oldlinux-files/docs/asm-inline/gcc-asm-inline-tut.txt

	A Brief Tutorial on GCC inline asm (x86 biased)
		colin@nyx.net, 20 April 1998


I am a great fan of GCC's inline asm feature, because there is no need to
second-guess or outsmart the compiler.  You can tell the compiler what
you are doing and what you expect of it, and it can work with it and
optimize your code.

However, on a convoluted processor like the x86, describing just what is
going on can be quite a complex job.  In the interest of a faster kernel
through appropriate usage of this powerful tool, here is an introduction
to its use.

* Extended asm, an introduction.

In a nice clean register-register RISC architecture, accessing an
occasional "foo" instruction is quite simple.  You just write:

  asm("foo %1,%2,%0" : "=r" (output) : "r" (input1), "r" (input2));

The part before the first colon is very much line the semi-standard
asm() feature that has been in many C compilers since the K&R days.
The string is pasted into the compiler's assembly output at the
current location.

However, GCC is rather more clever.  What will actually appear in the
output of "gcc -O -S foo.c" (a file named "foo.s") is:

#APP
	foo r17,r5,r9
#NO_APP

The "#APP" and "#NO_APP" parts are instructions to the assembler that
briefly put it into normal operating mode, as opposed to the special
high-speed "compiler output" mode that turns off every feature that
the compiler doesn't use as well as a lot of error-checking.  For our
purposes, it's convenient because it highlights the part of the code
we're interested in.

Between, you will see that the "%1" and so forth have turned into
registers.  This is because GCC replaced "%0", "%1" and "%2"
with registers holding the first three arguments after the colon.

That is, r17 holds input1, r5 holds input2, and r9 holds output.

It's perfectly legal to use more complex expressions like:

  asm("foo %1,%2,%0" : "=r" (ptr->vtable[3](a,b,c)->foo.bar[baz]) :
      : "r" (gcc(is) + really(damn->cool)), "r" (42));

GCC will treat this just like:

register int t0, t1, t2;

  t1 = gcc(is) + really(damn->cool);
  t2 = 42;
  asm("foo %1,%2,%0" : "=r" (t0) : "r" (t1), "r" (t2));
  ptr->vtable[3](a,b,c)->foo.bar[baz] = t0;

The general form of an asm() is

  asm( "code" : outputs : inputs : clobbers);

Within the "code", %0 refers to the first argument (usually an
output, unless there are no outputs), %1 to the second, and
so forth.  It only goes up to %9.  Note that GCC prepends a
tab and appends a newline to the code, so if you want to include
multi-line asm (which is legal) and you want it to look nice
in the asm output, you should separate lines with "\n\t".
(You'll see lots of examples of this in the Linux source.)
It's also legal to use ";" as a separator to put more than one
asm statement on a line.

There are option letters that you can put between the % and the digit
to print the operand specially; more on this later.

Each output or input in the comma-separated list has two parts,
"constraints" and (value).  The (value) part is pretty straightforward.
It's an expression.  For outputs, it must be an lvalue, i.e. something
that is legal to have on the left side of an assignment.

The constraints are more interesting.  All outputs must be marked with
"=", which says that this operand is assigned to.  I'm not sure why this
is necessary, since you also have to divide up outputs and inputs with
the colon, but I'm not inclined to make a fuss about it, since it's easy
to do once you know.

The letters that come after that give permitted operands.
There are more choices than you might think.  Some depend on the
processor, but there are a few that are generic.

"r", as example "rm" means a register or memory.  "ri" means
a register or an immediate value.  "g" is "general"; it can be
anything at all.  It's usually equivalent to "rim", but your
processor may have even more options that are included.
"o" is like "m", but "offsettable", meaning that you can add a small
offset to it.  On the x86, all memory operands are offsettable, but
some machines don't support indexing and displacement at the same
time, or have something like the 680x0's auto-increment addressing
mode that doesn't support a displacement.

Capital letters starting with "I" are usually assigned to immediate
values in a certain range.  For example, a lot of RISC machines
allow either a register or a short immediate value.  If our machine
is like the DEC Alpha, and allows a register or a 16-bit immediate,
you could write

  asm("foo %1,%2,%0" : "=r" (output) : "r" (input1), "rI" (input2));

and if input2 were, say, 42, the compiler could use an immediate
constant in the instruction.

The x86-specific constraints are defined later.

* A few notes about inputs

An input may be a temporary copy, but it may not be.  Unless you
tell GCC that you are going to modify that location (described later
in "equivalence constraints"), you must not alter any inputs.

GCC may, however, elect to place an output in the same register as an
input if it doesn't need the input value any more.  You must not make
assumptions either way.  If you need to have it one way or the other,
there are ways (described later) to tell GCC what you need.

The rule in GCC's inline asm is, say what you need and then get out
of the optimizer's way.

* x86 assembly code

The GNU tools used in Linux use an AT&T-developed assembly syntax that
is different from the Intel-developed one that you see in a lot of
example code.  It's a lot simpler, actually.  It doesn't have any of
the DWORD PTR stuff that the Intel syntax requires.

The most significant difference, however, is a major one and easy to get
confused by.  While Intel uses "op dest,src", AT&T syntax uses
"op src,dest".  DON'T FORGET THIS.  If you're used to Intel syntax,
this can take quite a while to get used to.

The easy way to know which flavour of asm syntax you're reading is to
look for all the % symbols.  AT&T names the registers %eax, %ebx, etc.
This avoids the need for a kludge like putting _ in front of all the
function and variable names to avoid using perfectly good C names
like esp.  It's easy enough to read, but don't forget it when writing.

The other major difference is that the operand size is clear from the
instruction.  You don't have just "inc", you have "incb", "incw" and
"incl" to increment 8, 16 or 32 bits.  If the size is clear from the
operands, you can just write "inc", (e.g. "inc %eax"), but if it's a
memory operand, rather than writing "inc DWORD PTR foo" you just wrote
"incl foo".  "inc foo" is an error; the assembler doesn't try to keep
track of the type of anything.  Writing "incl %al" is an error which
the assembler catches.

Immediate values are written with a leading $.  Thus, "movl foo,%eax"
copies the contents of memory location foo into %eax.  "movl $foo,%eax"
copies the address of foo.  "movl 42,%eax" is a fetch from an absolute
address.  "movl $42,%eax" is an immediate load.

Addressing modes are written offset(base,index,scale).  You may leave
out anything irrelevant.  So (%ebx) is legal, as is -44(%ebx,%eax),
which is equivalent to -44(%ebx,%eax,1).  Legal scales are 1, 2 4 and 8.

* Equivalence constraints

Sometimes, especially on two-address machines like the x86, you need to
use the same register for output and for input.  Although if you look
into the GCC documentation, you'll see a useful-looking "+" constraint
character, this isn't available to inline asm.  What you have to do
instead is to use a special constraint like "0":

  asm("foo %1,%0" : "=r" (output) : "r" (input1), "0" (input2));

This says that input2 has to go in the same place as the output, so %2
and %0 are the same thing.  (Which is why %2 isn't actually mentioned
anywhere.)  Note that it is perfectly legal to have different variables
for input and output even though they both use the same register.  GCC
will do any necessary copying to temporary registers for you.

To reiterate what was said in the section on inputs above, this asm
is also promising *not* to alter input1, unless GCC assigns it to the
same register as the output.  (Which could only happen if input1
and input2 ended up in the same register, which is entirely legal
if they happen to be the same value.)

* Constraints on the x86

The i386 has *lots* of register classes, designed for anything remotely
useful.  Common ones are defined in the "constraints" section of the
GCC manual.  Here are the most useful:

g - general effective address
m - memory effective address
r - register
i - immediate value, 0..0xffffffff
n - immediate value known at compile time.
    ("i" would allow an address known only at link time)

But there are some i386-specific ones described in the processor-specific
part of the manual and in more detail in GCC's i386.h:

q - byte-addressable register (eax, ebx, ecx, edx)
A - eax or edx
a, b, c, d, S, D - eax, ebx, ecx, edx, esi, edi respectively

I - immediate 0..31
J - immediate 0..63
K - immediate 255
L - immediate 65535
M - immediate 0..3 (shifts that can be done with lea)
N - immediate 0..255 (one-byte immediate value)
O - immediate 0..32

There are some more for floating-point registers, but I won't go into
those.  The very special cases like "K" are mostly used inside GCC in
alternative code sequences, providing a special-case way to do something
like ANDing with 255.

But something like "I" is useful, for example the x86 rotate left:

  asm("roll %1,%0" : "=g" (result) : "cI" (rotate), "0" (input));

(See the section on "x86 assembly syntax" if you wonder why the extra
"l" is on "rol".)

* Advanced constraints

In the GCC manual, constraints and so on are described in most detail
in the section on writing machine descriptions for ports.  GCC, not
surprisingly, uses the same constraints mechanism internally to compile
C code.  Here's a summary.

= has already been discussed, to mark an output.  No, I don't know why
  it's needed in inline asm, but it's not worth "fixing".

+ is described in the gcc manual, but is not legal in inline
  asm.  Sorry.

% says that this operand and the next one may be switched at the
  compiler's convenience; the arguments are commutative.  Many operations
  (+, *, &, |, ^) have this property, but the options permitted in the
  instruction set may not be as general.  For example, on a RISC machine
  which lets the second operand be an immediate value (in the "I" range),
  you could specify an add instruction like:

    asm("add %1,%2,%0" : "=r" (output) : "%r" (input1), "rI" (input2));

, separates a list of alternative constraints.  Each input and output
  must have the same length list of alternatives, and one element of
  the list is chosen.  For example, the x86 permits register-memory and
  memory-register operations, but not memory-memory.  So an add could
  be written as:

    asm("add %1,%0" : "=r,rm" (output) : "%g,ri" (input1), "0,0" (input2));

  This says that if the output is a register, input1 may be anything,
  but if the output is memory, the input may only be a register or an
  immediate value.  And input2 must be in the same place as the output,
  although you can swap things and place input1 there instead.

  If there are multiple options listed and the compiler has no preference,
  it will choose the first one.  Thus, if there's a minor difference
  in timing or some such, list the faster one first.

? in one alternative says that an alternative is discouraged.  This is
  important for compiler-writers who want to encourage the fastest code,
  but is getting pretty esoteric for inline asm.

& says that an output operand is written to before the inputs are
  read, so this output must not be the same register as any input.
  Without this, gcc may place an output and an input in the same register
  even if not required by a "0" constraint.  This is very useful, but
  is mentioned here because it's specific to an alternative.  Unlike
  = and %, but like ?, you have to include it with each alternative to
  which it applies. 

  Note that there is no way to encode more complex information, like
  "this output may not be in the same place as *that* input, but may
  share a register with that *other* input".  Each output either may
  share a register with any input, or with none.

  In inline asm, you usually specify this with every alternative, since
  you can't change the order of operations depending on the option selected.
  In GCC's internal code generation, there are provisions for producing
  different code depending on the register alternative chosen, but you
  can't do that with inline asm.

  One place you might use it is when you have the possibility of the
  output overlapping with input two, but not input one.  E.g.

    asm("foo %1,%0; bar %2,%0" : "=r,&r" (out) : "r,r" (in1), "0,r" (in2));

  This says that either in2 is in the same register as out, or nothing is.
  However, with more operands, the number of possibilities quickly
  mushrooms and GCC doesn't cope gracefully with large numbers of
  alternatives.

* Clobbers

Sometimes an instruction knocks out certain specific registers.
The most common example of this is a function call, where the called
function is allowed to do whatever it likes with some registers.

If this is the case, you can list specific registers that get
clobbered by an operation after the inputs.  The syntax is
not like constraints, you just provide a comma-separated list of
registers in string form.  On the 80x86, they're "ax", "bx",
"si" "di", etc.

There are two special cases for clobbered values.  One is "memory",
meaning that this instruction writes to some memory (other than a
listed output) and GCC shouldn't cache memory values in registers across
this asm.  An asm memcpy() implementation would need this.
You do *not* need to list "memory" just because outputs are in
memory; gcc understands that.

The second is "cc".  It's not necessary on all machines, and I haven't
figured it out for the x86 (I don't think it is), but it's always legal
to specify, and means that the instructions mess up the condition codes.

Note that GCC will not use a clobbered register for inputs or outputs.
GCC 2.7 would let you do it anyway, specifying an input in class
"a" and saying that "ax" is clobbered.  GCC 2.8 and egcs are getting
picky, and complaining that there are no free registers in class
"a" available.  This is not the way to do it.  If you corrupt an input
register, include a dummy output in the same register, the value of which
is never used.  E.g.

  int dummy;
  asm("munge %0" : "=r" (dummy) : "0" (input));

* Temporary registers

People also sometimes erroneously use clobbers for temporary registers.
The right way is to make up a dummy output, and use "=r" or "=&r"
depending on the permitted overlap with the inputs.  GCC allocates a
register for the dummy value.  The difference is that GCC can pick a
convenient register, so it has more flexibility.

* const and volatile

There are two optimization hints that you can give to an asm statement.

asm volatile(...) statements may not be deleted or significantly reordered;
the volatile keyword says that they do something magic that the compiler
shouldn't play with too much.

GCC will delete ordinary asm() blocks if the outputs are not used,
and will reorder them slightly to be convenient to where the outputs
are.
(asm blocks with no outputs are assumed to be volatile by default.)

asm const() statements are assumed to produce outputs that depend only on
the inputs, and thus can be subject to common subexpression optimization
and can be hoisted out of loops.  The most common example of an output
that does *not* depend only on an input is a pointer that is fetched.
*p may change from time to time even if p does not change.  Thus, an
asm block that fetches from a pointer should not include a const.

As an example of where it is relevant, consider the ntohl() functions that
switch around byte ordering.  y=bswap(x) depends only on the bits in x,
and two calls with the same x can be optimized down to one.

For example, compare:

  int foo(int x);
  {
    int i, y, total;

    total = 0;
    for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
      asm volatile("foo %1,%0" : "=r" (y) : "g" (x));
      total += y;
    }
    return total;
  }

then try changing that to "const" after the asm.
The code (on an x86) looks like:

func1:
	xorl %ecx,%ecx
	pushl %ebx
	movl %ecx,%edx
	movl 8(%esp),%ebx
	.align 4
.L7:
#APP
	foo %ebx,%eax
#NO_APP
	addl %eax,%ecx
	incl %edx
	cmpl $99,%edx
	jle .L7
	movl %ecx,%eax
	popl %ebx
	ret

which then changes to (in the const case):

func2:
	xorl %edx,%edx
#APP
	foo 4(%esp),%ecx
#NO_APP
	movl %edx,%eax
	.align 4
.L13:
	addl %ecx,%edx
	incl %eax
	cmpl $99,%eax
	jle .L13
	movl %edx,%eax
	ret

The code could get better yet, but you can see how it improves.

* Alternate keywords

__asm__() is a legal alias for asm(), and it is legal (and produces no
warnings) even when in strict-ANSI mode or when warning about non-portable
constructs.  Otherwise, it is equivalent.

* Output substitutions

Sometimes you want to include a value in an asm statement in an unusual way.
For example, you could use the lea instruction to do something hairy like

  asm("lea %1(%2,%3,1<<%4),%0" : "=r" (out)
      : "%i" (in1), "r" (in2), "r" (in3), "M" (logscale));

this looks like a way to generate a legal lea instruction with all the
possible bells and whistles.  There's only one problem.  When GCC
substitutes the immediates "in1" and "logscale", it's going to produce
something like:

	lea $-44(%ebx,%eax,1<<$2),%ecx

which is a syntax error.  The $ on the constants are not useful in
this context.  So there are modifier characters.  The one
applicable in this context is "c", which means to omit the usual
immediate value information.  The correct asm is

  asm("lea %c1(%2,%3,1<<%c4),%0" : "=r" (out)
      : "%i" (in1), "r" (in2), "r" (in3), "M" (logscale));

which will produce

	lea -44(%ebx,%eax,1<<2),%ecx

as desired.  There are a few others mentioned in the GCC manual as generic:

%c0 substitutes the immediate value %0, but without the immediate syntax.
%n0 substitutes like %c0, but the negated value.
%l0 substitutes like %c0, but with the syntax expected of a jump target.
    (This is usually the same as %c0.)

And then there are the x86-specific ones.  These are, unfortunately, only
listed in the i386.h header file in the GCC source (config/i386/i386.h),
so you have to dig a bit for them.

%k0 prints the 32-bit form of an operand.  %eax, etc.
%w0 prints the 16-bit form of an operand.  %ax, etc.
%b0 prints the 8-bit form of an operand.  %al, etc.
%h0 prints the high 8-bit form of a register.  %ah, etc.
%z0 print opcode suffix corresponding to the operand type, b, w or l.

By default, when %0 prints a register in the form corresponding to
the argument size.  E.g. asm("inc %0" : "=r" (out) : "0" (in))
will print as "inc %al", "inc %ax" or "inc %eax" depending
on the type of "out".

For example, byte-swapping on a non-486:

  asm("xchg %b0,%h0; roll $16,%0; xchg %b0,%h0" : "=q" (x) : "0" (x));

This says that x must be in a byte-addressable register and proceeds
to swap the bytes to big-endian form.

It's legal to use the %w and %b forms on objects that aren't
registers, it just makes no difference.  Using %b and %h on
non-byte addressable registers tends to make the compiler abort,
so don't do that.

%z is rather cool.  For example, consider the following code:
  #define xchg(m, in, out)	\
    asm("xchg%z0 %2,%0" : "=g" (*(m)), "=r" (out) : "1" (in))

  int
  bar(void *m, int x)
  {
    xchg((char *)m, (char)x, x);
    xchg((short *)m, (short)x, x);
    xchg((int *)m, (int)x, x);
    return x;
  }

This produces, as assembly output,

.globl bar
	.type    bar,@function
bar:
	movl 4(%esp),%eax
	movb 8(%esp),%dl
#APP
	xchgb %dl,(%eax)
	xchgw %dx,(%eax)
	xchgl %edx,(%eax)
#NO_APP
	movl %edx,%eax
	ret

(Re-using x is a way to make sure that nothing got optimized away.)

It's not really needed here because the size of the %2 register
lets you get away with just "xchg", but there are situations
where it's nice to have an operand size.

* Extra % patterns

Some % substitutions don't specify an argument.  The most common
one is %%, which comes out as a single %.

The second is %=, which generates a unique number for each asm()
block.  (Each time it is used if inlined or used in a macro.)
This can be used for temporary labels and so on.


* Examples

Some code that was in include/asm-i386/system.h:

#define _set_tssldt_desc(n,addr,limit,type) \
__asm__ __volatile__ ("movw %3,0(%2)\n\t" \
	"movw %%ax,2(%2)\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%%eax\n\t" \
	"movb %%al,4(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb %4,5(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb $0,6(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb %%ah,7(%2)\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%%eax" \
	: "=m"(*(n)) : "a" (addr), "r"(n), "ri"(limit), "i"(type))

It's obvious that the writer didn't know how to take optimal advantage of
this (admittedly complex, but x86 addressing *is* complex) facility.
This could be rewritten to use any register instead of %eax:

#define _set_tssldt_desc(n,addr,limit,type) \
__asm__ __volatile__ ("movw %w3,0(%2)\n\t" \
	"movw %w1,2(%2)\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%1\n\t" \
	"movb %b1,4(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb %4,5(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb $0,6(%2)\n\t" \
	"movb %h1,7(%2)\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%1" \
	: "=m"(*(n)) : "q" (addr), "r"(n), "ri"(limit), "ri"(type))

You notice here that *n is listed as an output, so GCC knows that it's
modified, but actually addressing it is done relative to n as an
input register everywhere because of the need to compute an offset.

The problem is that there is no syntactic way to encode an
offset from a given address.  If the address is "40(%eax)" then
an offset of 2 can be made by prepending "2+" to it.  But if
the address is "(%eax)" then "2+(%eax)" is not valid.
Tricks like "2+0" fall flat because "040" is taken as octal
and gets translated into 32.

BUT THERE'S NEWS (19 April 1998): gas will actually Do The Right Thing
with "2+(%eax)", just emit a warning.  Having seen this, a gas hacker
(Alan Modra) decided to make the warning go away in this case, so in
some near future version you will be able to do it, if the gas
maintainer accepts his hacks (something that is not at all certain)

With this fix (or putting up with the warning), you could
write the above as:

#define _set_tssldt_desc(n,addr,limit,type) \
__asm__ __volatile__ ("movw %w2,%0\n\t" \
	"movw %w1,2+%0\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%1\n\t" \
	"movb %b1,4+%0\n\t" \
	"movb %3,5+%0\n\t" \
	"movb $0,6+%0\n\t" \
	"movb %h1,7+%0\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%1" \
	: "=o"(*(n)) : "q" (addr), "ri"(limit), "i"(type))

The "o" constraint is just like "m", except that it's "offstable";
adding a small value to it leaves a valid address.  On the x86,
there is no distinction, so it's not really necessary, but on the
68000, for example, you can't add an offset to a post-increment
addressing mode.

If neither the warning nor waiting is acceptable, a fix is to list each
possible offset as a different output (here we're using the fact that
n is a char *):

__asm__ __volatile__ ("movw %w7,%0\n\t" \
	"movw %w6,%1\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%6\n\t" \
	"movb %b6,%2\n\t" \
	"movb %b8,%3\n\t" \
	"movb $0,%4\n\t" \
	"movb %h6,%5\n\t" \
	"rorl $16,%6" \
	: "=m"(*(n)), \
	  "=m"((n)[2]), \
	  "=m"((n)[4]), \
	  "=m"((n)[5]), \
	  "=m"((n)[6]), \
	  "=m"((n)[7]) \
       : "q" (addr), "g"(limit), "iqm"(type))

Although, as you can see, this gets a bit ugly when you have lots of offsets,
but it works just the same.

* Conclusion

I hope this has been of use to some folks.  GCC's inline asm features
are really cool because you can just do the little bit that you want
and let the compiler optimize the rest.

This has the unfortunate side effect that you have to learn how to
explain to the compiler what's going on.  But it's worth it, really!

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