GCC提供的几个內建函数

分支预测

You may use __builtin_expect to provide the compiler with branch prediction information. In general, you should prefer to use actual profile feedback for this (-fprofile-arcs), as programmers are notoriously bad at predicting how their programs actually perform. However, there are applications in which this data is hard to collect.

The return value is the value of exp, which should be an integral expression. The semantics of the built-in are that it is expected that exp == c. For example:

          if (__builtin_expect (x, 0))
            foo ();
     

would indicate that we do not expect to call foo, since we expect x to be zero. Since you are limited to integral expressions for exp, you should use constructions such as

          if (__builtin_expect (ptr != NULL, 1))
            error ();
     

when testing pointer or floating-point values.

预取

This function is used to minimize cache-miss latency by moving data into a cache before it is accessed. You can insert calls to __builtin_prefetch into code for which you know addresses of data in memory that is likely to be accessed soon. If the target supports them, data prefetch instructions will be generated. If the prefetch is done early enough before the access then the data will be in the cache by the time it is accessed.

The value of addr is the address of the memory to prefetch. There are two optional arguments, rw and locality. The value of rw is a compile-time constant one or zero; one means that the prefetch is preparing for a write to the memory address and zero, the default, means that the prefetch is preparing for a read. The value locality must be a compile-time constant integer between zero and three. A value of zero means that the data has no temporal locality, so it need not be left in the cache after the access. A value of three means that the data has a high degree of temporal locality and should be left in all levels of cache possible. Values of one and two mean, respectively, a low or moderate degree of temporal locality. The default is three.

          for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
            {
              a[i] = a[i] + b[i];
              __builtin_prefetch (&a[i+j], 1, 1);
              __builtin_prefetch (&b[i+j], 0, 1);
              /* ... */
            }
     

Data prefetch does not generate faults if addr is invalid, but the address expression itself must be valid. For example, a prefetch of p->next will not fault if p->next is not a valid address, but evaluation will fault if p is not a valid address.

If the target does not support data prefetch, the address expression is evaluated if it includes side effects but no other code is generated and GCC does not issue a warning.