[webkit-dev] arm jit

[Gavin Barraclough]

On Jun 9, 2009, at 2:38 PM, Akos Kiss wrote:

> Dear Community,
>
> Today, we realized that there is a new ARM JIT port for WebKit. (http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/44514 
> ) Congratulations on getting this working!, great job.

Hi Akos,

Thank you!  Just to clarify, we have just landed a ARMv7 architecture  
(thumb2) JIT backend into ToT.  I say ARMv7 to distinguish this port  
from the ARM application instruction set found in the ARMv6  
architecture and earlier (as I believe would be a common understanding  
of the term ARM, and and which I believe your port targets).  Thumb2  
in ARMv7 is, of course, a very different instruction set to the  
traditional 32-bit instructions found in ARM – with completely  
different machine encodings, and significantly different capabilities  
(e.g. two operand versus three operand instructions, sizes of  
immediate operands, and options for instruction predication).  For the  
JIT to be able to run on both ARM and ARMv7 platforms, it needs to be  
ported to both architectures – in much the same way the the JIT is  
ported to both the x86 and x86-64 platforms.

Obviously there is a great deal of similarity on the surface between  
ARM and ARMv7, but in terms of the JIT implementation that may well  
only be true above the level of the MacroAssembler interface.  There  
may be some limited opportunities to share code within the Assembler  
classes (register numbering enums, and possibly types describing  
immediate operands), but since the assembler is primarily concerned  
with formatting machine instructions, and since the instruction  
encodings are different, it seems likely the bulk of the code will  
have to remain separate.  Again, the differences in instruction  
selection options available on the two architectures will likely make  
it hard to share code within the MacroAssember (different numbers of  
operands to many common instructions, and the options when working  
with large immediate values particularly spring to mind).  We would  
certainly want to share code and avoid any duplication where ever it  
makes sense to do so.

> I cannot conceal how disappointed I am, as is the whole team at  
> Szeged.

I am very sorry to hear this.  If you look at the patches that landed  
into ToT there were very few changes made outside of the new assembler  
classes which, for the reasons described above, I think are highly  
unlikely to have much in common on the two platforms.  The changes  
that have been made to common code outside of the assemblers should  
only help in removing x86 dependencies and assumptions that had  
existed in the code. I strongly urge you to review the changes that  
have been made, as I hope and believe you will find that they will  
assist the team in integrating your ARM port.

> Of course, we've felt that you were reluctant to accept our  
> implementation.

We were (and remain) reluctant to accept a duplicate of the JIT into  
the tree, rather than a port of the existing JIT utilizing the  
MacroAssembler abstraction.  We are concerned that it would be  
extremely difficult to continue to maintain such a port as we move the  
JIT technology forwards.  Beyond that, they key barrier to the ARM JIT  
being accepted into WebKit is that there simply haven't been any  
patches put forwards for us to review!  (I'm sorry, I'm aware you have  
provided a link to an external git repository, but I'm afraid we  
really can't seek through version control systems to find changes to  
review – we do need contributors to attach patches to bugs, and we  
need a review flag setting to indicate when the contributor believes  
their patch is ready.  If there is any uncertainty as to the  
procedure, please see http://webkit.org/coding/contributing.html .)

> - Are you still looking for patches, bug reports, feature requests,  
> etc., or is it all in vain - you will get everything done in house?

Yes!   Please do so, this is only way your changes will get into the  
tree.

> - Should we ask for credits in the new files, as it was done by you  
> when we first published our JIT implementation? I'm quite sure that  
> we can state the same argument: "a number of the new files appear to  
> have taken large chunks of logic from existing jit files".

The new files were derived from their x86 counterparts, with reference  
to the ARMv7 manuals.  As such the existing copyright notifications  
within the files from which they were derived have been retained.

(Apologies for the slow reply, we have a busy week with WWDC on!)

cheers,
G.


>
> Best regards,
> Akos
>
>
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