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Date:   Tue, 15 Nov 2022 22:17:27 +0000
From:   Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org>
To:     Vineet Gupta <vineetg@rivosinc.com>
Cc:     Conor.Dooley@microchip.com, bjorn@kernel.org,
        stillson@rivosinc.com, greentime.hu@sifive.com,
        guoren@linux.alibaba.com, vincent.chen@sifive.com,
        paul.walmsley@sifive.com, palmer@dabbelt.com,
        aou@eecs.berkeley.edu, guoren@kernel.org,
        linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        ajones@ventanamicro.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v12 04/17] riscv: Add vector feature to compile
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On Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 09:38:53AM -0800, Vineet Gupta wrote:
> On 11/13/22 08:16, Conor.Dooley@microchip.com wrote:
> > > > +config VECTOR
> > > > +     bool "VECTOR support"
> > > > +     depends on GCC_VERSION >= 120000 || CLANG_VERSION >= 130000
> > > > +     default n
> > > > +     help
> > > > +       Say N here if you want to disable all vector related procedure
> > > > +       in the kernel.
> > > > +
> > > > +       If you don't know what to do here, say Y.
> > > > +
> > > > +endmenu
> > > "VECTOR" is not really consistent to how the other configs are named;
> > > RISCV_ISA_V, RISCV_ISA_VECTOR, RISCV_VECTOR?
> > It'd be RISCV_ISA_V to match the others single letter extentions, right?
> 
> Yep.
> 
> > The toolchain dependency check here also seems rather naive.
> 
> Indeed. I can build the code just fine with gcc-11 (and gcc-12), although my
> reworked patcheset doesn't include all the orig patches including the
> in-kernel xor stuff.

By naive here I meant that checking cc alone is probably not a
sufficient check for whether the toolchain supports the extension.
What about the assembler etc?

With Zicbom and Zihintpause we ran into problems with mixed usage, eg
binutils 2.35 + gcc 12. In his Zicboz series Drew has gone with insn
definitions - but while that's okay for something small like Zicboz,
do we want to do that for something with as many instructions as vector?

The alternative is cc-option, but that feels a lot less clean than what
Drew cooked up here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-riscv/20221027130247.31634-1-ajones@ventanamicro.com/

I've not checked this because I am lazy, but I am also assuming that
whoever put clang-13 in there picked it such that it doesn't require
experimental extensions flags. Mostly just writing this to remind myself
to check it at some point.