diff mbox

[ARM] Tuning for Cortex-M processors

Message ID 20120720132434.7acac08b@octopus
State New
Headers show

Commit Message

Julian Brown July 20, 2012, 12:24 p.m. UTC
Hi,

This patch provides some mild performance tuning for Cortex-M series
processors -- originally measured on a Cortex-M4 device (circa March
2011, on a 4.5-based branch), but making the changes for all Cortex-M
devices -- using the possibly-unwarranted assumption that other
Cortex-M devices are likely to be similar at a microarchitectural
level. Whether that's true or not, I suspect Cortex-M cores are more
similar to each other than to "generic" Cortex-R or Cortex-A cores,
though currently they will be tuned for in the same way as those.

We've used an analogous patch in (some of) our toolchains for a while,
with no ill effects, though I'm not set up to test mainline on Cortex-M
cores at the moment, nor to re-benchmark the patch. The compiler
builds, and spot-checks look fine though.

So, OK to apply, or does this need further testing/benchmarking? Maybe
someone within ARM has a suitable way of doing the latter easily, if
required?

Thanks,

Julian

ChangeLog

    gcc/
    * config/arm/arm.c (arm_cortex_m-branch_cost): New.
    (arm_cortex_m_tune): New.
    * config/arm/arm-cores.def (cortex-m4, cortex-m3, cortex-m1)
    (cortex-m0, cortex-m0plus): Use Cortex-M-specific tuning.

Comments

Joey Ye Aug. 14, 2012, 9:43 a.m. UTC | #1
I'm sorry the conversation about this patch went to private
incidentally.  Resend the key point.

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Julian Brown <julian@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:48:22 +0800
> Ye Joey <joey.ye.cc@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Since v7m and v6m are very different. It is high desired to have
>> separate tuning for them. Namely:
>> arm_cortex_v6m_tune and arm_cortex_v7m_tune. When created, they can
>> share the same tuning though.
>
> I understand the point, but I'm not convinced it buys anything -- and
> furthermore it suggests that effort has been spent on tuning for v6m
> and v7m devices separately, which isn't really true (at least as far
> as I and/or CodeSourcery/Mentor are concerned). The proper time to
> split the tunings is when it is discovered that they need to diverge
> from each other, IMO.
OK for now as I don't have a specific case in hand.
diff mbox

Patch

Index: gcc/config/arm/arm.c
===================================================================
--- gcc/config/arm/arm.c	(revision 189656)
+++ gcc/config/arm/arm.c	(working copy)
@@ -264,6 +264,7 @@  static reg_class_t arm_preferred_rename_
 static unsigned int arm_autovectorize_vector_sizes (void);
 static int arm_default_branch_cost (bool, bool);
 static int arm_cortex_a5_branch_cost (bool, bool);
+static int arm_cortex_m_branch_cost (bool, bool);
 
 static bool arm_vectorize_vec_perm_const_ok (enum machine_mode vmode,
 					     const unsigned char *sel);
@@ -948,6 +949,24 @@  const struct tune_params arm_cortex_tune
   arm_default_branch_cost
 };
 
+/* Cortex-M tuning.  On Cortex-M4 cores for example, MOVW/MOVT take a single
+   cycle to execute each.  An LDR from the constant pool also takes two cycles
+   to execute, but mildly increases pipelining opportunity (consecutive
+   loads/stores can be pipelined together, saving one cycle), and may also
+   improve icache utilisation.  Hence we prefer the constant pool for such
+   processors.  */
+
+const struct tune_params arm_cortex_m_tune =
+{
+  arm_9e_rtx_costs,
+  NULL,
+  1,                            /* Constant limit.  */
+  5,				/* Max cond insns.  */
+  ARM_PREFETCH_NOT_BENEFICIAL,
+  true,                         /* Prefer constant pool.  */
+  arm_cortex_m_branch_cost
+};
+
 /* Branches can be dual-issued on Cortex-A5, so conditional execution is
    less appealing.  Set max_insns_skipped to a low value.  */
 
@@ -8631,6 +8650,20 @@  arm_cortex_a5_branch_cost (bool speed_p,
   return speed_p ? 0 : arm_default_branch_cost (speed_p, predictable_p);
 }
 
+/* Thumb-2 branches are relatively cheap on Cortex-M processors ("1 + P cycles"
+   on Cortex-M4, where P varies from 1 to 3 according to some criteria), since
+   sequences of non-executed instructions in IT blocks probably take the same
+   amount of time as executed instructions (and the IT instruction itself takes
+   space in icache).  This function was experimentally determined to give good
+   results on a popular embedded benchmark.  */
+
+static int
+arm_cortex_m_branch_cost (bool speed_p, bool predictable_p)
+{
+  return (TARGET_32BIT && speed_p) ? 1
+         : arm_default_branch_cost (speed_p, predictable_p);
+}
+
 static bool fp_consts_inited = false;
 
 static REAL_VALUE_TYPE value_fp0;
Index: gcc/config/arm/arm-cores.def
===================================================================
--- gcc/config/arm/arm-cores.def	(revision 189656)
+++ gcc/config/arm/arm-cores.def	(working copy)
@@ -133,8 +133,8 @@  ARM_CORE("cortex-a15",	  cortexa15,	7A,	
 ARM_CORE("cortex-r4",	  cortexr4,	7R,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
 ARM_CORE("cortex-r4f",	  cortexr4f,	7R,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
 ARM_CORE("cortex-r5",	  cortexr5,	7R,				 FL_LDSCHED | FL_ARM_DIV, cortex)
-ARM_CORE("cortex-m4",	  cortexm4,	7EM,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
-ARM_CORE("cortex-m3",	  cortexm3,	7M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
-ARM_CORE("cortex-m1",	  cortexm1,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
-ARM_CORE("cortex-m0",	  cortexm0,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
-ARM_CORE("cortex-m0plus", cortexm0plus,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex)
+ARM_CORE("cortex-m4",	  cortexm4,	7EM,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex_m)
+ARM_CORE("cortex-m3",	  cortexm3,	7M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex_m)
+ARM_CORE("cortex-m1",	  cortexm1,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex_m)
+ARM_CORE("cortex-m0",	  cortexm0,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex_m)
+ARM_CORE("cortex-m0plus", cortexm0plus,	6M,				 FL_LDSCHED, cortex_m)