The Alpha AXP, epilogue: A correction about file system compression on the Alpha AXP

Raymond ChenAugust 31, 2017Aug 31, 201708/31/17

Some time ago, I claimed that Windows file compression had to be dumbed down in order for the Alpha AXP to hit its performance targets. I have since been informed by somebody who worked on file system compression for the Windows NT that information was badly sourced. (My source was somebody who worked on real-time file compression, but not sp

The Alpha AXP, part 17: Reconstructing a call stack

Raymond ChenAugust 30, 2017Aug 30, 201708/30/17

I'm going to wrap up the formal part of the series by applying the information we've been learning over the past several days weeks: We're going to reconstruct a broken stack. Suppose you have a debug session where all the k command says is That's it. We'll have to unwind the stack manually. We need to keep track of the stack pointer depth a

The Alpha AXP, part 16: What are the dire consequences of having 32-bit values in non-canonical form?

Raymond ChenAugust 29, 2017Aug 29, 201708/29/17

On the Alpha AXP, 32-bit values are typically represented in so-called canonical form. But what happens if you use a non-canonical representation? Well, it depends on what instruction consumes the non-canonical representation. If the consuming instruction is an explicit 32-bit instruction, such as ADDL or STL, then the upper 32 bits are igno

The Alpha AXP, part 15: Variadic functions

Raymond ChenAugust 28, 2017Aug 28, 201708/28/17

As noted in the initial plunge, the first six integer parameters are passed in registers, and the first six floating point parameters are passed in a different set of registers. So how does the callee known at function entry which registers to spill, and in what order?¹ Answer: It doesn't. So it just spills everything. First, a detail o

The Alpha AXP, part 14: On the strange behavior of writes to the zero register

Raymond ChenAugust 25, 2017Aug 25, 201708/25/17

I noted early on that a special rule in the Alpha AXP is that an instruction that specifies the zero register as a destination is permitted to be completely optimized out by the processor (with two exception, as noted). You might wonder what the point of this rule is. I mean, if you want the processor to not execute an instruction, then just

The Alpha AXP, part 13: On treating a 64-bit processor as if it were a 32-bit processor

Raymond ChenAugust 23, 2017Aug 23, 201708/23/17

The Alpha AXP is natively a 64-bit processor, but Windows NT for Alpha AXP treated it as a 32-bit processor. How is that possible? The Alpha AXP registers are full 64-bit registers, and you are welcome to use all 64 bits to perform your computations, in the same way that you are welcome to use the 32-bit registers of the x86 even when the pro

The Alpha AXP: Part 12: How you detect carry on a processor with no carry?

Raymond ChenAugust 22, 2017Aug 22, 201708/22/17

The Alpha AXP has no corresponding trap variant for arithmetic carry. So how would you detect carry?¹ Answer: The same way you detect carry in C, or pretty much any other programming language that doesn't support carry. To detect carry during addition, you check whether the sum is less than either addend. If the sum is less than one add

The Alpha AXP, part 11: Processor faults

Raymond ChenAugust 21, 2017Aug 21, 201708/21/17

There are three types of faults on the Alpha AXP: Software faults are those triggered by explicit instructions, such as CALL_PAL. These are calls that trap into the kernel and are used as the Alpha AXP version of syscall. Software faults are raised synchronously, and execution does not proceed past a software fault. Consequently, they are

The Alpha AXP, part 10: Atomic updates to byte and word memory units

Raymond ChenAugust 18, 2017Aug 18, 201708/18/17

Today we're going to do a little exercise based on what we've learned so far. We learned how to perform byte and word loads and stores to memory. And we also learned how to perform atomic memory operations on longs and quads. But how about atomic memory operations on bytes and words? We will have to put together what we've learned: Combine th