[LLVMdev] Question on use of subregs

[Bagel]

Thanks, I seem to have gotten sub-registers to work.  I can't seem to suppress 
the zero-extend sometimes.  There is no need to explicitly zero extend bytes to 
words on this machine as all byte operations do that.

I have also gotten some memory-to-memory to work.

Bagel

Evan Cheng wrote:
> On Mar 14, 2008, at 10:17 AM, Bagel wrote:
> 
>> I'm trying to write a backend for a machine that has both byte and  
>> word
>> instructions.  Both varieties of instructions operate on the same  
>> set of
>> general registers.  A byte mode instruction on a general register  
>> always clears
>> the upper bits.  Register-to-register byte mode and work mode  
>> instructions set
>> condition codes based on bytes and words and thus are not  
>> interchangeable.
>>
>> Do I need to have separate classes of registers for the work and byte
>> instructions?  If so, I assume the byte registers are declared as  
>> SubRegs?
> 
> Yes. Then you want to declare byte registers as sub-registers of the  
> word-registers.
> 
>>
>> Also, this machine supports memory-to-memory operations in byte and  
>> word
>> flavors.  What do I need to look out for to support this.
> 
> The instruction selector can be taught to *fold* loads and stores. X86  
> has many load + modify + write instructions. You can take a look their  
> patterns in X86InstrInfo.td  Does the target have operations that  
> operate on multiple memory operands? In theory, it's possible to write  
> patterns to select these as well.
> 
>>
>> If have looked at the X86 *.td's, but that architecture is so  
>> complex it is
>> hard to extract the information I need.
> 
> Unfortunately x86 is the only target that supports both of the  
> features you described. If you want to get started by looking at  
> existing examples, it's pretty much the only choice.
> 
> Evan
> 
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Bagel
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