Hi,
In MIPS (and similarly for other RISC architectures) to load an absolute
address of an object
requires a two instruction sequence: one instruction to load the high part of
the object's address,
and one instruction to load the low part of the object's address. Typically
the result from the
calculation of the high part of the address will only be used by one
instruction to load
the low part of the address. However, in certain situations (for example when
loading or
storing double word values) the result of computing the high part of the
address can be
used by multiple instructions to load the low parts of an address at different
offsets. Lets
show this with an example C program.
struct
{
short s;
unsigned long long l;
} h;
void foo (void)
{
h.l = 0;
}
When this is compiled for MIPS it produces the following assembly:
lui $2,%hi(h+8)
sw $0,%lo(h+8)($2)
jr $31
sw $0,%lo(h+12)($2)
...
.globl h
.section .bss,"aw",@nobits
.align 3
.type h, @object
.size h, 16
h:
.space 16
Notice here that the high part of the address of object h is loaded into
register $2,
and this is then used as part of the low part calculation by two the sw
instructions which each
have different offsets. In MIPS the value of a low part calculation is treated
as a signed value.
It is therefore valid to use the result of a high part calculation with
multiple low part calculations
containing different offsets so long as when adding the result of the high part
to the each of the
sign extended low parts we get valid addresses.
However, if we add the packed attribute to the h structure, the fields of the
structure will
not be naturally aligned and we can break the previous condition. Lets explain
this in more
detail with the following C program.
struct __attribute__((packed))
{
short s;
unsigned long long l;
} h;
void foo (void)
{
h.l = 0;
}
When this is compiled for MIPS it produces the following assembly:
lui $2,%hi(h)
addiu $4,$2,%lo(h+2)
addiu $3,$2,%lo(h+6)
swl $0,3($4)
swr $0,%lo(h+2)($2)
swl $0,3($3)
jr $31
swr $0,%lo(h+6)($2)
...
.globl h
.section .bss,"aw",@nobits
.align 2
.type h, @object
.size h, 10
h:
.space 10
There are two things to highlight here. Firstly the alignment of the h
structure has decreased
from 8 bytes to 4 bytes. Secondly we have a low part calculation which adds an
offset of 6
to the address of the h structure which is greater than its alignment.
When the MIPS linker resolves a HI relocation (i.e. %hi(h)) it finds the next
LO
relocation (i.e. %lo(h+2)) in the relocation table and using the information
from both
of these relocations it computes the object's address and extracts its high
part. Then, when the
MIPS linker resolves a LO relocation it adds the offset to the object's address
and then extracts
the low part.
Lets assume that object h has an address of 0x80007ffc. When the MIPS linker
resolves the value
of the HI relocation for object h, it will also use the value of the LO
relocation for object h
with an offset of 2. The high part value is therefore:
HIGH (0x80007ffc + 2) = HIGH (0x80007ffe) = 0x8000
Then the MIPS linker resolves the value of LO relocation for object h with an
offset of 2:
LO (0x80007ffc + 2) = LO (0x80007ffe) = 0x7ffe
Finally the MIPS linker resolves the value of the LO relocation for object h
with an offset of 6:
LO (0x80007ffc + 6) = LO (0x80008002) = 0x8002
In MIPS the value of a LO relocation is treated as a signed value, so when the
program is run the address
of h+6 will be 0x7fff8002 when it should be 0x80008002.
The place in the GCC middle end where the invalid RTX is generated is in the
adjust_address_1 function
in emit-rtl.c, when it adjusts the offset of an address which is a MEM rtx
containing a LO_SUM,
by producing a new LO_SUM containing the offset. In the case where the
original LO_SUM contains a SYMBOL_REF
this is only valid if the alignment of the object is less than the offset.
The potential fix (shown below) is to perform this check. Before I produce a
formal patch and testcase
for this issue I wanted to discuss it with the GCC community to ensure this is
the best place to fix such
a problem.
So, if required please feel free to suggest improvements or other more
appropriate places to apply this fix.
Many thanks,
Andrew
diff --git a/gcc/emit-rtl.c b/gcc/emit-rtl.c
index 3041b9e..b20de6f 100644
--- a/gcc/emit-rtl.c
+++ b/gcc/emit-rtl.c
@@ -2036,12 +2036,30 @@ adjust_address_1 (rtx memref, enum machine_mode mode,
HOST_WIDE_INT offset,
if (adjust_address)
{
+ unsigned HOST_WIDE_INT symbol_alignment;
+
+ symbol_alignment = GET_MODE_ALIGNMENT (GET_MODE (memref)) /
BITS_PER_UNIT;
+
+ if (GET_CODE (addr) == LO_SUM)
+ {
+ rtx sym = XEXP (addr, 1);
+
+ if (GET_CODE (sym) == CONST
+ && GET_CODE (XEXP (sym, 0)) == PLUS)
+ sym = XEXP (XEXP (sym, 0), 0);
+
+ if (GET_CODE (sym) == SYMBOL_REF
+ && SYMBOL_REF_DECL (sym))
+ symbol_alignment = DECL_ALIGN_UNIT (SYMBOL_REF_DECL (sym));
+ }
+
/* If MEMREF is a LO_SUM and the offset is within the alignment of the
object, we can merge it into the LO_SUM. */
if (GET_MODE (memref) != BLKmode && GET_CODE (addr) == LO_SUM
&& offset >= 0
- && (unsigned HOST_WIDE_INT) offset
+ && ((unsigned HOST_WIDE_INT) offset
< GET_MODE_ALIGNMENT (GET_MODE (memref)) / BITS_PER_UNIT)
+ && ((unsigned HOST_WIDE_INT) offset < symbol_alignment))
addr = gen_rtx_LO_SUM (address_mode, XEXP (addr, 0),
plus_constant (address_mode,
XEXP (addr, 1), offset));
