Loading SSE registers - gcc

I'm working on homework project for OS development class. One task is to save context of SSE registers upon interrupt. Now, saving and restoring context is easy (fxsave/fxsave). But I have problem with testing. I want to put same sample date into one of registers, but all I get is error interrupt 6. Here is code:
// load some SSE registers
struct Vec4 {
int x, y, z, w;
} vec = { 0, 1, 2, 3 };
asm volatile ( "movl %0, %%eax"
: /* no output */
: "r"( &vec )
:
);
asm volatile ( "movups (%eax), %xmm0" );
I searched on internet for solution. All I got is that it might something to do with effective address space. But I don't know what it is.

You need to use a memory operand as a constraint in the inline assembly. This is much better than generating the address by yourself (as you tried with the & operator) and loading in in a register, because the latter will not work if the address is rip relative or relocatable.
asm volatile ( "movups %0, %%xmm0"
: /* no output */
: "m"( vec )
:
);
And you need to use two "%%" before register names.
Read more about gcc's constraints here: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Simple-Constraints.html#Simple-Constraints . The title is somewhat misleading, as this concept is far from simple :-)

I found out what is problem. Execution of SSE instructions must be enabled by setting some flags in CR0 and CR4 registers. More info here: http://wiki.osdev.org/SSE

You're making this way harder than it needs to be - just use the intrinsics in the *mmintrin.h headers, e.g.
#include <emmintrin.h>
__m128i vec = _mm_set_epi32(3, 2, 1, 0);
If you need to put this in a specific XMM register then use the above example as a starting point, then generate asm, e.g. using gcc -S and use the generated asm as a template for your own code.

Related

Confusion about different clobber description for arm inline assembly

I'm learning ARM inline assembly, and is confused about a very simple function: assign the value of x to y (both are int type), on arm32 and arm64 why different clobber description required?
Here is the code:
#include <arm_neon.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void asm_test()
{
int x = 10;
int y = 0;
#ifdef __aarch64__
asm volatile(
"mov %w[in], %w[out]"
: [out] "=r"(y)
: [in] "r"(x)
: "r0" // r0 not working, but r1 or x1 works
);
#else
asm volattile(
"mov %[in], %[out]"
: [out] "=r"(y)
: [in] "r"(x)
: "r0" // r0 works, but r1 not working
);
#endif
printf("y is %d\n", y);
}
int main() {
arm_test();
return 0;
}
Tested on my rooted android phone, for arm32, r0 generates correct result but r1 won't. For arm64, r1 or x1 generate correct result, and r0 won't. Why on arm32 and arm64 they are different? What is the concrete rule for this and where can I find it?
ARM / AArch64 syntax is mov dst, src
Your asm statement only works if the compiler happens to pick the same register for both "=r" output and "r" input (or something like that, given extra copies of x floating around).
Different clobbers simply perturb the compiler's register-allocation choices. Look at the generated asm (gcc -S or on https://godbolt.org/, especially with -fverbose-asm.)
Undefined Behaviour from getting the constraints mismatched with the instructions in the template string can still happen to work; never assume that an asm statement is correct just because it works with one set of compiler options and surrounding code.
BTW, x86 AT&T syntax does use mov src, dst, and many GNU C inline-asm examples / tutorials are written for that. Assembly language is specific to the ISA and the toolchain, but a lot of architectures have an instruction called mov. Seeing a mov does not mean this is an ARM example.
Also, you don't actually need a mov instruction to use inline asm to copy a valid. Just tell the compiler you want the input to be in the same register it picks for the output, whatever that happens to be:
// not volatile: has no side effects and produces the same output if the input is the same; i.e. the output is a pure function of the input.
asm (""
: "=r"(output) // pick any register
: "0"(input) // pick the same register as operand 0
: // no clobbers
);

AVR inline assembly: registers to variables?

I'm currently trying to write some code that checks the value of SRAM at a certain address, and then executes some C code if it matches. This is running on an atmega32u4 AVR chip. Here is what I have so far:
volatile char a = 0;
void setup(){
}
void loop(){
asm(
"LDI r16,77\n" //load value 77 into r16
"STS 0x0160,r16\n" //copy r16 value into RAM location 0x0160
"LDS r17,0x0160\n" //copy value of RAM location 0x0160 into register r17
//some code to copy value r17 to char a?
);
if(a == 77){
//do something
}
}
I'm having trouble figuring out the part where I transition from assembly back to C. How do I get the value inside register r17 and put it into a variable in the C code?
I did find this code snippet, however I don't quite understand how that works, or if that is the best way to approach this.
__asm__ __volatile__ (
" ldi __tmp_reg__, 77" "\n\t"
" sts 0x0160, __tmp_reg__" "\n\t"
" lds %0, 0x0160" "\n\t"
: "=r" (a)
:
);
See here on how to inline assembly. Unless you have a very specific reason in mind, you should let the compiler take care of the variables for you. Even though you declared a in your code to be volatile, it could very well be bound to any of the 32 registers on the GP register file of the AVR core. This essentially means, the variable is never stored in RAM. If you really want to know what your compiler is doing, disassemble the final object file with avr-objdump -S and study it.

Which inline assembly code is correct for rdtscp?

Disclaimer: Words cannot describe how much I detest AT&T style syntax
I have a problem that I hope is caused by register clobbering. If not, I have a much bigger problem.
The first version I used was
static unsigned long long rdtscp(void)
{
unsigned int hi, lo;
__asm__ __volatile__("rdtscp" : "=a"(lo), "=d"(hi));
return (unsigned long long)lo | ((unsigned long long)hi << 32);
}
I notice there is no 'clobbering' stuff in this version. Whether or not this is a problem I don't know... I suppose it depends if the compiler inlines the function or not. Using this version causes me problems that aren't always reproducible.
The next version I found is
static unsigned long long rdtscp(void)
{
unsigned long long tsc;
__asm__ __volatile__(
"rdtscp;"
"shl $32, %%rdx;"
"or %%rdx, %%rax"
: "=a"(tsc)
:
: "%rcx", "%rdx");
return tsc;
}
This is reassuringly unreadable and official looking, but like I said my issue isn't always reproducible so I'm merely trying to rule out one possible cause of my problem.
The reason I believe the first version is a problem is that it is overwriting a register that previously held a function parameter.
What's correct... version 1, or version 2, or both?
Here's C++ code that will return the TSC and store the auxiliary 32-bits into the reference parameter
static inline uint64_t rdtscp( uint32_t & aux )
{
uint64_t rax,rdx;
asm volatile ( "rdtscp\n" : "=a" (rax), "=d" (rdx), "=c" (aux) : : );
return (rdx << 32) + rax;
}
It is better to do the shift and add to merge both 32-bit halves in C++ statement rather than inline, this allows the compiler to schedule those instructions as it sees fit.
According to this, this operation clobbers EDX and ECX. You need to mark those registers as clobbered which is what the second one does. BTW, is this the link where you got the above code or did you find it elsewhere? It also shows a few other variaitions for timings as well which is pretty neat.

Rewrite Intel-style assembly code into GCC inline assembly

How to write this assembly code as inline assembly? Compiler: gcc(i586-elf-gcc). The GAS syntax confuses me. Please give tell me how to write this as inline assembly that works for gcc.
.set_video_mode:
mov ah,00h
mov al,13h
int 10h
.init_mouse:
mov ax,0
int 33h
Similar one I have in assembly. I wrote them separate as assembly routines to call them from my C program. I need to call these and some more interrupts from C itself.
Also I need to put some values in some registers depending on which interrupt routine I'm calling. Please tell me how to do it.
All that I want to do is call interrupt routines from C. It's OK for me even to do it using int86() but i don't have source code of that function.
I want int86() so that i can call interrupts from C.
I am developing my own tiny OS so i got no restrictions for calling interrupts or for any direct hardware access.
I've not tested this, but it should get you started:
void set_video_mode (int x, int y) {
register int ah asm ("ah") = x;
register int al asm ("al") = y;
asm volatile ("int $0x10"
: /* no outputs */
: /* no inputs */
: /* clobbers */ "ah", "al");
}
I've put in two 'clobbers' as an example, but you'll need to set the correct list of clobbers so that the compiler knows you've overwritten register values (maybe none).
First, keep in mind GCC doesn't support 16-bit code yet, so you'll end up compiling 32-bit code in 16-bit mode, which is very inefficient but doable (it is used, for example, by Linux and SeaBIOS). It can be done with the following at the begging of each file:
__asm__ (".code16gcc");
Newer GCC versions (since 4.9 IIRC) support the -m16 flag that does the same thing.
Also, there's no mouse driver available unless you load it previous to your kernel running init_mouse.
You seem to be using an API commonly available in several x86 DOS.
asm can take care of the register assignments, so the code can be reduced to:
void set_video_mode(int mode)
{
mode &= 255;
__asm__ __volatile__ (
"int $0x10"
: "+a" (mode) /* %eax = mode & 255 => %ah = 0, %al = mode */
);
}
void init_mouse(void)
{
/* XXX it is really important to check the IDT entry isn't 0 */
int tmp = 0;
__asm__ __volatile__ (
"int $0x33"
: "+a" (tmp) /* %eax = 0*/
:: "ebx" /* %ebx is also clobbered by DOS mouse drivers */
);
}
The asm statement is documented in the GCC manual, although perhaps not in enough depth and lacks x86 examples. The outputs (after first colon) have a distinctively obscure syntax, while the rest is far easier to understand (the second colon specifies the inputs and the third the clobbered registers, flags and/or memory).
The outputs must be prefixed with =, meaning you don't care the previous value it may have had, or +, meaning you want to use it as an input too. In this context we use that instead of an input because the value is modified by the interrupt and you're not allowed to specify input registers in the clobbered list (because the compiler is forbidden from using them).

C inline assembly of x86 fbstp instruction

Was wondering how to inline a usage of fbstp on a 32 bit I86 architecture. I tried something like
int main( )
{
double foo = 100.0;
long bar = 0;
asm( "pushl %1; fbstp %0"
: "=m"(bar)
: "r"(foo)
);
...
But bar is unchanged. I have tried reading everything I can find on this but most example simply do things like add two integers together. I can’t find any that talk about pushing operands onto the stack and what I should be doing when an instruction like fbstp writes 80 bits of data back to memory ( i.e. what C type to use ) and how to specify it in the asm syntax.
Also on x86-64 there seems to be a pushq and no pushl but fbstp still exists whereas fbstq does not. Is there some other magic for 64 bit.
There's an example here: http://bap.ece.cmu.edu/download/bap-0.1/VEX/test/test-i386.c
which seems to suggest doing something like this:
unsigned short bcd[5];
double a;
asm("fbstp %0" : "=m" (bcd[0]) : "t" (a) : "st");

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