GCC 5 added a compiler option, -mskip-rax-setup, for x86-64. It skips
setting up the RAX register when SSE is disabled and there are no
variable arguments passed in vector registers. (According to the x86_64
ABI, %al is used as a hidden register containing the number of vector
registers used).
Since the kernel doesn't pass vector registers to functions with
variable arguments, this option can be used to optimize the x86-64
kernel.
This GCC feature was suggested by Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>.
This is the corresponding kernel change using it.
For kernel v3.17:
text data bss dec filename
11455921 2204048 5853184 19513153 vmlinux #with -mskip-rax-setup
11480079 2204048 5853184 19537311 vmlinux
For Kernel v4.0+ - custom config:
text data bss dec filename
10231778 3479800 16617472 30329050 vmlinux-gcc5+-mskip-rax-setup
10268797 3547448 16621568 30437813 vmlinux
Signed-off-by: H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
d9ee948d82