ranjith kumar wrote:
Hi,
1) Will "gcc" insert prefetch instructions
automatically on "pentium 4" processor?
Which flags should be enabled while compiling sothat
gcc automatically insert prefetch instructions?
2) Or programmer has to include some functions?
If so, what is the syntax of that function?
P4 isn't suitable for automatic compiler-generated prefetch. Default
hardware prefetch (stride-based and cache line pairs) is quite
effective. Prefetch intrinsics are available with #include
<xmmintrin.h>. Details on what works vary with steppings. The earliest
P4 models could accelerate hardware prefetch by the program issuing 3
cache lines of prefetch prior to entering a loop. Since Northwood, that
doesn't work. Since Prescott, prefetch hints are ignored on P4, with
prefetch going to L2 regardless of hints. Effect of prefetch on DTLB
misses also is model dependent.
Contrary to what certain Windows related docs say, _mm_prefetch() works
the same on all compilers which implement it.
