[Dwarf-discuss] ISSUE: CPU vector types.

[Cary Coutant]

> Vector registers
>
> It has been the long standing existing practice to treat hardware
> vector registers as arrays of a fundamental base type. To deliniate
> these hardware register arrays from arrays in the language source they
> have been given the DW_AT_GNU_vector attribute. This proposal simply
> standardizes the existing behavior.
>
> In Section 2.2 Attribute Types, DW_AT_vector and
> DW_AT_variable_vector_width shall be added to Table 2.2
>
>     --------------------------------------------------------------------
>     DW_AT_vector                | A hardware vector register
>     DW_AT_variable_vector_width | Array bound for hardware
>                                 | implementation defined vector register
>                                 | width
>     --------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't understand what tags this DW_AT_vector attribute would apply
to. Vector registers aren't *types*, they're *locations*, so it
doesn't really make sense to me to put this attribute on a
DW_TAG_array_type. We don't have DW_TAGs that describe registers; the
ABI defines the registers and DWARF producers and consumers should
understand and agree on the sizes and shapes of the various registers.

In Tony's proposal, the new attribute modifies a base type, thus
introducing a vector type, which might get placed in a vector
register. But there, I don't see how the vector base type is
fundamentally different from an array type. It seems it's just a dodge
to make it a base type so that we can put whole vectors on the stack.

Maybe what we're looking for is a DW_TAG_vector_type, whose DW_AT_type
attribute gives the base type for each element of the vector. This
seems to be more DWARF-like, and if we decide there's a reason to
allow stack entries with vector types, we can do that.

-cary