6.57.22 PowerPC Hardware Transactional Memory Built-in Functions

GCC provides two interfaces for accessing the Hardware Transactional Memory (HTM) instructions available on some of the PowerPC family of prcoessors (eg, POWER8). The two interfaces come in a low level interface, consisting of built-in functions specific to PowerPC and a higher level interface consisting of inline functions that are common between PowerPC and S/390.

6.57.22.1 PowerPC HTM Low Level Built-in Functions

The following low level built-in functions are available with -mhtm or -mcpu=CPU where CPU is `power8' or later. They all generate the machine instruction that is part of the name.

The HTM builtins (with the exception of __builtin_tbegin) return the full 4-bit condition register value set by their associated hardware instruction. The header file htmintrin.h defines some macros that can be used to decipher the return value. The __builtin_tbegin builtin returns a simple true or false value depending on whether a transaction was successfully started or not. The arguments of the builtins match exactly the type and order of the associated hardware instruction's operands, except for the __builtin_tcheck builtin, which does not take any input arguments. Refer to the ISA manual for a description of each instruction's operands.

unsigned int __builtin_tbegin (unsigned int)
unsigned int __builtin_tend (unsigned int)

unsigned int __builtin_tabort (unsigned int)
unsigned int __builtin_tabortdc (unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int)
unsigned int __builtin_tabortdci (unsigned int, unsigned int, int)
unsigned int __builtin_tabortwc (unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int)
unsigned int __builtin_tabortwci (unsigned int, unsigned int, int)

unsigned int __builtin_tcheck (void)
unsigned int __builtin_treclaim (unsigned int)
unsigned int __builtin_trechkpt (void)
unsigned int __builtin_tsr (unsigned int)

In addition to the above HTM built-ins, we have added built-ins for some common extended mnemonics of the HTM instructions:

unsigned int __builtin_tendall (void)
unsigned int __builtin_tresume (void)
unsigned int __builtin_tsuspend (void)

The following set of built-in functions are available to gain access to the HTM specific special purpose registers.

unsigned long __builtin_get_texasr (void)
unsigned long __builtin_get_texasru (void)
unsigned long __builtin_get_tfhar (void)
unsigned long __builtin_get_tfiar (void)

void __builtin_set_texasr (unsigned long);
void __builtin_set_texasru (unsigned long);
void __builtin_set_tfhar (unsigned long);
void __builtin_set_tfiar (unsigned long);

Example usage of these low level built-in functions may look like:

#include <htmintrin.h>

int num_retries = 10;

while (1)
  {
    if (__builtin_tbegin (0))
      {
        /* Transaction State Initiated.  */
        if (is_locked (lock))
          __builtin_tabort (0);
        ... transaction code...
        __builtin_tend (0);
        break;
      }
    else
      {
        /* Transaction State Failed.  Use locks if the transaction
           failure is "persistent" or we've tried too many times.  */
        if (num_retries-- <= 0
            || _TEXASRU_FAILURE_PERSISTENT (__builtin_get_texasru ()))
          {
            acquire_lock (lock);
            ... non transactional fallback path...
            release_lock (lock);
            break;
          }
      }
  }

One final built-in function has been added that returns the value of the 2-bit Transaction State field of the Machine Status Register (MSR) as stored in CR0.

unsigned long __builtin_ttest (void)

This built-in can be used to determine the current transaction state using the following code example:

#include <htmintrin.h>

unsigned char tx_state = _HTM_STATE (__builtin_ttest ());

if (tx_state == _HTM_TRANSACTIONAL)
  {
    /* Code to use in transactional state.  */
  }
else if (tx_state == _HTM_NONTRANSACTIONAL)
  {
    /* Code to use in non-transactional state.  */
  }
else if (tx_state == _HTM_SUSPENDED)
  {
    /* Code to use in transaction suspended state.  */
  }

6.57.22.2 PowerPC HTM High Level Inline Functions

The following high level HTM interface is made available by including <htmxlintrin.h> and using -mhtm or -mcpu=CPU where CPU is `power8' or later. This interface is common between PowerPC and S/390, allowing users to write one HTM source implementation that can be compiled and executed on either system.

long __TM_simple_begin (void)
long __TM_begin (void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_end (void)
void __TM_abort (void)
void __TM_named_abort (unsigned char const code)
void __TM_resume (void)
void __TM_suspend (void)

long __TM_is_user_abort (void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_is_named_user_abort (void* const TM_buff, unsigned char *code)
long __TM_is_illegal (void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_is_footprint_exceeded (void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_nesting_depth (void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_is_nested_too_deep(void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_is_conflict(void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_is_failure_persistent(void* const TM_buff)
long __TM_failure_address(void* const TM_buff)
long long __TM_failure_code(void* const TM_buff)

Using these common set of HTM inline functions, we can create a more portable version of the HTM example in the previous section that will work on either PowerPC or S/390:

#include <htmxlintrin.h>

int num_retries = 10;
TM_buff_type TM_buff;

while (1)
  {
    if (__TM_begin (TM_buff) == _HTM_TBEGIN_STARTED)
      {
        /* Transaction State Initiated.  */
        if (is_locked (lock))
          __TM_abort ();
        ... transaction code...
        __TM_end ();
        break;
      }
    else
      {
        /* Transaction State Failed.  Use locks if the transaction
           failure is "persistent" or we've tried too many times.  */
        if (num_retries-- <= 0
            || __TM_is_failure_persistent (TM_buff))
          {
            acquire_lock (lock);
            ... non transactional fallback path...
            release_lock (lock);
            break;
          }
      }
  }