| Hexagon ISA instruction definitions to tinycode generator compiler |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| |
| idef-parser is a small compiler able to translate the Hexagon ISA description |
| language into tinycode generator code, that can be easily integrated into QEMU. |
| |
| Compilation Example |
| ------------------- |
| |
| To better understand the scope of the idef-parser, we'll explore an applicative |
| example. Let's start by one of the simplest Hexagon instruction: the ``add``. |
| |
| The ISA description language represents the ``add`` instruction as |
| follows: |
| |
| .. code:: c |
| |
| A2_add(RdV, in RsV, in RtV) { |
| { RdV=RsV+RtV;} |
| } |
| |
| idef-parser will compile the above code into the following code: |
| |
| .. code:: c |
| |
| /* A2_add */ |
| void emit_A2_add(DisasContext *ctx, Insn *insn, Packet *pkt, TCGv_i32 RdV, |
| TCGv_i32 RsV, TCGv_i32 RtV) |
| /* { RdV=RsV+RtV;} */ |
| { |
| TCGv_i32 tmp_0 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| tcg_gen_add_i32(tmp_0, RsV, RtV); |
| tcg_gen_mov_i32(RdV, tmp_0); |
| } |
| |
| The output of the compilation process will be a function, containing the |
| tinycode generator code, implementing the correct semantics. That function will |
| not access any global variable, because all the accessed data structures will be |
| passed explicitly as function parameters. Among the passed parameters we will |
| have TCGv (tinycode variables) representing the input and output registers of |
| the architecture, integers representing the immediates that come from the code, |
| and other data structures which hold information about the disassemblation |
| context (``DisasContext`` struct). |
| |
| Let's begin by describing the input code. The ``add`` instruction is associated |
| with a unique identifier, in this case ``A2_add``, which allows to distinguish |
| variants of the same instruction, and expresses the class to which the |
| instruction belongs, in this case ``A2`` corresponds to the Hexagon |
| ``ALU32/ALU`` instruction subclass. |
| |
| After the instruction identifier, we have a series of parameters that represents |
| TCG variables that will be passed to the generated function. Parameters marked |
| with ``in`` are already initialized, while the others are output parameters. |
| |
| We will leverage this information to infer several information: |
| |
| - Fill in the output function signature with the correct TCGv registers |
| - Fill in the output function signature with the immediate integers |
| - Keep track of which registers, among the declared one, have been |
| initialized |
| |
| Let's now observe the actual instruction description code, in this case: |
| |
| .. code:: c |
| |
| { RdV=RsV+RtV;} |
| |
| This code is composed by a subset of the C syntax, and is the result of the |
| application of some macro definitions contained in the ``macros.h`` file. |
| |
| This file is used to reduce the complexity of the input language where complex |
| variants of similar constructs can be mapped to a unique primitive, so that the |
| idef-parser has to handle a lower number of computation primitives. |
| |
| As you may notice, the description code modifies the registers which have been |
| declared by the declaration statements. In this case all the three registers |
| will be declared, ``RsV`` and ``RtV`` will also be read and ``RdV`` will be |
| written. |
| |
| Now let's have a quick look at the generated code, line by line. |
| |
| :: |
| |
| TCGv_i32 tmp_0 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| |
| This code starts by declaring a temporary TCGv to hold the result from the sum |
| operation. |
| |
| :: |
| |
| tcg_gen_add_i32(tmp_0, RsV, RtV); |
| |
| Then, we are generating the sum tinycode operator between the selected |
| registers, storing the result in the just declared temporary. |
| |
| :: |
| |
| tcg_gen_mov_i32(RdV, tmp_0); |
| |
| The result of the addition is now stored in the temporary, we move it into the |
| correct destination register. This code may seem inefficient, but QEMU will |
| perform some optimizations on the tinycode, reducing the unnecessary copy. |
| |
| Parser Input |
| ------------ |
| |
| Before moving on to the structure of idef-parser itself, let us spend some words |
| on its' input. There are two preprocessing steps applied to the generated |
| instruction semantics in ``semantics_generated.pyinc`` that we need to consider. |
| Firstly, |
| |
| :: |
| |
| gen_idef_parser_funcs.py |
| |
| which takes instruction semantics in ``semantics_generated.pyinc`` to C-like |
| pseudo code, output into ``idef_parser_input.h.inc``. For instance, the |
| ``J2_jumpr`` instruction which jumps to an address stored in a register |
| argument. This is instruction is defined as |
| |
| :: |
| |
| SEMANTICS( \ |
| "J2_jumpr", \ |
| "jumpr Rs32", \ |
| """{fJUMPR(RsN,RsV,COF_TYPE_JUMPR);}""" \ |
| ) |
| |
| in ``semantics_generated.pyinc``. Running ``gen_idef_parser_funcs.py`` |
| we obtain the pseudo code |
| |
| :: |
| |
| J2_jumpr(in RsV) { |
| {fJUMPR(RsN,RsV,COF_TYPE_JUMPR);} |
| } |
| |
| with macros such as ``fJUMPR`` intact. |
| |
| The second step is to expand macros into a form suitable for our parser. |
| These macros are defined in ``idef-parser/macros.h.inc`` and the step is |
| carried out by the ``prepare`` script which runs the C preprocessor on |
| ``idef_parser_input.h.inc`` to produce |
| ``idef_parser_input.preprocessed.h.inc``. |
| |
| To finish the above example, after preprocessing ``J2_jumpr`` we obtain |
| |
| :: |
| |
| J2_jumpr(in RsV) { |
| {(PC = RsV);} |
| } |
| |
| where ``fJUMPR(RsN,RsV,COF_TYPE_JUMPR);`` was expanded to ``(PC = RsV)``, |
| signifying a write to the Program Counter ``PC``. Note, that ``PC`` in |
| this expression is not a variable in the strict C sense since it is not |
| declared anywhere, but rather a symbol which is easy to match in |
| idef-parser later on. |
| |
| Parser Structure |
| ---------------- |
| |
| The idef-parser is built using the ``flex`` and ``bison``. |
| |
| ``flex`` is used to split the input string into tokens, each described using a |
| regular expression. The token description is contained in the |
| ``idef-parser.lex`` source file. The flex-generated scanner takes care also to |
| extract from the input text other meaningful information, e.g., the numerical |
| value in case of an immediate constant, and decorates the token with the |
| extracted information. |
| |
| ``bison`` is used to generate the actual parser, starting from the parsing |
| description contained in the ``idef-parser.y`` file. The generated parser |
| executes the ``main`` function at the end of the ``idef-parser.y`` file, which |
| opens input and output files, creates the parsing context, and eventually calls |
| the ``yyparse()`` function, which starts the execution of the LALR(1) parser |
| (see `Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LALR_parser>`__ for more |
| information about LALR parsing techniques). The LALR(1) parser, whenever it has |
| to shift a token, calls the ``yylex()`` function, which is defined by the |
| flex-generated code, and reads the input file returning the next scanned token. |
| |
| The tokens are mapped on the source language grammar, defined in the |
| ``idef-parser.y`` file to build a unique syntactic tree, according to the |
| specified operator precedences and associativity rules. |
| |
| The grammar describes the whole file which contains the Hexagon instruction |
| descriptions, therefore it starts from the ``input`` nonterminal, which is a |
| list of instructions, each instruction is represented by the following grammar |
| rule, representing the structure of the input file shown above: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| instruction : INAME arguments code |
| | error |
| |
| arguments : '(' ')' |
| | '(' argument_list ')'; |
| |
| argument_list : argument_decl ',' argument_list |
| | argument_decl |
| |
| argument_decl : REG |
| | PRED |
| | IN REG |
| | IN PRED |
| | IMM |
| | var |
| ; |
| |
| code : '{' statements '}' |
| |
| statements : statements statement |
| | statement |
| |
| statement : control_statement |
| | var_decl ';' |
| | rvalue ';' |
| | code_block |
| | ';' |
| |
| code_block : '{' statements '}' |
| | '{' '}' |
| |
| With this initial portion of the grammar we are defining the instruction, its' |
| arguments, and its' statements. Each argument is defined by the |
| ``argument_decl`` rule, and can be either |
| |
| :: |
| |
| Description Example |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| output register RsV |
| output predicate register P0 |
| input register in RsV |
| input predicate register in P0 |
| immediate value 1234 |
| local variable EA |
| |
| Note, the only local variable allowed to be used as an argument is the effective |
| address ``EA``. Similarly, each statement can be a ``control_statement``, a |
| variable declaration such as ``int a;``, a code block, which is just a |
| bracket-enclosed list of statements, a ``';'``, which is a ``nop`` instruction, |
| and an ``rvalue ';'``. |
| |
| Expressions |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| Allowed in the input code are C language expressions with a few exceptions |
| to simplify parsing. For instance, variable names such as ``RdV``, ``RssV``, |
| ``PdV``, ``CsV``, and other idiomatic register names from Hexagon, are |
| reserved specifically for register arguments. These arguments then map to |
| ``TCGv_i32`` or ``TCGv_i64`` depending on the register size. Similarly, ``UiV``, |
| ``riV``, etc. refer to immediate arguments and will map to C integers. |
| |
| Also, as mentioned earlier, the names ``PC``, ``SP``, ``FP``, etc. are used to |
| refer to Hexagon registers such as the program counter, stack pointer, and frame |
| pointer seen here. Writes to these registers then correspond to assignments |
| ``PC = ...``, and reads correspond to uses of the variable ``PC``. |
| |
| Moreover, another example of one such exception is the selective expansion of |
| macros present in ``macros.h``. As an example, consider the ``fABS`` macro which |
| in plain C is defined as |
| |
| :: |
| |
| #define fABS(A) (((A) < 0) ? (-(A)) : (A)) |
| |
| and returns the absolute value of the argument ``A``. This macro is not included |
| in ``idef-parser/macros.h.inc`` and as such is not expanded and kept as a "call" |
| ``fABS(...)``. Reason being, that ``fABS`` is easier to match and map to |
| ``tcg_gen_abs_<width>``, compared to the full ternary expression above. Loads of |
| macros in ``macros.h`` are kept unexpanded to aid in parsing, as seen in the |
| example above, for more information see ``idef-parser/idef-parser.lex``. |
| |
| Finally, in mapping these input expressions to tinycode generators, idef-parser |
| tries to perform as much as possible in plain C. Such as, performing binary |
| operations in C instead of tinycode generators, thus effectively constant |
| folding the expression. |
| |
| Variables and Variable Declarations |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| Similarly to C, variables in the input code must be explicitly declared, such as |
| ``int var1;`` which declares an uninitialized variable ``var1``. Initialization |
| ``int var2 = 0;`` is also allowed and behaves as expected. In tinycode |
| generators the previous declarations are mapped to |
| |
| :: |
| |
| int var1; -> TCGv_i32 var1 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| |
| int var2 = 0; -> TCGv_i32 var1 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| tcg_gen_movi_i32(j, ((int64_t) 0ULL)); |
| |
| which are later automatically freed at the end of the function they're declared |
| in. Contrary to C, we only allow variables to be declared with an integer type |
| specified in the following table (without permutation of keywords) |
| |
| :: |
| |
| type bit-width signedness |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| int 32 signed |
| signed |
| signed int |
| |
| unsigned 32 unsigned |
| unsigned int |
| |
| long 64 signed |
| long int |
| signed long |
| signed long int |
| |
| unsigned long 64 unsigned |
| unsigned long int |
| |
| long long 64 signed |
| long long int |
| signed long long |
| signed long long int |
| |
| unsigned long long 64 unsigned |
| unsigned long long int |
| |
| size[1,2,4,8][s,u]_t 8-64 signed or unsigned |
| |
| In idef-parser, variable names are matched by a generic ``VARID`` token, |
| which will feature the variable name as a decoration. For a variable declaration |
| idef-parser calls ``gen_varid_allocate`` with the ``VARID`` token to save the |
| name, size, and bit width of the newly declared variable. In addition, this |
| function also ensures that variables aren't declared multiple times, and prints |
| and error message if that is the case. Upon use of a variable, the ``VARID`` |
| token is used to lookup the size and bit width of the variable. |
| |
| Type System |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| idef-parser features a simple type system which is used to correctly implement |
| the signedness and bit width of the operations. |
| |
| The type of each ``rvalue`` is determined by two attributes: its bit width |
| (``unsigned bit_width``) and its signedness (``HexSignedness signedness``). |
| |
| For each operation, the type of ``rvalue``\ s influence the way in which the |
| operands are handled and emitted. For example a right shift between signed |
| operators will be an arithmetic shift, while one between unsigned operators |
| will be a logical shift. If one of the two operands is signed, and the other |
| is unsigned, the operation will be signed. |
| |
| The bit width also influences the outcome of the operations, in particular while |
| the input languages features a fine granularity type system, with types of 8, |
| 16, 32, 64 (and more for vectorial instructions) bits, the tinycode only |
| features 32 and 64 bit widths. We propagate as much as possible the fine |
| granularity type, until the value has to be used inside an operation between |
| ``rvalue``\ s; in that case if one of the two operands is greater than 32 bits |
| we promote the whole operation to 64 bit, taking care of properly extending the |
| two operands. Fortunately, the most critical instructions already feature |
| explicit casts and zero/sign extensions which are properly propagated down to |
| our parser. |
| |
| The combination of ``rvalue``\ s are handled through the use of the |
| ``gen_bin_op`` and ``gen_bin_cmp`` helper functions. These two functions handle |
| the appropriate compile-time or run-time emission of operations to perform the |
| required computation. |
| |
| Control Statements |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| ``control_statement``\ s are all the statements which modify the order of |
| execution of the generated code according to input parameters. They are expanded |
| by the following grammar rule: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| control_statement : frame_check |
| | cancel_statement |
| | if_statement |
| | for_statement |
| | fpart1_statement |
| |
| ``if_statement``\ s require the emission of labels and branch instructions which |
| effectively perform conditional jumps (``tcg_gen_brcondi``) according to the |
| value of an expression. Note, the tinycode generators we produce for conditional |
| statements do not perfectly mirror what would be expected in C, for instance we |
| do not reproduce short-circuiting of the ``&&`` operator, and use of the ``||`` |
| operator is disallowed. All the predicated instructions, and in general all the |
| instructions where there could be alternative values assigned to an ``lvalue``, |
| like C-style ternary expressions: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| rvalue : rvalue QMARK rvalue COLON rvalue |
| |
| are handled using the conditional move tinycode instruction |
| (``tcg_gen_movcond``), which avoids the additional complexity of managing labels |
| and jumps. |
| |
| Instead, regarding the ``for`` loops, exploiting the fact that they always |
| iterate on immediate values, therefore their iteration ranges are always known |
| at compile time, we implemented those emitting plain C ``for`` loops. This is |
| possible because the loops will be executed in the QEMU code, leading to the |
| consequential unrolling of the for loop, since the tinycode generator |
| instructions will be executed multiple times, and the respective generated |
| tinycode will represent the unrolled execution of the loop. |
| |
| Parsing Context |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| All the helper functions in ``idef-parser.y`` carry two fixed parameters, which |
| are the parsing context ``c`` and the ``YYLLOC`` location information. The |
| context is explicitly passed to all the functions because the parser we generate |
| is a reentrant one, meaning that it does not have any global variable, and |
| therefore the instruction compilation could easily be parallelized in the |
| future. Finally for each rule we propagate information about the location of the |
| involved tokens to generate pretty error reporting, able to highlight the |
| portion of the input code which generated each error. |
| |
| Debugging |
| --------- |
| |
| Developing the idef-parser can lead to two types of errors: compile-time errors |
| and parsing errors. |
| |
| Compile-time errors in Bison-generated parsers are usually due to conflicts in |
| the described grammar. Conflicts forbid the grammar to produce a unique |
| derivation tree, thus must be solved (except for the dangling else problem, |
| which is marked as expected through the ``%expect 1`` Bison option). |
| |
| For solving conflicts you need a basic understanding of `shift-reduce conflicts |
| <https://www.gnu.org/software/Bison/manual/html_node/Shift_002fReduce.html>`__ |
| and `reduce-reduce conflicts |
| <https://www.gnu.org/software/Bison/manual/html_node/Reduce_002fReduce.html>`__, |
| then, if you are using a Bison version > 3.7.1 you can ask Bison to generate |
| some counterexamples which highlight ambiguous derivations, passing the |
| ``-Wcex`` option to Bison. In general shift/reduce conflicts are solved by |
| redesigning the grammar in an unambiguous way or by setting the token priority |
| correctly, while reduce/reduce conflicts are solved by redesigning the |
| interested part of the grammar. |
| |
| Run-time errors can be divided between lexing and parsing errors, lexing errors |
| are hard to detect, since the ``var`` token will catch everything which is not |
| caught by other tokens, but easy to fix, because most of the time a simple |
| regex editing will be enough. |
| |
| idef-parser features a fancy parsing error reporting scheme, which for each |
| parsing error reports the fragment of the input text which was involved in the |
| parsing rule that generated an error. |
| |
| Implementing an instruction goes through several sequential steps, here are some |
| suggestions to make each instruction proceed to the next step. |
| |
| - not-emitted |
| |
| Means that the parsing of the input code relative to that instruction failed, |
| this could be due to a lexical error or to some mismatch between the order of |
| valid tokens and a parser rule. You should check that tokens are correctly |
| identified and mapped, and that there is a rule matching the token sequence |
| that you need to parse. |
| |
| - emitted |
| |
| This instruction class contains all the instructions which are emitted but |
| fail to compile when included in QEMU. The compilation errors are shown by |
| the QEMU building process and will lead to fixing the bug. Most common |
| errors regard the mismatch of parameters for tinycode generator functions, |
| which boil down to errors in the idef-parser type system. |
| |
| - compiled |
| |
| These instruction generate valid tinycode generator code, which however fail |
| the QEMU or the harness tests, these cases must be handled manually by |
| looking into the failing tests and looking at the generated tinycode |
| generator instruction and at the generated tinycode itself. Tip: handle the |
| failing harness tests first, because they usually feature only a single |
| instruction, thus will require less execution trace navigation. If a |
| multi-threaded test fail, fixing all the other tests will be the easier |
| option, hoping that the multi-threaded one will be indirectly fixed. |
| |
| An example of debugging this type of failure is provided in the following |
| section. |
| |
| - tests-passed |
| |
| This is the final goal for each instruction, meaning that the instruction |
| passes the test suite. |
| |
| Another approach to fix QEMU system test, where many instructions might fail, is |
| to compare the execution trace of your implementation with the reference |
| implementations already present in QEMU. To do so you should obtain a QEMU build |
| where the instruction pass the test, and run it with the following command: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| sudo unshare -p sudo -u <USER> bash -c \ |
| 'env -i <qemu-hexagon full path> -d cpu <TEST>' |
| |
| And do the same for your implementation, the generated execution traces will be |
| inherently aligned and can be inspected for behavioral differences using the |
| ``diff`` tool. |
| |
| Example of debugging erroneous tinycode generator code |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| The goal of this section is to provide a complete example of debugging |
| incorrectly emitted tinycode generator for a single instruction. |
| |
| Let's first introduce a bug in the tinycode generator of the ``A2_add`` |
| instruction, |
| |
| :: |
| |
| void emit_A2_add(DisasContext *ctx, Insn *insn, Packet *pkt, TCGv_i32 RdV, |
| TCGv_i32 RsV, TCGv_i32 RtV) |
| /* RdV=RsV+RtV;} */ |
| { |
| TCGv_i32 tmp_0 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| tcg_gen_add_i32(tmp_0, RsV, RsV); |
| tcg_gen_mov_i32(RdV, tmp_0); |
| } |
| |
| Here the bug, albeit hard to spot, is in ``tcg_gen_add_i32(tmp_0, RsV, RsV);`` |
| where we compute ``RsV + RsV`` instead of ``RsV + RtV``, as would be expected. |
| This particular bug is a bit tricky to pinpoint when debugging, since the |
| ``A2_add`` instruction is so ubiquitous. As a result, pretty much all tests will |
| fail and therefore not provide a lot of information about the bug. |
| |
| For example, let's run the ``check-tcg`` tests |
| |
| :: |
| |
| make check-tcg TIMEOUT=1200 \ |
| DOCKER_IMAGE=debian-hexagon-cross \ |
| ENGINE=podman V=1 \ |
| DOCKER_CROSS_CC_GUEST=hexagon-unknown-linux-musl-clang |
| |
| In the output, we find a failure in the very first test case ``float_convs`` |
| due to a segmentation fault. Similarly, all harness and libc tests will fail as |
| well. At this point we have no clue where the actual bug lies, and need to start |
| ruling out instructions. As such a good starting point is to utilize the debug |
| options ``-d in_asm,cpu`` of QEMU to inspect the Hexagon instructions being run, |
| alongside the CPU state. We additionally need a working version of the emulator |
| to compare our buggy CPU state against, running |
| |
| :: |
| |
| meson configure -Dhexagon_idef_parser=false |
| |
| will disable the idef-parser for all instructions and fallback on manual |
| tinycode generator overrides, or on helper function implementations. Recompiling |
| gives us ``qemu-hexagon`` which passes all tests. If ``qemu-hexagon-buggy`` is |
| our binary with the incorrect tinycode generators, we can compare the CPU state |
| between the two versions |
| |
| :: |
| |
| ./qemu-hexagon-buggy -d in_asm,cpu float_convs &> out_buggy |
| ./qemu-hexagon -d in_asm,cpu float_convs &> out_working |
| |
| Looking at ``diff -u out_buggy out_working`` shows us that the CPU state begins |
| to diverge on line 141, with an incorrect value in the ``R1`` register |
| |
| :: |
| |
| @@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ |
| |
| General Purpose Registers = { |
| r0 = 0x4100f9c0 |
| - r1 = 0x00042108 |
| + r1 = 0x00000000 |
| r2 = 0x00021084 |
| r3 = 0x00000000 |
| r4 = 0x00000000 |
| |
| If we also look into ``out_buggy`` directly we can inspect the input assembly |
| which the caused the incorrect CPU state, around line 141 we find |
| |
| :: |
| |
| 116 | ---------------- |
| 117 | IN: _start_c |
| 118 | 0x000210b0: 0xa09dc002 { allocframe(R29,#0x10):raw } |
| ... | ... |
| 137 | 0x000210fc: 0x5a00c4aa { call PC+2388 } |
| 138 | |
| 139 | General Purpose Registers = { |
| 140 | r0 = 0x4100fa70 |
| 141 | r1 = 0x00042108 |
| 142 | r2 = 0x00021084 |
| 143 | r3 = 0x00000000 |
| |
| Importantly, we see some Hexagon assembly followed by a dump of the CPU state, |
| now the CPU state is actually dumped before the input assembly above is ran. |
| As such, we are actually interested in the instructions ran before this. |
| |
| Scrolling up a bit, we find |
| |
| :: |
| |
| 54 | ---------------- |
| 55 | IN: _start |
| 56 | 0x00021088: 0x6a09c002 { R2 = C9/pc } |
| 57 | 0x0002108c: 0xbfe2ff82 { R2 = add(R2,#0xfffffffc) } |
| 58 | 0x00021090: 0x9182c001 { R1 = memw(R2+#0x0) } |
| 59 | 0x00021094: 0xf302c101 { R1 = add(R2,R1) } |
| 60 | 0x00021098: 0x7800c01e { R30 = #0x0 } |
| 61 | 0x0002109c: 0x707dc000 { R0 = R29 } |
| 62 | 0x000210a0: 0x763dfe1d { R29 = and(R29,#0xfffffff0) } |
| 63 | 0x000210a4: 0xa79dfdfe { memw(R29+#0xfffffff8) = R29 } |
| 64 | 0x000210a8: 0xbffdff1d { R29 = add(R29,#0xfffffff8) } |
| 65 | 0x000210ac: 0x5a00c002 { call PC+4 } |
| 66 | |
| 67 | General Purpose Registers = { |
| 68 | r0 = 0x00000000 |
| 69 | r1 = 0x00000000 |
| 70 | r2 = 0x00000000 |
| 71 | r3 = 0x00000000 |
| |
| Remember, the instructions on lines 56-65 are ran on the CPU state shown below |
| instructions, and as the CPU state has not diverged at this point, we know the |
| starting state is accurate. The bug must then lie within the instructions shown |
| here. Next we may notice that ``R1`` is only touched by lines 57 and 58, that is |
| by |
| |
| :: |
| |
| 58 | 0x00021090: 0x9182c001 { R1 = memw(R2+#0x0) } |
| 59 | 0x00021094: 0xf302c101 { R1 = add(R2,R1) } |
| |
| Therefore, we are either dealing with an correct load instruction |
| ``R1 = memw(R2+#0x0)`` or with an incorrect add ``R1 = add(R2,R1)``. At this |
| point it might be easy enough to go directly to the emitted code for the |
| instructions mentioned and look for bugs, but we could also run |
| ``./qemu-heaxgon -d op,in_asm float_conv`` where we find for the following |
| tinycode for the Hexagon ``add`` instruction |
| |
| :: |
| |
| ---- 00021094 |
| mov_i32 pkt_has_store_s1,$0x0 |
| add_i32 tmp0,r2,r2 |
| mov_i32 loc2,tmp0 |
| mov_i32 new_r1,loc2 |
| mov_i32 r1,new_r1 |
| |
| Here we have finally located our bug ``add_i32 tmp0,r2,r2``. |
| |
| Limitations and Future Development |
| ---------------------------------- |
| |
| The main limitation of the current parser is given by the syntax-driven nature |
| of the Bison-generated parsers. This has the severe implication of only being |
| able to generate code in the order of evaluation of the various rules, without, |
| in any case, being able to backtrack and alter the generated code. |
| |
| An example limitation is highlighted by this statement of the input language: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| { (PsV==0xff) ? (PdV=0xff) : (PdV=0x00); } |
| |
| This ternary assignment, when written in this form requires us to emit some |
| proper control flow statements, which emit a jump to the first or to the second |
| code block, whose implementation is extremely convoluted, because when matching |
| the ternary assignment, the code evaluating the two assignments will be already |
| generated. |
| |
| Instead we pre-process that statement, making it become: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| { PdV = ((PsV==0xff)) ? 0xff : 0x00; } |
| |
| Which can be easily matched by the following parser rules: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| statement | rvalue ';' |
| |
| rvalue : rvalue QMARK rvalue COLON rvalue |
| | rvalue EQ rvalue |
| | LPAR rvalue RPAR |
| | assign_statement |
| | IMM |
| |
| assign_statement : pred ASSIGN rvalue |
| |
| Another example that highlight the limitation of the flex/bison parser can be |
| found even in the add operation we already saw: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| TCGv_i32 tmp_0 = tcg_temp_new_i32(); |
| tcg_gen_add_i32(tmp_0, RsV, RtV); |
| tcg_gen_mov_i32(RdV, tmp_0); |
| |
| The fact that we cannot directly use ``RdV`` as the destination of the sum is a |
| consequence of the syntax-driven nature of the parser. In fact when we parse the |
| assignment, the ``rvalue`` token, representing the sum has already been reduced, |
| and thus its code emitted and unchangeable. We rely on the fact that QEMU will |
| optimize our code reducing the useless move operations and the relative |
| temporaries. |
| |
| A possible improvement of the parser regards the support for vectorial |
| instructions and floating point instructions, which will require the extension |
| of the scanner, the parser, and a partial re-design of the type system, allowing |
| to build the vectorial semantics over the available vectorial tinycode generator |
| primitives. |
| |
| A more radical improvement will use the parser, not to generate directly the |
| tinycode generator code, but to generate an intermediate representation like the |
| LLVM IR, which in turn could be compiled using the clang TCG backend. That code |
| could be furtherly optimized, overcoming the limitations of the syntax-driven |
| parsing and could lead to a more optimized generated code. |