Re: no-op delay loops

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Fri Nov 27 2015 - 06:18:05 EST


On Friday 27 November 2015 09:53:50 Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
>
> It seems that gcc happily compiles
>
> for (i = 0; i < 1000000000; ++i) ;
>
> into simply
>
> i = 1000000000;
>
> (which is then usually eliminated as a dead store). At least at -O2, and
> when i is not declared volatile. So it would seem that the loops at
>
> arch/mips/pci/pci-rt2880.c:235
> arch/mips/pmcs-msp71xx/msp_setup.c:80
> arch/mips/sni/reset.c:35
>
> actually don't do anything. (In the middle one, i is 'register', but
> that doesn't change anything.) Is mips compiled with some special flags
> that would make gcc actually emit code for the above?
>

I remember that gcc used to not optimize code that looked like a
delay loop such as the above, and my tests show that this was still
the case in gcc-4.0.3, but starting with gcc-4.1 it opimtized away
that loop.

Arnd
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