"Clark, Rob" rob@ti.com writes:
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Clark, Rob rob@ti.com wrote:
possibly on the topic of "NEON Optimization Forum Collaboration tools" (or possibly off-topic and more of a general tools thing)..
I've always wanted a static code analyzer for neon that given a specified cortex-a processor, could tell me which instructions would stall, and for how many cycles and why. It would be a helpful thing for optimizing NEON code. I guess not a hard thing to write for someone who has a deep understanding of cortex-a* pipeline.. (ie. ARM)
hmm, well, let me put a disclaimer on that.. I'd be interested to check with someone at ARM who knows the pipeline well, to see if something like this could be implemented without having to write a full cycle accurate simulation of the ARM.. it's possible that a tool like I describe might be more difficult than it's worth if it requires an elaborate simulation of the inner workings of the ARM. But it was a feasible thing to write such a tool, it would be very useful for optimizing neon code
ARM RVCT has such a feature, although it is not entirely accurate. An accurate one would need a complete simulation of the pipelines.