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Date:      Thu, 09 Nov 1995 09:28:58 +0100
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.tfs.com>
To:        koshy@blr.novell.com
Cc:        hasty@rah.star-gate.com (), freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Load/Store using FPU regs ... 
Message-ID:  <6254.815905738@critter.tfs.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 09 Nov 1995 14:03:00 %2B0700." <30a1bccf0.4265@novidc.blr.novell.com> 

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> >>>>> "Amancio" == "Amancio Hasty Jr " <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> writes:
> 
>     >>> L20: fldl (%ebx) fstpl (%ecx) ...
>     >>> 
>     >>> The resulting program copies data at about 60 Megabytes per
>     >>> second.
> 
> 
> Using the FPU registers for memmove/bitblt operations was a technique
> I first saw on an i860.  We used to do a series of reads into FPU regs
> ...

I think I saw something like that about 8 years back on an 20 year old
system...

> Now, I'm not sure if this approach can be used across all processors.
> Some FPU's could raise exceptions if illegal bit-patterns are loaded
> into its registers.  The x86 FPU in particular has very few registers
> and a LIFO access pattern for loads and stores so I don't know if the
> same trick would work well for it.

Not to mention that you might not have a FPU.

I guess it would be interesting to try to do the zero of pages with it...

--
Poul-Henning Kamp           | phk@FreeBSD.ORG       FreeBSD Core-team.
http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk    Private mailbox.
whois: [PHK]                | phk@ref.tfs.com       TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.



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