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Re: [RISC-V] [tech-unprivileged] [RISC-V] [tech-vector-ext] FP Trapped exceptions needed for portability

Allen Baum
 

IF the Trap-on-masked-fflags op isn't executed often, then a 4 instruction sequence 
(CSRRD FFLAGS, ANDI, BNE, .+4, ECALL) would do that, so there is a workaround.
IF that has a performance impact, then it argues that you may need actual trapping behavior.


On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 5:05 PM ghost <ghost@...> wrote:
> I’d suggest identifying important use cases for this. I’d also be looking at
> software techniques where the compiler inserts checks to provide the
> necessary support for the use cases first.

Along with this, I'd suggest considering an extension that consists of just
one instruction: trap if (FP flags & mask in instruction) is non-zero.  I'm
not a hardware designer, but it seems to me that this would allow
floating-point computation to run at full speed until a point selected by
the programmer or compiler where a precise trap was needed, and the more
instructions the compiler can place between the FP computation and the
conditional trap, the less likely a pipeline stall.

--

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

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