Storage Layout#

Note that the definitions of the macros in this table which are sizes or alignments measured in bits do not need to be constant. They can be C expressions that refer to static variables, such as the target_flags. See Run-time Target Specification.

BITS_BIG_ENDIAN#

Define this macro to have the value 1 if the most significant bit in a byte has the lowest number; otherwise define it to have the value zero. This means that bit-field instructions count from the most significant bit. If the machine has no bit-field instructions, then this must still be defined, but it doesn’t matter which value it is defined to. This macro need not be a constant.

This macro does not affect the way structure fields are packed into bytes or words; that is controlled by BYTES_BIG_ENDIAN.

BYTES_BIG_ENDIAN#: Define this macro to have the value 1 if the most significant byte in a word has the lowest number. This macro need not be a constant.

WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN#: Define this macro to have the value 1 if, in a multiword object, the most significant word has the lowest number. This applies to both memory locations and registers; see REG_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN if the order of words in memory is not the same as the order in registers. This macro need not be a constant.

REG_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN#: On some machines, the order of words in a multiword object differs between registers in memory. In such a situation, define this macro to describe the order of words in a register. The macro WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN controls the order of words in memory.

FLOAT_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN#

Define this macro to have the value 1 if DFmode, XFmode or TFmode floating point numbers are stored in memory with the word containing the sign bit at the lowest address; otherwise define it to have the value 0. This macro need not be a constant.

You need not define this macro if the ordering is the same as for multi-word integers.

BITS_PER_WORD#: Number of bits in a word. If you do not define this macro, the default is BITS_PER_UNIT * UNITS_PER_WORD.

MAX_BITS_PER_WORD#: Maximum number of bits in a word. If this is undefined, the default is BITS_PER_WORD. Otherwise, it is the constant value that is the largest value that BITS_PER_WORD can have at run-time.

UNITS_PER_WORD#: Number of storage units in a word; normally the size of a general-purpose register, a power of two from 1 or 8.

MIN_UNITS_PER_WORD#: Minimum number of units in a word. If this is undefined, the default is UNITS_PER_WORD. Otherwise, it is the constant value that is the smallest value that UNITS_PER_WORD can have at run-time.

POINTER_SIZE#: Width of a pointer, in bits. You must specify a value no wider than the width of Pmode. If it is not equal to the width of Pmode, you must define POINTERS_EXTEND_UNSIGNED. If you do not specify a value the default is BITS_PER_WORD.

POINTERS_EXTEND_UNSIGNED#

A C expression that determines how pointers should be extended from ptr_mode to either Pmode or word_mode. It is greater than zero if pointers should be zero-extended, zero if they should be sign-extended, and negative if some other sort of conversion is needed. In the last case, the extension is done by the target’s ptr_extend instruction.

You need not define this macro if the ptr_mode, Pmode and word_mode are all the same width.

PROMOTE_MODE(m, unsignedp, type)#

A macro to update m and unsignedp when an object whose type is type and which has the specified mode and signedness is to be stored in a register. This macro is only called when type is a scalar type.

On most RISC machines, which only have operations that operate on a full register, define this macro to set m to word_mode if m is an integer mode narrower than BITS_PER_WORD. In most cases, only integer modes should be widened because wider-precision floating-point operations are usually more expensive than their narrower counterparts.

For most machines, the macro definition does not change unsignedp. However, some machines, have instructions that preferentially handle either signed or unsigned quantities of certain modes. For example, on the DEC Alpha, 32-bit loads from memory and 32-bit add instructions sign-extend the result to 64 bits. On such machines, set unsignedp according to which kind of extension is more efficient.

Do not define this macro if it would never modify m.

enum flt_eval_method TARGET_C_EXCESS_PRECISION(enum excess_precision_type type)#: Return a value, with the same meaning as the C99 macro FLT_EVAL_METHOD that describes which excess precision should be applied. type is either EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_IMPLICIT, EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FAST, EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_STANDARD, or EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FLOAT16. For EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_IMPLICIT, the target should return which precision and range operations will be implictly evaluated in regardless of the excess precision explicitly added. For EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_STANDARD, EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FLOAT16, and EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FAST, the target should return the explicit excess precision that should be added depending on the value set for -fexcess-precision=[standard|fast|16]. Note that unpredictable explicit excess precision does not make sense, so a target should never return FLT_EVAL_METHOD_UNPREDICTABLE when type is EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_STANDARD, EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FLOAT16 or EXCESS_PRECISION_TYPE_FAST.

Return a value, with the same meaning as the C99 macro FLT_EVAL_METHOD that describes which excess precision should be applied.

machine_mode TARGET_PROMOTE_FUNCTION_MODE(const_tree type, machine_mode mode, int *punsignedp, const_tree funtype, int for_return)#

Like PROMOTE_MODE, but it is applied to outgoing function arguments or function return values. The target hook should return the new mode and possibly change *punsignedp if the promotion should change signedness. This function is called only for scalar or pointer types.

for_return allows to distinguish the promotion of arguments and return values. If it is 1, a return value is being promoted and TARGET_FUNCTION_VALUE must perform the same promotions done here. If it is 2, the returned mode should be that of the register in which an incoming parameter is copied, or the outgoing result is computed; then the hook should return the same mode as promote_mode, though the signedness may be different.

type can be NULL when promoting function arguments of libcalls.

The default is to not promote arguments and return values. You can also define the hook to default_promote_function_mode_always_promote if you would like to apply the same rules given by PROMOTE_MODE.

PARM_BOUNDARY#: Normal alignment required for function parameters on the stack, in bits. All stack parameters receive at least this much alignment regardless of data type. On most machines, this is the same as the size of an integer.

STACK_BOUNDARY#: Define this macro to the minimum alignment enforced by hardware for the stack pointer on this machine. The definition is a C expression for the desired alignment (measured in bits). This value is used as a default if PREFERRED_STACK_BOUNDARY is not defined. On most machines, this should be the same as PARM_BOUNDARY.

PREFERRED_STACK_BOUNDARY#: Define this macro if you wish to preserve a certain alignment for the stack pointer, greater than what the hardware enforces. The definition is a C expression for the desired alignment (measured in bits). This macro must evaluate to a value equal to or larger than STACK_BOUNDARY.

INCOMING_STACK_BOUNDARY#: Define this macro if the incoming stack boundary may be different from PREFERRED_STACK_BOUNDARY. This macro must evaluate to a value equal to or larger than STACK_BOUNDARY.

FUNCTION_BOUNDARY#: Alignment required for a function entry point, in bits.

BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT#: Biggest alignment that any data type can require on this machine, in bits. Note that this is not the biggest alignment that is supported, just the biggest alignment that, when violated, may cause a fault.

HOST_WIDE_INT TARGET_ABSOLUTE_BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT#: If defined, this target hook specifies the absolute biggest alignment that a type or variable can have on this machine, otherwise, BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT is used.

MALLOC_ABI_ALIGNMENT#: Alignment, in bits, a C conformant malloc implementation has to provide. If not defined, the default value is BITS_PER_WORD.

ATTRIBUTE_ALIGNED_VALUE#: Alignment used by the __attribute__ ((aligned)) construct. If not defined, the default value is BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT.

MINIMUM_ATOMIC_ALIGNMENT#: If defined, the smallest alignment, in bits, that can be given to an object that can be referenced in one operation, without disturbing any nearby object. Normally, this is BITS_PER_UNIT, but may be larger on machines that don’t have byte or half-word store operations.

BIGGEST_FIELD_ALIGNMENT#: Biggest alignment that any structure or union field can require on this machine, in bits. If defined, this overrides BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT for structure and union fields only, unless the field alignment has been set by the __attribute__ ((aligned (n))) construct.

ADJUST_FIELD_ALIGN(field, type, computed)#: An expression for the alignment of a structure field field of type type if the alignment computed in the usual way (including applying of BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT and BIGGEST_FIELD_ALIGNMENT to the alignment) is computed. It overrides alignment only if the field alignment has not been set by the __attribute__ ((aligned (n))) construct. Note that field may be NULL_TREE in case we just query for the minimum alignment of a field of type type in structure context.

MAX_STACK_ALIGNMENT#

Biggest stack alignment guaranteed by the backend. Use this macro to specify the maximum alignment of a variable on stack.

If not defined, the default value is STACK_BOUNDARY.

Todo

The default should be PREFERRED_STACK_BOUNDARY. But the fix for PR 32893 indicates that we can only guarantee maximum stack alignment on stack up to STACK_BOUNDARY, not PREFERRED_STACK_BOUNDARY, if stack alignment isn’t supported.

MAX_OFILE_ALIGNMENT#

Biggest alignment supported by the object file format of this machine. Use this macro to limit the alignment which can be specified using the __attribute__ ((aligned (n))) construct for functions and objects with static storage duration. The alignment of automatic objects may exceed the object file format maximum up to the maximum supported by GCC. If not defined, the default value is BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT.

On systems that use ELF, the default (in config/elfos.h) is the largest supported 32-bit ELF section alignment representable on a 32-bit host e.g. (((uint64_t) 1 << 28) * 8). On 32-bit ELF the largest supported section alignment in bits is (0x80000000 * 8), but this is not representable on 32-bit hosts.

void TARGET_LOWER_LOCAL_DECL_ALIGNMENT(tree decl)#: Define this hook to lower alignment of local, parm or result decl (decl).

HOST_WIDE_INT TARGET_STATIC_RTX_ALIGNMENT(machine_mode mode)#: This hook returns the preferred alignment in bits for a statically-allocated rtx, such as a constant pool entry. mode is the mode of the rtx. The default implementation returns GET_MODE_ALIGNMENT (mode).

DATA_ALIGNMENT(type, basic_align)#

If defined, a C expression to compute the alignment for a variable in the static store. type is the data type, and basic_align is the alignment that the object would ordinarily have. The value of this macro is used instead of that alignment to align the object.

If this macro is not defined, then basic_align is used.

One use of this macro is to increase alignment of medium-size data to make it all fit in fewer cache lines. Another is to cause character arrays to be word-aligned so that strcpy calls that copy constants to character arrays can be done inline.

DATA_ABI_ALIGNMENT(type, basic_align)#

Similar to DATA_ALIGNMENT, but for the cases where the ABI mandates some alignment increase, instead of optimization only purposes. E.g.AMD x86-64 psABI says that variables with array type larger than 15 bytes must be aligned to 16 byte boundaries.

If this macro is not defined, then basic_align is used.

HOST_WIDE_INT TARGET_CONSTANT_ALIGNMENT(const_tree constant, HOST_WIDE_INT basic_align)#

This hook returns the alignment in bits of a constant that is being placed in memory. constant is the constant and basic_align is the alignment that the object would ordinarily have.

The default definition just returns basic_align.

The typical use of this hook is to increase alignment for string constants to be word aligned so that strcpy calls that copy constants can be done inline. The function constant_alignment_word_strings provides such a definition.

LOCAL_ALIGNMENT(type, basic_align)#

If defined, a C expression to compute the alignment for a variable in the local store. type is the data type, and basic_align is the alignment that the object would ordinarily have. The value of this macro is used instead of that alignment to align the object.

If this macro is not defined, then basic_align is used.

One use of this macro is to increase alignment of medium-size data to make it all fit in fewer cache lines.

If the value of this macro has a type, it should be an unsigned type.

HOST_WIDE_INT TARGET_VECTOR_ALIGNMENT(const_tree type)#: This hook can be used to define the alignment for a vector of type type, in order to comply with a platform ABI. The default is to require natural alignment for vector types. The alignment returned by this hook must be a power-of-two multiple of the default alignment of the vector element type.

STACK_SLOT_ALIGNMENT(type, mode, basic_align)#

If defined, a C expression to compute the alignment for stack slot. type is the data type, mode is the widest mode available, and basic_align is the alignment that the slot would ordinarily have. The value of this macro is used instead of that alignment to align the slot.

If this macro is not defined, then basic_align is used when type is NULL. Otherwise, LOCAL_ALIGNMENT will be used.

This macro is to set alignment of stack slot to the maximum alignment of all possible modes which the slot may have.

If the value of this macro has a type, it should be an unsigned type.

LOCAL_DECL_ALIGNMENT(decl)#

If defined, a C expression to compute the alignment for a local variable decl.

If this macro is not defined, then LOCAL_ALIGNMENT (TREE_TYPE (decl), DECL_ALIGN (decl)) is used.

One use of this macro is to increase alignment of medium-size data to make it all fit in fewer cache lines.

If the value of this macro has a type, it should be an unsigned type.

MINIMUM_ALIGNMENT(exp, mode, align)#

If defined, a C expression to compute the minimum required alignment for dynamic stack realignment purposes for exp (a type or decl), mode, assuming normal alignment align.

If this macro is not defined, then align will be used.

EMPTY_FIELD_BOUNDARY#

Alignment in bits to be given to a structure bit-field that follows an empty field such as int : 0;.

If PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS is true, it overrides this macro.

STRUCTURE_SIZE_BOUNDARY#

Number of bits which any structure or union’s size must be a multiple of. Each structure or union’s size is rounded up to a multiple of this.

If you do not define this macro, the default is the same as BITS_PER_UNIT.

STRICT_ALIGNMENT#: Define this macro to be the value 1 if instructions will fail to work if given data not on the nominal alignment. If instructions will merely go slower in that case, define this macro as 0.

PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS#

Define this if you wish to imitate the way many other C compilers handle alignment of bit-fields and the structures that contain them.

The behavior is that the type written for a named bit-field (int, short, or other integer type) imposes an alignment for the entire structure, as if the structure really did contain an ordinary field of that type. In addition, the bit-field is placed within the structure so that it would fit within such a field, not crossing a boundary for it.

Thus, on most machines, a named bit-field whose type is written as int would not cross a four-byte boundary, and would force four-byte alignment for the whole structure. (The alignment used may not be four bytes; it is controlled by the other alignment parameters.)

An unnamed bit-field will not affect the alignment of the containing structure.

If the macro is defined, its definition should be a C expression; a nonzero value for the expression enables this behavior.

Note that if this macro is not defined, or its value is zero, some bit-fields may cross more than one alignment boundary. The compiler can support such references if there are insv, extv, and extzv insns that can directly reference memory.

The other known way of making bit-fields work is to define STRUCTURE_SIZE_BOUNDARY as large as BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT. Then every structure can be accessed with fullwords.

Unless the machine has bit-field instructions or you define STRUCTURE_SIZE_BOUNDARY that way, you must define PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS to have a nonzero value.

If your aim is to make GCC use the same conventions for laying out bit-fields as are used by another compiler, here is how to investigate what the other compiler does. Compile and run this program:

struct foo1
{
  char x;
  char :0;
  char y;
};

struct foo2
{
  char x;
  int :0;
  char y;
};

main ()
{
  printf ("Size of foo1 is %d\n",
          sizeof (struct foo1));
  printf ("Size of foo2 is %d\n",
          sizeof (struct foo2));
  exit (0);
}

If this prints 2 and 5, then the compiler’s behavior is what you would get from PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS.

BITFIELD_NBYTES_LIMITED#: Like PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS except that its effect is limited to aligning a bit-field within the structure.

bool TARGET_ALIGN_ANON_BITFIELD(void)#: When PCC_BITFIELD_TYPE_MATTERS is true this hook will determine whether unnamed bitfields affect the alignment of the containing structure. The hook should return true if the structure should inherit the alignment requirements of an unnamed bitfield’s type.

bool TARGET_NARROW_VOLATILE_BITFIELD(void)#

This target hook should return true if accesses to volatile bitfields should use the narrowest mode possible. It should return false if these accesses should use the bitfield container type.

The default is false.

bool TARGET_MEMBER_TYPE_FORCES_BLK(const_tree field, machine_mode mode)#

Return true if a structure, union or array containing field should be accessed using BLKMODE.

If field is the only field in the structure, mode is its mode, otherwise mode is VOIDmode. mode is provided in the case where structures of one field would require the structure’s mode to retain the field’s mode.

Normally, this is not needed.

ROUND_TYPE_ALIGN(type, computed, specified)#

Define this macro as an expression for the alignment of a type (given by type as a tree node) if the alignment computed in the usual way is computed and the alignment explicitly specified was specified.

The default is to use specified if it is larger; otherwise, use the smaller of computed and BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT

MAX_FIXED_MODE_SIZE#: An integer expression for the size in bits of the largest integer machine mode that should actually be used. All integer machine modes of this size or smaller can be used for structures and unions with the appropriate sizes. If this macro is undefined, GET_MODE_BITSIZE (DImode) is assumed.

STACK_SAVEAREA_MODE(save_level)#

If defined, an expression of type machine_mode that specifies the mode of the save area operand of a save_stack_level named pattern (see Standard Pattern Names For Generation). save_level is one of SAVE_BLOCK, SAVE_FUNCTION, or SAVE_NONLOCAL and selects which of the three named patterns is having its mode specified.

You need not define this macro if it always returns Pmode. You would most commonly define this macro if the save_stack_level patterns need to support both a 32- and a 64-bit mode.

STACK_SIZE_MODE#

If defined, an expression of type machine_mode that specifies the mode of the size increment operand of an allocate_stack named pattern (see Standard Pattern Names For Generation).

You need not define this macro if it always returns word_mode. You would most commonly define this macro if the allocate_stack pattern needs to support both a 32- and a 64-bit mode.

scalar_int_mode TARGET_LIBGCC_CMP_RETURN_MODE(void)#: This target hook should return the mode to be used for the return value of compare instructions expanded to libgcc calls. If not defined word_mode is returned which is the right choice for a majority of targets.

scalar_int_mode TARGET_LIBGCC_SHIFT_COUNT_MODE(void)#: This target hook should return the mode to be used for the shift count operand of shift instructions expanded to libgcc calls. If not defined word_mode is returned which is the right choice for a majority of targets.

scalar_int_mode TARGET_UNWIND_WORD_MODE(void)#: Return machine mode to be used for _Unwind_Word type. The default is to use word_mode.

bool TARGET_MS_BITFIELD_LAYOUT_P(const_tree record_type)#

This target hook returns true if bit-fields in the given record_type are to be laid out following the rules of Microsoft Visual C/C++, namely: (i) a bit-field won’t share the same storage unit with the previous bit-field if their underlying types have different sizes, and the bit-field will be aligned to the highest alignment of the underlying types of itself and of the previous bit-field; (ii) a zero-sized bit-field will affect the alignment of the whole enclosing structure, even if it is unnamed; except that (iii) a zero-sized bit-field will be disregarded unless it follows another bit-field of nonzero size. If this hook returns true, other macros that control bit-field layout are ignored.

When a bit-field is inserted into a packed record, the whole size of the underlying type is used by one or more same-size adjacent bit-fields (that is, if its long:3, 32 bits is used in the record, and any additional adjacent long bit-fields are packed into the same chunk of 32 bits. However, if the size changes, a new field of that size is allocated). In an unpacked record, this is the same as using alignment, but not equivalent when packing.

If both MS bit-fields and __attribute__((packed)) are used, the latter will take precedence. If __attribute__((packed)) is used on a single field when MS bit-fields are in use, it will take precedence for that field, but the alignment of the rest of the structure may affect its placement.

bool TARGET_DECIMAL_FLOAT_SUPPORTED_P(void)#: Returns true if the target supports decimal floating point.

bool TARGET_FIXED_POINT_SUPPORTED_P(void)#: Returns true if the target supports fixed-point arithmetic.

void TARGET_EXPAND_TO_RTL_HOOK(void)#: This hook is called just before expansion into rtl, allowing the target to perform additional initializations or analysis before the expansion. For example, the rs6000 port uses it to allocate a scratch stack slot for use in copying SDmode values between memory and floating point registers whenever the function being expanded has any SDmode usage.

void TARGET_INSTANTIATE_DECLS(void)#: This hook allows the backend to perform additional instantiations on rtl that are not actually in any insns yet, but will be later.

const char *TARGET_MANGLE_TYPE(const_tree type)#

If your target defines any fundamental types, or any types your target uses should be mangled differently from the default, define this hook to return the appropriate encoding for these types as part of a C++ mangled name. The type argument is the tree structure representing the type to be mangled. The hook may be applied to trees which are not target-specific fundamental types; it should return NULL for all such types, as well as arguments it does not recognize. If the return value is not NULL, it must point to a statically-allocated string constant.

Target-specific fundamental types might be new fundamental types or qualified versions of ordinary fundamental types. Encode new fundamental types as u nname, where name is the name used for the type in source code, and n is the length of name in decimal. Encode qualified versions of ordinary types as Unnamecode, where name is the name used for the type qualifier in source code, n is the length of name as above, and code is the code used to represent the unqualified version of this type. (See write_builtin_type in cp/mangle.cc for the list of codes.) In both cases the spaces are for clarity; do not include any spaces in your string.

This hook is applied to types prior to typedef resolution. If the mangled name for a particular type depends only on that type’s main variant, you can perform typedef resolution yourself using TYPE_MAIN_VARIANT before mangling.

The default version of this hook always returns NULL, which is appropriate for a target that does not define any new fundamental types.