Date: 2020/3/20
Task Group: Vector Extension
Chair: Krste Asanovic
Number of Attendees: ~20
Current issues on github: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-v-spec

Issues discussed: #367, #393

The following issues were discussed.

#367 Tail Agnostic

Proposal to add option of tail and/or mask agnostic behavior.

Concern about software incompatibility if agnostic option would allow
software to make use of 0s when this is detected. Proposal that
agnostic would require that either ones are written to non active
results, or they are left undisturbed. Writing ones is consistent
with scalar FP NaN-boxing.

It was noted that hardware could add a debugging mode that detected
when non-portable behavior was detected (using values written as
agnostic), but this would not be mandated.

To support thread migration between different microarchitectures
(e.g., big and little cores), it would be explicitly stated that
agnostic behavior (undisturbed versus writing ones) could change on
each execution of an instruction, or even when restarting an
instruction at non-zero vstart.

The tail and/or mask agnostic behavior would be recorded in vtype (or
maybe vcsr?)as two bits. Suggested encoding:

[1:0]
0 0 Tail undisturbed, masked undisturbed
1 0 Tail agnostic, masked undisturbed
1 1 Tail agnostic, masked agnostic
0 1 Illegal, sets vill

Implementations would be required to implement both state bits even if
the microarchitecture ignored setting and executed all options as
tail+mask undisturbed (a legal implementation).

Discussion to continue on mailing list.

#393 Fractional LMUL additional registers

Proposal to add fractional LMUL to support a greater number of usable
architecture registers in presence of mixed-width operands.

There was discussion about the new proposal on mapping fractional LMUL
elements when systems have SLEN<VLEN, as it appeared to break SLEN
wiring optimization. A scheme that appears to address the datapath
wiring concern spreads out fractional LMUL elements along the register
was discussed in meeting

VLEN=128b, SLEN=64b
F E D C B A 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Byte number

X X X X X X X X X X X X 0 0 0 0 LMUL=1/4, SEW=32b
X X X X X X X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LMUL=1/2, SEW=64b

X X X X 1 1 1 1 X X X X 0 0 0 0 LMUL=1/2, SEW=32b
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LMUL=1, SEW=64b

Discussion to continue on mailing list.