changing this to
if (! REG_P (reg))
{
if (check_only_p)
return true;
return false;
}
solves my immediate problem. However I imagine there was a reason for doing
this reload, and presumably a better way of avoiding it.
Can someone explain the reason for this reload, and how I can best ensure that
indirect memory operands are left in the compiled code?