Hi Alex, This is good, thanks. Please see below...
On 11/15/06, Alex Astapchuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
>Hi all, >Among other things listed on the JIT Dev tasks, there is a need for >calling convention (CC) fix-up for IA-32 [1]. >Current problems are: >1. The calling convention(s) used are stack-based - this adds a memory >access overhead on calls. >2. The convention currently used for managed code neither allow to pass >float-point values on XMM registers, nor it provides callee-saved XMM >registers. >3. FPU stack is used to return float/double values So, I'm going to implement register-based calling convention for IA-32. >The current proposal is: > - make it possible to switch between existing and new conventions > for investigation and tuning purposes
So does this mean one specific convention, fastcall, for C helpers and a second custom DRLVM convention for managed code?
- implement 2 calling conventions: > 1. well known standard fastcall (fisrt 2 params on ECX+EDX, the > rest is on stack)
> 2. DRLVM-specific convention: which involves ECX, EDX (and may > be EAX) for integer/parameters passing and also use XMMs for > float-point parameters and produce callee-save XMMs.
Passing a bounded number of fp args using XMM sounds like a good idea, but why callee-saves XMM's? My recollection is that the Intel Software Development Manual recommends caller saved SSE and SSE2 registers for performance. Primarily because there are all kinds of optimized move instructions to and from XMM registers like MOVAPS, MOVUPS, MOVAPD, MOVDQA etc. for packed/unpacked, single/double precision fp types. The callee does not know the datatype in a register. The caller can save only what it wants to preserve, using the best move. My recollection is that the unaligned move penalties are high. I did not fully understand your comment about the resolve_interface() helper. In the custom convention(2), is the proposal for all XMM registers to be saved by the callee, even if there are no fp operands in the method? Thanks, Rana
