VC4ASM - History of changes

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V 0.3

Breaking changes

• The -c command line option now generates entirely different C output intended to be used with a header file.
• The option to generate C hex output with a trailing ',' at the last line (formerly -c) has gone.
• The -i option of V0.2.3 now only applies to the file immediately after the -i option rather than the entire command line.
• The -E option has gone. Use -s -e instead.
• The vc4.qinc file now resides in the directory share/vc4inc/ rather than just share/. No big deal if you used the -i option. Otherwise you need to adjust your command line, preferably by using -i.
• The entire message handling has been rewritten. This causes incompatibilities in the library API as well as different screen output. The library version can avoid to print to stderr.

Features

• Switched build environment to CMake.
• Added full C compatible output using -c including header file with global symbols (rather than only hex fragments).
• Test cases for disassembler.
• Try harder when combining small immediate values with vector rotation.

Fixes

• bkpt instruction fixed.
• Do not override mux fields at read.
• Accept instruction extensions at nop and read.
• vc4dis: disassemble invalid instructions as raw data (.long).
• vc4dis: fixed disassembly of regfile A source in case of modulo 4 MUL ALU vector rotation.
• vc4dis: generate .setf extension at branch also.
• vc4dis: disassembly of branch instruction with two destination registers and only a regfile A target.

Extras

• Added language description file for GtkSourceView based editors like gedit or pluma.

V 0.2.3

Features

• Support of ::label syntax to define global (exported) symbols.
• Added building as library (shared and static) [doe300].
• CLI option -i to assemble files from include path. (Allows to refer to vc4.qinc without path.)
• Added amov/mmov to explicitly place move instruction to one of the ALUs (if vc4asm can't guess correctly).

Fixes

• Make parser smarter with respect to operators that are not separated by spaces.
• Do not unnecessarily swap ALUs when loading mov constants with small immediate values.
• vc4.qinc: compatibility to Broadcom VPM macros.

V 0.2.2

Features

• Complete redesign of pack/unpack handling. Support for packed register expressions, including in macros.
• Support for instructions that are tied to an ALU, e.g. mv8adds.
• Support nop instruction with target register (to use easter egg).
• Validator: warn about concurrent VPM access.
• Added binary rotate operators to expression syntax.

Fixes

• Fixed instruction swap of sub & xor resulting in bad code.
• Reworked Inf/NaN handling; fixes mov ..., 0x7f800000
• Fixed parsing of floating point constants without a decimal dot, e.g. 1E6.
• Disabled ELF support on OS X.

V 0.2.1

Features

• Support to swap regfile A and regfile B read access if the I/O register is invariant of that.
• Added support for mov and ldi with two target arguments.
• Added read pseudo instruction.
• Added support for code and data segments. (Validator does no longer complain about data.)
• Added support for half precision floating point constants.

Fixes

• Fixed use of regfile A pack modes with MUL ALU.
• Fixed disassemble signed values at ldipes.
• Fixed .align with more than 8 bytes, support offset based .align.
• Fixed local labels in .rep.
• Fixed ws swap in case of vector rotation. (e.g mov r3, r0<<8; mov ra0, 0)
• Fixed disassemble of pack flags.

V 0.2

• Changed internal expression evaluation to 64 bit or double precision respectively.
• Support for alphanumeric mathematical operators like trigonometric, hyperbolic or exponential function.
• Support for data directives without 64 bit alignment and .align.
• Added identity (===, !==), Perl like full comparison (<=>) and xnor (!^, !^^) operators.
• No longer accept floats as boolean expression, use explicit comparison against 0.0 instead.
• Fixed: cannot define global constants in another file invoked from command line.
• Validator: check for disjunctive conditional access before warning about back to back register access.
• Automatically choose MUL ALU if mov instruction contains vector rotation.
• Warn about unexpected side effects in conjunction with MUL ALU vector rotations.
• Fixed .foreach
• Added support for direct ELF output.
• Added .global directive to export symbols in ELF format.
• Added support for C like include search paths.
• Added .local/.endloc.
• Do not accept blanks between : and label name to disambiguate branch target markers before instruction names.
• Disassembler: fixed wrong code for branch with two write registers and no regfile A read.
• Do not accept .if blocks to cross file boundaries.
• Fixed mov ..., -1.0
• Allow to combine two ldi with the same value to assign two targets.
• Added support for the use of vector rotation values as small immediate.
• Fixed: disassemble rotation by r5.
• Fixed constant -2 at load per element signed.
• Fixed regfile A target check at mov constants created from small immediate value with regfile A pack mode.
• Fixed destination operand extensions at mov instruction.
• .setf support at branch instruction.

V0.1.9

• Fixed vc4dis: decoded not only the first 8 instructions in case of a binary source file.
• Work around for missing git feature to create empty folders.
• Added support for use of pack modes when tying to load a constant by the small immediate field.
• Fixed bug in small immediate table that caused some values not to work.
• Fixed duplicate messages for the invocation call stack at some parser errors.
• Significantly improved source code documentation.

V0.1.8

• Fixed unary ADD operators to use mux A rather than B.
• Fixed memory leak on platforms where va_end is not a no-op.
• Fixed disassemble of floating point numbers to be turn around stable.

V0.1.7

• Fixed "The unpack option works for none of the source operands" error when regfile A unpack is used as first operand of ALU instruction.
• Fixed "The unpack option silently applies to source argument" error when using instruction level unpack syntax.
• Fixed MacOS issues. Thanks to Francisco Facioni.

V0.1.6

• Fixed branch instructions broken by 0.1.5.
• Fixed 64 bit compatibility for cross platform operation.

V0.1.5

• Merge with hello_fft 3.0, 4 Mi FFT, should fix RPi 2 compatibility.
• Use overlapping buffers for hello_fft, saves much memory.
• Support for MUL ALU pack and r4 unpack modes.
• Support for .ifset directive.
• Support for ALU swap when combining instructions. Can e.g. handle mov ra16, r1; mov r1, 0x180 (The constant 0x180 can only be loaded by the ADD ALU.)
• Fix: use of instruction extensions like .8a at ALU source expressions.
• Fix: do not auto combine TMU instructions.
• Fix: do not erroneously convert signalling instructions to ldi.
• Fix: honor .if/.macro at .int/.long...
• Added .foreach directive.

V0.1.4

• Support all shift values with small immediates.
• Fixed .setf for MUL ALU.
• Fixed operator >>> and <<<.
• Support forward .clone.
• Fixed validation of branch return targets.
• Check for conditional TMU access.
• Do not overwrite read address B with small immediate value.
• Support equivalence of add ... 16 and sub ... -16 in conjunction with small immediates.

V0.1.3

• Fixed pack/unpack instruction, still incomplete.
• Added .clone directive (experimental).
• Further optimizations to hello_fft example.
• Several smaller bugfixes.

V0.1.2

• Added type detection macros.
• Optional automatic instruction packing.
• Merged with gpu_fft V2.0 including 2 Mi FFT, a few further optimizations.

V0.1.1

• Added support for binary constants between the code.

V0.1

• First public release.