Request for discussion: Rewrite of inline assembler docs

dw limegreensocks@yahoo.com
Mon Mar 31 04:44:00 GMT 2014


So, after looking over this discussion, I have updated the text. This 
time no undefined terms, while still conveying all the points I had in mind:

The "memory" clobber tells the compiler that the assembly code performs 
memory reads or writes to items other than those listed in the input and 
output operands (for example accessing the memory pointed to by one of 
the input parameters).  To ensure memory contains correct values, GCC 
may need to flush specific register values to memory before executing 
the asm. Further, the compiler will not assume that any values read from 
memory before the @code{asm} will remain unchanged after the @code{asm}; 
it will reload them as needed.  This effectively forms a read/write 
memory barrier for the compiler.

Note that this clobber does not prevent the @emph{processor} from doing 
speculative reads past the @code{asm} statement. To stop that, you need 
processor-specific fence instructions.

Objections?

dw



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