i have not totally been following this discussion.  but at convex we handled this very simply

if Vl = 0,  no vector operation was executed,  and the vector instruction was executed and sequential operation proceeded.

to the best  of my  knowledge this never came up as an issue

https://github.com/riscv/riscv-v-spec/issues/587#issuecomment-711087236

To clarify, Andrew's reading of the spec has vstart>= vl behaviour superseding vl=0 implied behaviour.

Thus some vector instructions are executed even when vl=0. vfirst and vpopc are two of them.

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On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 18:14:48 -0700, Andy Glew Si5 <andy.glew@...> said:

|     [DH]: I see this openness/lack of arbitrary constraint  as  precisely  the strength of RISCV.
|     Limiting vector operations due to current constraints in software (Linuz does it this way, compilers cannot optimize that formulation[yet])
|     or hardware (reminiscent of delayed branch because prediction was too expensive) is short sighted.
|     A check for vl=0 on platforms that allow it is eminently doable, low overhead for many use cases  AND guarantees forward progress under
|     SOFTWARE control.

| Sure. You could guarantee forward progress, e.g. by allowing no more than 10 successive "first fault" with VL=0, and requiring trap on element zero
| on the 11th.   That check could be in hardware, or it could be in
| the software that's calling the FF instruction.

I don't want us to rathole on how to guarantee forward progress for
vl=0 case, but do want to note that this kind of forward progress is
nasty to guarantee, implying there's long-lasting microarch state to
keep around - what if you're context swapped out before you get to the
11th?  Do you have to force the first one after a context swap to not
trim?  What if there's a sequence of ff's and second one goes back to
vl=0?

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