On Tue, 16 Nov 2021 07:36:40 -0800 (PST), "ghost" <ghost@...> said:

|| 1) Mandate all implementations raise an illegal exception in this
|| case. This is my preferred route, as this would be a minor errata for
|| existing implementations (doesn't affect software), and we would not
|| reuse
|| this state/encoding for other purposes.
||
|| 2) Allow either correct execution or illegal exception (as with
|| misaligned).
||
|| 3) Consider "reserved", implying implementations that support it are
|| non-conforming unless we later go with 2).
||
|| I'm assuming we're going to push to ratify 1) unless I hear strong
|| objections.

| I agree that #1 is the least unfortunate of the alternatives, but I want to
| raise a flag because I think there are larger considerations.

| AFAIK, the vector extensions are unique among proposed non-privileged
| extensions in their extensive functional dependency on machine state other
| than the instruction.

The task group had a strong consensus in retaining a 32-bit encoding
for the vector extension, which led to the separate control state.
The desire to stick with 32-bit encoding was not only to avoid adding
a new instruction length, but also to reduce static and dynamic code
size. It should be noted that fixed-instruction-width RISC vector
architectures (ARM SVE2, IBM VMX) have had to adopt a prefix model to
accomodate vector encodings, with similar concerns about intermediate
control state (variable-length ISAs just have very long vector
instruction encoding). With obvious bias, I believe the RISC-V
solution is cleaner than these others in this regard.

| Avoiding this kind of dependency seems to have been a
| consistent and important goal (one of many, of course) in previous designs.
| For example, including a rounding mode in every floating point instruction,
| even the FMA group, multiplied the number of code points for these
| instructions by 8, even though it is not clear (at least to me) how
| important the use cases are. (IMO this might tend to support ds2horner's
| proposal to use 48- or 64-bit instructions for some of the vector
| capability, but that is off topic for the present discussion; and I can see
| a counter-argument that using machine state simplifies pipelining setup that
| might depend on that state.)

A longer 64-bit encoding was always planned for the vector extension
as it is clear that the set of desired instruction types could not fit
in 32 bits. The main simplification from using the separate control
state was in avoiding the longer instruction width, not in pipelining,
which it actually complicates.

| Because of this dependency, it seems to me
| that the current issue creates a currently rare, and undesirable, situation
| where an illegal exception trap depends on a significantly complex
| interaction between an instruction and the machine state. Just something to
| bear in mind for the future.

In some cases, the trap is only dependent on the instruction bits
(e.g., vfwadd.wv). In others, it depends on two bits of vtype plus
the instruction bits.

Of course, actual hardware implementations have many cases where
behavior of unprivileged instructions depends on control state
settings in privileged layers in much more complex ways.

Krste


| --

| L Peter Deutsch <ghost@...> :: Aladdin Enterprises :: Healdsburg, CA

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