From bf2119ff22d60c6dabf8f01cfd5968553d04de6e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2018 09:40:09 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] start filling in --- isa_conflict_resolution.mdwn | 32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 29 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/isa_conflict_resolution.mdwn b/isa_conflict_resolution.mdwn index 1002440fd..d743e9c30 100644 --- a/isa_conflict_resolution.mdwn +++ b/isa_conflict_resolution.mdwn @@ -250,10 +250,36 @@ advantages over other proposals: (but has "frozen" aspects) - would be completely unaffected: the change is to the "wording" of the specification to "retrospectively" fit reality. +* Unlike with the MISA idea this is *purely* at the "decode" phase: + no internal Extension state information is permitted to be disabled, + altered or destroyed as a direct result of writing to the + mvendor/march-id CSRs. +* Compliance Testing may be carried out with a different vendorid/marchid + tuple set prior to a test, allowing a vendor to claim *Certified* + compatibility with *both* one (or more) legacy variants of the RISC-V + Specification *and* with a present one. +* With sufficient care taken in the implementation an implementor + may have multiple interpretations of the same binary encoding within + an inner loop, with a single instruction (to the WARL register) + changing the meaning. + +A couple of points were made: + +* Compliance Testing may **fail** any system that has mvendorid/marchid + as WARL. This however is a clear case of "Compliance Tail Wagging Standard + Dog". +* The redirection of meaning of certain binary encodings to multiple + engines was considered extreme, eyebrow-raising, and also (importantly) + potentially expensive, introducing significant latency at the decode + phase. + +On this latter point, it was observed that MISA already switches out entire +sets of instructions (interacts at the "decode" phase). The difference +between what MISA does and the mvendor/march-id WARL idea is that whilst +MISA only switches instruction decoding on (or off), the WARL idea +*redirects* encoding, to *different* engines, fortunately in a deliberately +mutually-exclusive fashion. -> In an earlier part of the thread someone kindly pointed out that MISA -> already switches out entire sets of instructions [which interacts at the -> "decode" phase]. However it was noted after a few days of investigating > that particular lead that: > > * MISA Extension disabling is permitted (optionally) to DESTROY the state -- 2.30.2