On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 03:22:50PM -0400, Kai Tietz wrote:
> > In any case, I still can't understand how limiting the choices of the
> > register allocator can improve code rather than making it worse.
> > If the accumulator is available there, why doesn't the RA choose it
> > if it is beneficial? And why aren't other registers similarly suitable for
> > that? Say r10, r11...
>
> I don't see it as limiting. The intend of this is more to have fixed
> patterns on epilogue. And in fact is accumulator that register which can
> be used as scratch-register for all i386-targets. Beside for
> varardic-functions, which anyway aren't any good candidates for
> sibling-call-optimization (on x86_64 due ABI). Well, for x86_64 ABI we
> might could consider to use R11_REG instead of AX_REG. Is there any
> advantage in special-case for x86_64 ABI? The R10-register isn't a good
> choice due it might be used as drap-register and therefore can't be loaded
> before epilogue gets destroyed.
It is limiting. If r11/rax and often also r10 can be chosen, telling the RA
it can only choose rax is a limitation.
Can you show some testcase where your patch is actually beneficial? We
should analyze why the RA made that choice.
Jakub
