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From: Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel•crashing.org>
To: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail•com>
Cc: gcc@gcc•gnu.org, libc-alpha@sourceware•org,
	Paul E Murphy <murphyp@linux•ibm.com>,
	linuxppc-dev@lists•ozlabs.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH Linux] powerpc: add documentation for HWCAPs
Date: Tue, 24 May 2022 12:38:14 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20220524173814.GH25951@gate.crashing.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20220524093828.505575-1-npiggin@gmail.com>

Hi!

On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 07:38:28PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> Thanks for all the comments and corrections. It should be nearing the
> point where it is useful now. Yes I do think it would be useful to align
> this more with OpenPOWER docs (and possibly eventually move it into the
> ABI, given that's the allocator of these numbers) but that's not
> done yet.

The auxiliary vector is a Linux/glibc thing, it should not be described
in more generic ABI documents.  It is fine where you have it now afaics.

> +Where software relies on a feature described by a HWCAP, it should check the
> +relevant HWCAP flag to verify that the feature is present before attempting to
> +make use of the feature.
> +
> +Features should not be probed through other means. When a feature is not
> +available, attempting to use it may result in unpredictable behaviour, and
> +may not be guaranteed to result in any reliable indication that the feature
> +is unavailable.

Traditionally VMX was tested for by simply executing an instruction and
catching SIGILL.  This is portable even.  This has worked fine for over
two decades, it's a bit weird to declare this a forbidden practice
now :-)

It certainly isn't recommended for more complex and/or newer things.

> +verstions.

(typo.  spellcheck maybe?)


Segher

  parent reply	other threads:[~2022-05-24 17:42 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-05-24  9:38 [PATCH Linux] powerpc: add documentation for HWCAPs Nicholas Piggin
2022-05-24  9:52 ` Florian Weimer
2022-05-24 18:32   ` Segher Boessenkool
2022-07-15  1:17     ` Nicholas Piggin
2022-07-15 14:35       ` Segher Boessenkool
2022-05-24 17:38 ` Segher Boessenkool [this message]
2022-07-15  1:00   ` Nicholas Piggin
2023-06-06 14:49 ` Passing the complex args in the GPR's Umesh Kalappa
2023-06-06 14:58   ` Andrew Pinski
2023-06-06 15:05     ` Umesh Kalappa
2023-06-06 15:16       ` Andrew Pinski
2023-06-06 16:42       ` Segher Boessenkool
2023-06-06 17:07         ` Umesh Kalappa
2023-06-06 17:33           ` David Edelsohn
2023-06-07 13:17           ` Michael Matz
2023-06-06 17:18     ` Joseph Myers

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