From: "H. Peter Anvin" <h...@zytor.com> gcc 6+ has the ability to let flags (actually, conditions, which are specific combinations of flags) to be used directly as asm() outputs. The syntax for that is "=@cc<cc>" where <cc> is the same set of letters that would be used in a j<cc> or set<cc> instruction (e.g. "=@ccz" to test the ZF flag.)
This patchset by itself reduces the size of the x86-64 kernel by 0.12%, from a baseline of 4.7-rc2 built with gcc 6.1 (first line is with the patchset, the second one is without): text data bss dec hex filename 68245656 41004339 20533248 129783243 7bc55cb o.i386-allconfig/vmlinux 68355716 41008499 20533248 129897463 7be13f7 o.i386-allconfig/vmlinux 127384005 129742359 38150144 295276508 11998fdc o.x86_64-allconfig/vmlinux 127538765 129742295 38150144 295431204 119bec24 o.x86_64-allconfig/vmlinux v2: fix a conflict between <linux/random.h> and <asm/archrandom.h> discovered by Ingo Molnar. There are a few places in x86-specific code where we need all of <arch/archrandom.h> even when xCONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM is disabled, so <linux/random.h> does not suffice. Only the <asm/archrandom.h> patch has been changed; since it is a little bit different from the others I have moved it to the end.