8 Maks registers are quite needed in modern outer-vectorized loops. Also in graphic shaders. I would say 16 is overkill. 

Now, and I am not defending this, if we had to go this route, I would seriously fight for masks-in-x-registers. I.e :no new state , no new instructions. Only a few arch tricks to try to avoid loss of decoupling between vector unit and scalar unit.  That’s better than a new set of registers and instructions

Roger. 

On Wed, 16 Dec 2020 at 21:34, swallach <steven.wallach@...> wrote:

in my experience only only one maybe two vm registers are needed

nested loops under if statements is rare.   



> On Dec 16, 2020, at 3:29 PM, Bill Huffman <huffman@...> wrote:
>
> I don’t think a separate mask register will do at all.  It would take a mask register file with at least 8 and maybe 16 registers.  Lots of compare results need to be kept and operations need to be done on mask registers.  I don't think we should have a separate mask register file.
>
>      Bill
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tech-vector-ext@... <tech-vector-ext@...> On Behalf Of swallach
> Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:26 PM
> To: Alex Solomatnikov <sols@...>
> Cc: Krste Asanovic <krste@...>; tech-vector-ext@...
> Subject: Re: [RISC-V] [tech-vector-ext] Vector Task Group minutes 2020/12/04
>
> EXTERNAL MAIL
>
>
> i  totally agree.  if this is done,  then instructions like:  count bits,  etc can directly apply to the mask register.
>
> also,  from a hardware implementation,   the VM register can be implemented with LATÇHES.  this facilitates a better implementation (imho) for operations under mask
>
> and yes load and store VM are required
>
> ——
>
>
> If separate loads and stores are introduced for mask, then separate vmask register can be introduced to avoid dual use of v0 (as a regular vector register and as a mask register) and its complications.
>
> Alex
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://bsc.es/disclaimer__;!!EHscmS1ygiU1lA!RJHAWw-769bPQyIHjTxb9o5uKdCXTVYJl2Bab73oZY-l_MvY1RgkMuZPnlTs5wU$
>
>
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>
>


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