Re: [PATCH 1/2] gdb: introduce command "info architecture"

Guinevere Larsen
2025-11-27T20:02:20Z

On 11/7/25 11:25 PM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Nov 2025, Guinevere Larsen wrote:
>
>>> Thanks. The documentation parts are okay (with one nit, see below),
>>> but I'm struggling to understand what you mean by "CPU
>>> microarchitectures". And without examples, I cannot even guess.
>>> Would it be possible to expand on that in the manual, or at least
>>> provide a could of examples of what the output will look like?
>> A CPU architecture is something like "arm" or "x86". The microarchitecture is
>> changes within that architecture, like "armv3", "armv4", "armv3m" and so on.
> I don't think it's correct, not at least it's the definition I've been
> taught. In my dictionary microarchitecture is a particular implementation
> of a given architecture with all its properties, such as instruction
> latencies, the execution units and pipeline stages, the existence or the
> lack of specific pipeline dependencies, and so on and so on.
>
> I can't comment on ARM particulars as I'm not very familiar with them,
> but offhand "armv3" or "armv4" seem to me to be architecture revisions
> rather than microarchitectures.
>
> In MIPS terms MIPS is the target architecture, MIPS32r2 is a particular
> architecture revision ("mips:isa32r2" in terms of `set architecture') and
> 24Kf or 74Kf are microarchitectures, both implementing the MIPS32r2
> architecture.
>
> Cf. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microarchitecture> for an overview.
>
> I think the GDB manual has been pretty correct in its "architecture" term
> usage.
>
> Maciej
>
Ah, I guess I must have misunderstood microarchitecture somewhere along
the way. So, would it be correct for me to describe the command as
listing the "architectures" that GDB supports?

--
Cheers,
Guinevere Larsen
It/she