Re: Help Translating Message from MIPS Simulator

Joel Sherrill
2017-04-16T14:26:51Z

On 4/15/2017 6:44 PM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Apr 2017, Joel Sherrill wrote:
>
>> We have some RTEMS tests failing on the mips simulator
>> in gdb. We are using the jmr3904 configuration and the
>> run ends with this message:
>>
>> HILO: MFHI: MF at 0x88015698 following OP at 0x88000464 corrupted by MT at
>> 0x88003c68
>>
>> 0x88000464 does appear to be in a reasonable location
>> inside the test.
>>
>> How do I translate the rest to get an idea about the fault?
>
> I'll give some background information.
>
> In MIPS architecture HILO or HI/LO is the integer multiply-divide (MD)
> unit's accumulator aka the HI and LO register pair. For widening
> multiplication LO holds the low part of the product and HI holds the
> corresponding high part. For division LO holds the quotient and HI holds
> the remainder.
>
> These registers are not a part of the general ALU and therefore special
> operations have been defined to retrieve and also to store data there:
> MFHI and MFLO (Move From HI/LO) are the read instructions and MTHI and
> MTLO (Move To HI/LO) are the write instructions for the HI and the LO
> register respectively.
>
> In older architecture revisions the MTHI and MTLO instructions are only
> really useful for context switches as data placed there cannot be further
> used, except to read it back with MFHI or MFLO. Consequently MTHI and
> MTLO are seldom used and those architecture revisions do not have hardware
> interlocks implemented for them, requiring a sufficient number of other
> instructions to be executed between a MFHI or MFLO and a following MTHI or
> MTLO for predictable results to be produced. Otherwise the MTHI/MTLO
> operation may (and generally will) corrupt data retrieved with MFHI/MFLO.

This is an old MIPS being simulated. It is the TX3904.
So all that applies.

> NB later architecture revisions have integer multiply-accumulate
> instructions which use HI/LO as one of inputs, making MTHI and MTLO more
> useful, and they do implement hardware interlocks for them.
>
> So the message above means that the result of a MFHI or MFLO operation
> (MF) at 0x88015698 executed after an MD unit operation (OP) at 0x88000464
> has been corrupted by a MTHI or MTLO operation (MT) at 0x88003c68. And I
> believe that what I wrote above makes the HILO and MFHI prefixes obvious.

Thanks for the explanation.

0x88000464 is in the test code.

0x88003c68 is in the device driver. It is executing in the same thread
as the test code. This is a single threaded test with no context switches
before the failure.

0x88003c54 <+88>: beq a2,a3,0x88003c7c <i2c_bus_transfer+128>
0x88003c58 <+92>: addiu v1,v1,12
0x88003c5c <+96>: lhu v0,2(v1)
0x88003c60 <+100>: andi t0,v0,0x4000
0x88003c64 <+104>: bnez t0,0x88003c2c <i2c_bus_transfer+48>
0x88003c68 <+108>: mtlo t3
0x88003c6c <+112>: move t1,a3

The code for i2c_bus_transfer is in pure C and it looks like gcc generated
that mtlo. I don't see a mthi or any mfhi/lo instructions in the method.

0x88015698 is the mfhi instruction in the outer level of the RTEMS
interrupt processing code. This is the source:

mflo t0
STREG t8, R_T8*R_SZ(sp)
STREG t0, R_MDLO*R_SZ(sp)
STREG t9, R_T9*R_SZ(sp)
mfhi t0 <===================
STREG gp, R_GP*R_SZ(sp)
STREG t0, R_MDHI*R_SZ(sp)
STREG fp, R_FP*R_SZ(sp)

The first two are in C. The last was obviously is in assembly.

Based on your description, I think gcc is using this as a scratch register
and shouldn't. In case we are using the wrong compiler options, this is
what we use:

-march=r3900 -Wa,-xgot -G0

I will file a gcc ticket and cc you on it if that looks like the explanation.

Thanks.

> HTH,
>
> Maciej
>

--joel