Re: [PATCH] arm64: save movk instructions in mov_q when the lower 16|32 bits are all zero

[Jisheng Zhang]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 08:15:11AM -0700, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jul 2022 at 01:58, Jisheng Zhang <jszhang@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Currently mov_q is used to move a constant into a 64-bit register,
> > when the lower 16 or 32bits of the constant are all zero, the mov_q
> > emits one or two useless movk instructions. If the mov_q macro is used
> > in hot code path, we want to save the movk instructions as much as
> > possible. For example, when CONFIG_ARM64_MTE is 'Y' and
> > CONFIG_KASAN_HW_TAGS is 'N', the following code in __cpu_setup()
> > routine is the pontential optimization target:
> >
> >         /* set the TCR_EL1 bits */
> >         mov_q   x10, TCR_MTE_FLAGS
> >
> > Before the patch:
> >         mov     x10, #0x10000000000000
> >         movk    x10, #0x40, lsl #32
> >         movk    x10, #0x0, lsl #16
> >         movk    x10, #0x0
> >
> > After the patch:
> >         mov     x10, #0x10000000000000
> >         movk    x10, #0x40, lsl #32
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Jisheng Zhang <jszhang@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> This is broken for constants that have 0xffff in the top 16 bits, as
> in that case, we will emit a MOVN/MOVK/MOVK sequence, and omitting the
> MOVKs will set the corresponding field to 0xffff not 0x0.

Thanks so much for this hint. I think you are right about the 0xffff in
top 16bits case.