MCA fails to parse Intel syntax movsx instructions

[TiborGY]

See: https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/z4nWWTj6E
Trying to analyze some assembly from gfortran results in errors when MCA sees some movsx instructions:

<source>:105:2: error: invalid operand for instruction
        movsx   rax, r10d
        ^
<source>:253:2: error: invalid operand for instruction
        movsx   rdi, esi

[topperc]

llvm-mca probably expects AT&T syntax by default. I'm on my phone so I cant really look at the godbolt link.

[TiborGY]

llvm-mca probably expects AT&T syntax by default. I'm on my phone so I cant really look at the godbolt link.

Confirmed working with AT&T. Still, this appears to be a movsx specific parsing bug, as so far in general Intel syntax has been working fine with MCA.

[topperc]

llvm-mca probably expects AT&T syntax by default. I'm on my phone so I cant really look at the godbolt link.

Confirmed working with AT&T. Still, this appears to be a movsx specific parsing bug, as so far in general Intel syntax has been working fine with MCA.

I wonder if it appears to work with Intel because the registers are usually the same size, but source and dest are swapped. Movsx is special because the source and dest are different sizes.

[boomanaiden154]

I'm pretty sure Craig is right. llvm-mca defaults to ATT Syntax and only works with Intel syntax when you use a .intel_syntax directive at the top of the assembly file. Adding that doesn't exactly fix the problem though...

It looks like there might be a subtle incompatibility between how gfortran emits intel style assembly and how the LLVM MC layer parses it. Taking the following assembly snippet:

movsx   rax, r10d

And running through llvm-mc:

llvm-mc --assemble /test.s --show-encoding

Produces the following:

/test2.s:1:12: error: invalid operand for instruction
movsx rax, r10d
           ^~~~

Writing it in ATT Syntax and then assembling in llvm-mc produces the encoding as 4963C2. Disassembling that with llvm-mc produces movsxd rax, r10d, and running the following snippet through llvm-mca:

.intel_syntax
movsxd	rax, r10d

With the following invocation:

llvm-mca -mcpu=znver3 /test.s

produces normal output.

I'm not exactly sure who is in the right here. Either LLVM should be accepting of movsx rax, r10d in Intel syntax, gfortran should be emitting movsxd when working with 64-bit registers, or maybe both.

Interestingly enough, it also seems like we only have APX test coverage for the MC layer for movsxd in Intel syntax. We should probably rectify that.

[TiborGY]

Wait, so both movsx rax, r10d and movsxd rax, r10d produce the same machine code bytes? Is there some kind of non-bijectiveness in the x86-64 spec regarding this group of instructions that prevents llvm-mc from disassembling 4963C2 into movsx ?

[TiborGY]

Scratch that, based on https://www.felixcloutier.com/x86/movsx:movsxd the 63 opcode definitely means movsxd. So to me it seems that llvm-mc is silently replacing movsx with movsxd when assembling movsx rax, r10d.
That feels strange.

[topperc]

Scratch that, based on https://www.felixcloutier.com/x86/movsx:movsxd the 63 opcode definitely means movsxd. So to me it seems that llvm-mc is silently replacing movsx with movsxd when assembling movsx rax, r10d. That feels strange.

llvm-mc doesn't accept movsx rax, r10d in Intel syntax, but binutils does. llvm-mc will accept movsxd rax, r10d in Intel syntax. llvm-mc will accept movsx %r10d, %rax or movslq %r10d, %rax in AT&T syntax.