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Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2015 09:43:43 +0200
From: magnum <john.magnum@...hmail.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: extend SIMD intrinsics

On 2015-07-06 04:24, Lei Zhang wrote:
>> On Jul 5, 2015, at 2:44 PM, Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:
>> While in general you're right, for loads and stores in particular an
>> alternative approach may be to stop using those intrinsics, and instead
>> use simple assignments (or nothing at all, within expressions) at the C
>> level.  I don't know whether this will result in any worse code being
>> generated on any relevant arch; I think I haven't run into such cases so
>> far.  For example, in yescrypt-simd.c, I am not using any load/store
>> intrinsics, and the generated code is good.
>
> That makes sense. I think compilers should have no difficulty
> converting a vector assignment into a proper vector load/store. But
> code written this way may look a bit messier, when pointer
> dereferencing is involved, e.g.
>
> void func(uint32_t *buf) {
>      vtype32 v = *((vtype32*)buf); // could be vload(buf)
>      ...
> }

You could do just the typecast in a 'vload' pseudo-intrinsic:

#define vload(buf) *((vtype32*)buf)

OTOH you could do that with a load/store intrinsics too:

#define vload(buf) _real_intrinsic((vtype32*)buf)


>> Now, there might or might not be a difference as it relates to C strict
>> aliasing rules.  Maybe the load/store intrinsics allow us to perform
>> an equivalent of typecasts yet safely circumvent C strict aliasing rules.
>
> If I understand the strict aliasing rule correctly, I don't see how
> the current use of intrinsics in JtR could violate the rule, as we
> don't use different vector types to access the same memory address.

We currently declare the functions like this:

void SSESHA256body(vtype *data, ARCH_WORD_32 *out, ARCH_WORD_32 
*reload_state, unsigned SSEi_flags);

I think we break strict aliasing rules right there: reload_state, when 
used, is an alias to either data or out but they are declared as 
different types.

I'm not sure why they are declared like this. Since all three really are 
vectors, I think we should have it as:

void SSESHA256body(vtype32 *data, vtype32 *out, vtype32 *reload_state, 
uint32_t SSEi_flags);

Note also that in sse-intrinsics.h the functions are *externally* 
declared with "vtype" being a macro defined as "void". I'm not sure who 
made it that way originally nor if it's 100% kosher, but it sure is 
convenient.

magnum

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