http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=59277
Bug ID: 59277 Summary: x86_64 code generation defects when SSE instructions are disabled Product: gcc Version: 4.7.3 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: aron at udel dot edu There are a couple of defects in GCC for x86_64 targets when -mno-sse is specified. (1) SSE registers are still generated in various cases. For example, the following codes will throw an error during compilation because SSE registers are used: (1) double test() { return 0.0; } (2) void test (int n, ...) { va_list vl; va_start(vl, n); double foo = va_arg(vl, double); va_end(vl); } (2) va_arg is broken for double types, independently of the bug listed above. When '-mno-sse' is specified, floating-point numbers are pushed to the stack by default instead of using the SSE registers; however, the current implementation for va_arg still looks in the register save area for FP numbers and as such it returns garbage values. A fix for the latter should be pretty simple, along the lines of just defaulting to overflow area for double types similar to the following: #define va_arg_double(va) \ (*(double*)((va->overflow_arg_area += 8, va->overflow_arg_area It looked to me like the code to generate the ABI implementation of va_list for x86 targets is in gcc\config\i386\i386.c. The only question I have is that I believe fixing these the defects breaks with the x86_64 ABI specification and wonder whether this would be an issue because of that.