On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 11:30:17PM -0800, Tinga Shilo wrote: > I am implementing a kernel mechanism which is > very performance oriented. Along my long critical > path, > there is a static variable that needs to be accessed > quite a few times. This variable is a structure which > is approximately 60 bytes big. > In there any way I can "convince" my kernel (compiled > with gcc) to access this variable using gp ? > Is gp usually used for this purpose in mips-linux ? > Can it be ? > > A while ago I saw a small discussion here about usage > of gp for static variables, but it didn't provide > any definite answers. Use a pointer to the that structure. Gcc will keep this pointer in a registers wherever it considers that sensible. Any reference to members of the structure can then be made with just a single instruction. $28 is used for the current pointer so only suitable for per-process data. Ralf
