AW: [avr-gcc-list] optimizer

[Haase Bjoern (PT-BEU/MKP5) *]

Hi,

I have observed similar situations where the optimized generated code could be 
realized
with much less registers: Mainly when dealing with global variables of more 
than 8 bit 
word length.

I also have been thinking about improving the compiler. I came
to the conclusion, that it is probably difficult to solve this problem:
The core problem seems to be that the compiler internally 
considers r24:r25:r26:r27 to be one single logical 
32 bit register r24. It seems that this logical 32 bit register is 
broken down to 4x8 bit objects at the very last step only, i.e. when issuing the
assembler instructions.

In order to implement your suggested optimizations, it would probably be 
necessary, to convert
all the 32 bit objects to 8 bit objects already at an earlier stage during the 
compilation, i.e. 
at the RTL level. This, however, probably would make it almost impossible to 
generate object code 
that could be used in a debugger. This might also prevent a lot of other useful 
optimization steps
that require the variables to be considered as monolithic 32 bit quantities.

I have come to the conclusion, that the possible benefit of an early 32 bit -> 
4x8 Bit
splitting also mainly affects code that uses global variables and does not help 
much when
dealing with the more commonly present case that variables are held in 
registers. Possibly your code
could be improved if you try to avoid global variables.

IMHO the possible benefit of a 32-> 4x8 splitting at the RTL level does not 
really justify 
the required amount of changes in the compiler.

Björn



-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden
On Behalf Of Bernard Fouché
Sent: Wednesday, 24 November 2004 7:18 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: [avr-gcc-list] optimizer


Hi.

I'm compiling with -Os for atmega64 with avr-gcc 3.4.2. When I have

uint32_t var;

var=(uint32_t)function_returning_an_int8_t();

the generated code is, for instance:

 var=(uint32_t)eeprom_read_byte((uint8_t *)EEPROM_PARM);
ldi     r24, 0x36       ; 54
ldi     r25, 0x00       ; 0
call    0xf9c0
eor     r25, r25
eor     r26, r26
eor     r27, r27
sts     0x046B, r24
sts     0x046C, r25
sts     0x046D, r26
sts     0x046E, r27

Could it be instead:
ldi     r24, 0x36       ; 54
ldi     r25, 0x00       ; 0
call    0xf9c0
sts     0x046B, r24
sts     0x046C, r1
sts     0x046D, r1
sts     0x046E, r1

That would spare 6 bytes...

  Bernard


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