**No arithmetic operations are added or required to be added.** SV is purely a parallelism API and consequentially is suitable for use even with RV32E.
-Talk slides: <http://hands.com/~lkcl/simple_v_chennai_2018.pdf>
+* Talk slides: <http://hands.com/~lkcl/simple_v_chennai_2018.pdf>
+* Specification: now move to its own page: [[specification]]
[[!toc ]]
when vectorisation is detected), all the way up to full supercomputing
level all-hardware parallelism. Options are covered in the Appendix.
-# CSRs <a name="csrs"></a>
-
-There are two CSR tables needed to create lookup tables which are used at
-the register decode phase.
-
-* Integer Register N is Vector
-* Integer Register N is of implicit bitwidth M (M=default,8,16,32,64)
-* Floating-point Register N is Vector of length M: r(N) -> r(N..N+M-1)
-* Floating-point Register N is of implicit bitwidth M (M=default,8,16,32,64)
-* Integer Register N is a Predication Register (note: a key-value store)
-
-Also (see Appendix, "Context Switch Example") it may turn out to be important
-to have a separate (smaller) set of CSRs for M-Mode (and S-Mode) so that
-Vectorised LOAD / STORE may be used to load and store multiple registers:
-something that is missing from the Base RV ISA.
-
-Notes:
-
-* for the purposes of LOAD / STORE, Integer Registers which are
- marked as a Vector will result in a Vector LOAD / STORE.
-* Vector Lengths are *not* the same as vsetl but are an integral part
- of vsetl.
-* Actual vector length is *multipled* by how many blocks of length
- "bitwidth" may fit into an XLEN-sized register file.
-* Predication is a key-value store due to the implicit referencing,
- as opposed to having the predicate register explicitly in the instruction.
-* Whilst the predication CSR is a key-value store it *generates* easier-to-use
- state information.
-* TODO: assess whether the same technique could be applied to the other
- Vector CSRs, particularly as pointed out in Section 17.8 (Draft RV 0.4,
- V2.3-Draft ISA Reference) it becomes possible to greatly reduce state
- needed for context-switches (empty slots need never be stored).
-
-## Predication CSR <a name="predication_csr_table"></a>
-
-The Predication CSR is a key-value store indicating whether, if a given
-destination register (integer or floating-point) is referred to in an
-instruction, it is to be predicated. However it is important to note
-that the *actual* register is *different* from the one that ends up
-being used, due to the level of indirection through the lookup table.
-This includes (in the future) redirecting to a *second* bank of
-integer registers (as a future option)
-
-* regidx is the actual register that in combination with the
- i/f flag, if that integer or floating-point register is referred to,
- results in the lookup table being referenced to find the predication
- mask to use on the operation in which that (regidx) register has
- been used
-* predidx (in combination with the bank bit in the future) is the
- *actual* register to be used for the predication mask. Note:
- in effect predidx is actually a 6-bit register address, as the bank
- bit is the MSB (and is nominally set to zero for now).
-* inv indicates that the predication mask bits are to be inverted
- prior to use *without* actually modifying the contents of the
- register itself.
-* zeroing is either 1 or 0, and if set to 1, the operation must
- place zeros in any element position where the predication mask is
- set to zero. If zeroing is set to 0, unpredicated elements *must*
- be left alone. Some microarchitectures may choose to interpret
- this as skipping the operation entirely. Others which wish to
- stick more closely to a SIMD architecture may choose instead to
- interpret unpredicated elements as an internal "copy element"
- operation (which would be necessary in SIMD microarchitectures
- that perform register-renaming)
-
-| PrCSR | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | (9..5) | (4..0) |
-| ----- | - | - | - | - | ------- | ------- |
-| 0 | bank0 | zero0 | inv0 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| 1 | bank1 | zero1 | inv1 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| .. | bank.. | zero.. | inv.. | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| 15 | bank15 | zero15 | inv15 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-
-The Predication CSR Table is a key-value store, so implementation-wise
-it will be faster to turn the table around (maintain topologically
-equivalent state):
-
- struct pred {
- bool zero;
- bool inv;
- bool bank; // 0 for now, 1=rsvd
- bool enabled;
- int predidx; // redirection: actual int register to use
- }
-
- struct pred fp_pred_reg[32]; // 64 in future (bank=1)
- struct pred int_pred_reg[32]; // 64 in future (bank=1)
-
- for (i = 0; i < 16; i++)
- tb = int_pred_reg if CSRpred[i].type == 0 else fp_pred_reg;
- idx = CSRpred[i].regidx
- tb[idx].zero = CSRpred[i].zero
- tb[idx].inv = CSRpred[i].inv
- tb[idx].bank = CSRpred[i].bank
- tb[idx].predidx = CSRpred[i].predidx
- tb[idx].enabled = true
-
-So when an operation is to be predicated, it is the internal state that
-is used. In Section 6.4.2 of Hwacha's Manual (EECS-2015-262) the following
-pseudo-code for operations is given, where p is the explicit (direct)
-reference to the predication register to be used:
-
- for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
- if ([!]preg[p][i])
- (d ? vreg[rd][i] : sreg[rd]) =
- iop(s1 ? vreg[rs1][i] : sreg[rs1],
- s2 ? vreg[rs2][i] : sreg[rs2]); // for insts with 2 inputs
-
-This instead becomes an *indirect* reference using the *internal* state
-table generated from the Predication CSR key-value store, which iwws used
-as follows.
-
- if type(iop) == INT:
- preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
- else:
- preg = fp_pred_reg[rd]
-
- for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
- predidx = preg[rd].predidx; // the indirection takes place HERE
- if (!preg[rd].enabled)
- predicate = ~0x0; // all parallel ops enabled
- else:
- predicate = intregfile[predidx]; // get actual reg contents HERE
- if (preg[rd].inv) // invert if requested
- predicate = ~predicate;
- if (predicate && (1<<i))
- (d ? regfile[rd+i] : regfile[rd]) =
- iop(s1 ? regfile[rs1+i] : regfile[rs1],
- s2 ? regfile[rs2+i] : regfile[rs2]); // for insts with 2 inputs
- else if (preg[rd].zero)
- // TODO: place zero in dest reg
-
-Note:
-
-* d, s1 and s2 are booleans indicating whether destination,
- source1 and source2 are vector or scalar
-* key-value CSR-redirection of rd, rs1 and rs2 have NOT been included
- above, for clarity. rd, rs1 and rs2 all also must ALSO go through
- register-level redirection (from the Register CSR table) if they are
- vectors.
-
-If written as a function, obtaining the predication mask (but not whether
-zeroing takes place) may be done as follows:
-
- def get_pred_val(bool is_fp_op, int reg):
- tb = int_pred if is_fp_op else fp_pred
- if (!tb[reg].enabled):
- return ~0x0 // all ops enabled
- predidx = tb[reg].predidx // redirection occurs HERE
- predicate = intreg[predidx] // actual predicate HERE
- if (tb[reg].inv):
- predicate = ~predicate // invert ALL bits
- return predicate
-
-## MAXVECTORLENGTH
-
-MAXVECTORLENGTH is the same concept as MVL in RVV. However in Simple-V,
-given that its primary (base, unextended) purpose is for 3D, Video and
-other purposes (not requiring supercomputing capability), it makes sense
-to limit MAXVECTORDEPTH to the regfile bitwidth (32 for RV32, 64 for RV64
-and so on).
-
-The reason for setting this limit is so that predication registers, when
-marked as such, may fit into a single register as opposed to fanning out
-over several registers. This keeps the implementation a little simpler.
-Note also (as also described in the VSETVL section) that the *minimum*
-for MAXVECTORDEPTH must be the total number of registers (15 for RV32E
-and 31 for RV32 or RV64).
-
-Note that RVV on top of Simple-V may choose to over-ride this decision.
-
-## Register CSR key-value (CAM) table
-
-The purpose of the Register CSR table is four-fold:
-
-* To mark integer and floating-point registers as requiring "redirection"
- if it is ever used as a source or destination in any given operation.
- This involves a level of indirection through a 5-to-6-bit lookup table
- (where the 6th bit - bank - is always set to 0 for now).
-* To indicate whether, after redirection through the lookup table, the
- register is a vector (or remains a scalar).
-* To over-ride the implicit or explicit bitwidth that the operation would
- normally give the register.
-* To indicate if the register is to be interpreted as "packed" (SIMD)
- i.e. containing multiple contiguous elements of size equal to "bitwidth".
-
-| RgCSR | 15 | 14 | 13 | (12..11) | 10 | (9..5) | (4..0) |
-| ----- | - | - | - | - | - | ------- | ------- |
-| 0 | simd0 | bank0 | isvec0 | vew0 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| 1 | simd1 | bank1 | isvec1 | vew1 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| .. | simd.. | bank.. | isvec.. | vew.. | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-| 15 | simd15 | bank15 | isvec15 | vew15 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
-
-vew may be one of the following (giving a table "bytestable", used below):
-
-| vew | bitwidth |
-| --- | --------- |
-| 00 | default |
-| 01 | default/2 |
-| 10 | 8 |
-| 11 | 16 |
-
-Extending this table (with extra bits) is covered in the section
-"Implementing RVV on top of Simple-V".
-
-As the above table is a CAM (key-value store) it may be appropriate
-to expand it as follows:
-
- struct vectorised fp_vec[32], int_vec[32]; // 64 in future
-
- for (i = 0; i < 16; i++) // 16 CSRs?
- tb = int_vec if CSRvec[i].type == 0 else fp_vec
- idx = CSRvec[i].regkey // INT/FP src/dst reg in opcode
- tb[idx].elwidth = CSRvec[i].elwidth
- tb[idx].regidx = CSRvec[i].regidx // indirection
- tb[idx].isvector = CSRvec[i].isvector // 0=scalar
- tb[idx].packed = CSRvec[i].packed // SIMD or not
- tb[idx].bank = CSRvec[i].bank // 0 (1=rsvd)
-
-TODO: move elsewhere
-
- # TODO: use elsewhere (retire for now)
- vew = CSRbitwidth[rs1]
- if (vew == 0)
- bytesperreg = (XLEN/8) # or FLEN as appropriate
- elif (vew == 1)
- bytesperreg = (XLEN/4) # or FLEN/2 as appropriate
- else:
- bytesperreg = bytestable[vew] # 8 or 16
- simdmult = (XLEN/8) / bytesperreg # or FLEN as appropriate
- vlen = CSRvectorlen[rs1] * simdmult
- CSRvlength = MIN(MIN(vlen, MAXVECTORDEPTH), rs2)
-
-The reason for multiplying the vector length by the number of SIMD elements
-(in each individual register) is so that each SIMD element may optionally be
-predicated.
-
-An example of how to subdivide the register file when bitwidth != default
-is given in the section "Bitwidth Virtual Register Reordering".
-
-# Instructions
-
-Despite being a 98% complete and accurate topological remap of RVV
-concepts and functionality, the only instructions needed are VSETVL
-and VGETVL. *All* RVV instructions can be re-mapped, however xBitManip
-becomes a critical dependency for efficient manipulation of predication
-masks (as a bit-field). Despite the removal of all but VSETVL and VGETVL,
-*all instructions from RVV are topologically re-mapped and retain their
-complete functionality, intact*.
-
-Three instructions, VSELECT, VCLIP and VCLIPI, do not have RV Standard
-equivalents, so are left out of Simple-V. VSELECT could be included if
-there existed a MV.X instruction in RV (MV.X is a hypothetical
-non-immediate variant of MV that would allow another register to
-specify which register was to be copied). Note that if any of these three
-instructions are added to any given RV extension, their functionality
-will be inherently parallelised.
-
-## Instruction Format
-
-The instruction format for Simple-V does not actually have *any* explicit
-compare operations, *any* arithmetic, floating point or *any*
-memory instructions.
-Instead it *overloads* pre-existing branch operations into predicated
-variants, and implicitly overloads arithmetic operations, MV,
-FCVT, and LOAD/STORE
-depending on CSR configurations for bitwidth and
-predication. **Everything** becomes parallelised. *This includes
-Compressed instructions* as well as any
-future instructions and Custom Extensions.
-
-* For analysis of RVV see [[v_comparative_analysis]] which begins to
- outline topologically-equivalent mappings of instructions
-* Also see Appendix "Retro-fitting Predication into branch-explicit ISA"
- for format of Branch opcodes.
-
-**TODO**: *analyse and decide whether the implicit nature of predication
-as proposed is or is not a lot of hassle, and if explicit prefixes are
-a better idea instead. Parallelism therefore effectively may end up
-as always being 64-bit opcodes (32 for the prefix, 32 for the instruction)
-with some opportunities for to use Compressed bringing it down to 48.
-Also to consider is whether one or both of the last two remaining Compressed
-instruction codes in Quadrant 1 could be used as a parallelism prefix,
-bringing parallelised opcodes down to 32-bit (when combined with C)
-and having the benefit of being explicit.*
-
-## VSETVL
-
-NOTE TODO: 28may2018: VSETVL may need to be *really* different from RVV,
-with the instruction format remaining the same.
-
-VSETVL is slightly different from RVV in that the minimum vector length
-is required to be at least the number of registers in the register file,
-and no more than XLEN. This allows vector LOAD/STORE to be used to switch
-the entire bank of registers using a single instruction (see Appendix,
-"Context Switch Example"). The reason for limiting VSETVL to XLEN is
-down to the fact that predication bits fit into a single register of length
-XLEN bits.
-
-The second change is that when VSETVL is requested to be stored
-into x0, it is *ignored* silently (VSETVL x0, x5, #4)
-
-The third change is that there is an additional immediate added to VSETVL,
-to which VL is set after first going through MIN-filtering.
-So When using the "vsetl rs1, rs2, #vlen" instruction, it becomes:
-
- VL = MIN(MIN(vlen, MAXVECTORDEPTH), rs2)
-
-where RegfileLen <= MAXVECTORDEPTH < XLEN
-
-This has implication for the microarchitecture, as VL is required to be
-set (limits from MAXVECTORDEPTH notwithstanding) to the actual value
-requested in the #immediate parameter. RVV has the option to set VL
-to an arbitrary value that suits the conditions and the micro-architecture:
-SV does *not* permit that.
-
-The reason is so that if SV is to be used for a context-switch or as a
-substitute for LOAD/STORE-Multiple, the operation can be done with only
-2-3 instructions (setup of the CSRs, VSETVL x0, x0, #{regfilelen-1},
-single LD/ST operation). If VL does *not* get set to the register file
-length when VSETVL is called, then a software-loop would be needed.
-To avoid this need, VL *must* be set to exactly what is requested
-(limits notwithstanding).
-
-Therefore, in turn, unlike RVV, implementors *must* provide
-pseudo-parallelism (using sequential loops in hardware) if actual
-hardware-parallelism in the ALUs is not deployed. A hybrid is also
-permitted (as used in Broadcom's VideoCore-IV) however this must be
-*entirely* transparent to the ISA.
-
-## Branch Instruction:
-
-Branch operations use standard RV opcodes that are reinterpreted to
-be "predicate variants" in the instance where either of the two src
-registers are marked as vectors (isvector=1). When this reinterpretation
-is enabled the "immediate" field of the branch operation is taken to be a
-predication target register, rs3. The predicate target register rs3 is
-to be treated as a bitfield (up to a maximum of XLEN bits corresponding
-to a maximum of XLEN elements).
-
-If either of src1 or src2 are scalars (CSRvectorlen[src] == 0) the comparison
-goes ahead as vector-scalar or scalar-vector. Implementors should note that
-this could require considerable multi-porting of the register file in order
-to parallelise properly, so may have to involve the use of register cacheing
-and transparent copying (see Multiple-Banked Register File Architectures
-paper).
-
-In instances where no vectorisation is detected on either src registers
-the operation is treated as an absolutely standard scalar branch operation.
-
-This is the overloaded table for Integer-base Branch operations. Opcode
-(bits 6..0) is set in all cases to 1100011.
-
-[[!table data="""
-31 .. 25 |24 ... 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 .. 8 | 7 | 6 ... 0 |
-imm[12,10:5]| rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | imm[4:1] | imm[11] | opcode |
-7 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | BPR | predicate rs3 || BRANCH |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 000 | predicate rs3 || BEQ |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 001 | predicate rs3 || BNE |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 010 | predicate rs3 || rsvd |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 011 | predicate rs3 || rsvd |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 100 | predicate rs3 || BLT |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 101 | predicate rs3 || BGE |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 110 | predicate rs3 || BLTU |
-reserved | src2 | src1 | 111 | predicate rs3 || BGEU |
-"""]]
-
-Note that just as with the standard (scalar, non-predicated) branch
-operations, BLE, BGT, BLEU and BTGU may be synthesised by inverting
-src1 and src2.
-
-Below is the overloaded table for Floating-point Predication operations.
-Interestingly no change is needed to the instruction format because
-FP Compare already stores a 1 or a zero in its "rd" integer register
-target, i.e. it's not actually a Branch at all: it's a compare.
-The target needs to simply change to be a predication bitfield (done
-implicitly).
-
-As with
-Standard RVF/D/Q, Opcode (bits 6..0) is set in all cases to 1010011.
-Likewise Single-precision, fmt bits 26..25) is still set to 00.
-Double-precision is still set to 01, whilst Quad-precision
-appears not to have a definition in V2.3-Draft (but should be unaffected).
-
-It is however noted that an entry "FNE" (the opposite of FEQ) is missing,
-and whilst in ordinary branch code this is fine because the standard
-RVF compare can always be followed up with an integer BEQ or a BNE (or
-a compressed comparison to zero or non-zero), in predication terms that
-becomes more of an impact. To deal with this, SV's predication has
-had "invert" added to it.
-
-[[!table data="""
-31 .. 27| 26 .. 25 |24 ... 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 .. 7 | 6 ... 0 |
-funct5 | fmt | rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | rd | opcode |
-5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 7 |
-10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 010 | pred rs3 | FEQ |
-10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | **011**| pred rs3 | rsvd |
-10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 001 | pred rs3 | FLT |
-10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 000 | pred rs3 | FLE |
-"""]]
-
-Note (**TBD**): floating-point exceptions will need to be extended
-to cater for multiple exceptions (and statuses of the same). The
-usual approach is to have an array of status codes and bit-fields,
-and one exception, rather than throw separate exceptions for each
-Vector element.
-
-In Hwacha EECS-2015-262 Section 6.7.2 the following pseudocode is given
-for predicated compare operations of function "cmp":
-
- for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
- if ([!]preg[p][i])
- preg[pd][i] = cmp(s1 ? vreg[rs1][i] : sreg[rs1],
- s2 ? vreg[rs2][i] : sreg[rs2]);
-
-With associated predication, vector-length adjustments and so on,
-and temporarily ignoring bitwidth (which makes the comparisons more
-complex), this becomes:
-
- if I/F == INT: # integer type cmp
- preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
- reg = int_regfile
- else:
- preg = fp_pred_reg[rd]
- reg = fp_regfile
-
- s1 = reg_is_vectorised(src1);
- s2 = reg_is_vectorised(src2);
- if (!s2 && !s1) goto branch;
- for (int i = 0; i < VL; ++i)
- if (cmp(s1 ? reg[src1+i]:reg[src1],
- s2 ? reg[src2+i]:reg[src2])
- preg[rs3] |= 1<<i; # bitfield not vector
-
-Notes:
-
-* Predicated SIMD comparisons would break src1 and src2 further down
- into bitwidth-sized chunks (see Appendix "Bitwidth Virtual Register
- Reordering") setting Vector-Length times (number of SIMD elements) bits
- in Predicate Register rs3 as opposed to just Vector-Length bits.
-* Predicated Branches do not actually have an adjustment to the Program
- Counter, so all of bits 25 through 30 in every case are not needed.
-* There are plenty of reserved opcodes for which bits 25 through 30 could
- be put to good use if there is a suitable use-case.
- FLT and FLE may be inverted to FGT and FGE if needed by swapping
- src1 and src2 (likewise the integer counterparts).
-
-## Compressed Branch Instruction:
-
-Compressed Branch instructions are likewise re-interpreted as predicated
-2-register operations, with the result going into rs3. All the bits of
-the immediate are re-interpreted for different purposes, to extend the
-number of comparator operations to beyond the original specification,
-but also to cater for floating-point comparisons as well as integer ones.
-
-[[!table data="""
-15..13 | 12...10 | 9..7 | 6..5 | 4..2 | 1..0 | name |
-funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | | op | |
-3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |
-C.BPR | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F B | src2 | C1 | |
-110 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 0 | src2 | C1 | P.EQ |
-111 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 0 | src2 | C1 | P.NE |
-110 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 1 | src2 | C1 | P.LT |
-111 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 1 | src2 | C1 | P.LE |
-"""]]
-
-Notes:
-
-* Bits 5 13 14 and 15 make up the comparator type
-* Bit 6 indicates whether to use integer or floating-point comparisons
-* In both floating-point and integer cases there are four predication
- comparators: EQ/NEQ/LT/LE (with GT and GE being synthesised by inverting
- src1 and src2).
-
-## LOAD / STORE Instructions <a name="load_store"></a>
-
-For full analysis of topological adaptation of RVV LOAD/STORE
-see [[v_comparative_analysis]]. All three types (LD, LD.S and LD.X)
-may be implicitly overloaded into the one base RV LOAD instruction,
-and likewise for STORE.
-
-Revised LOAD:
-
-[[!table data="""
-31 | 30 | 29 25 | 24 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 7 | 6 0 |
-imm[11:0] |||| rs1 | funct3 | rd | opcode |
-1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
-? | s | rs2 | imm[4:0] | base | width | dest | LOAD |
-"""]]
-
-The exact same corresponding adaptation is also carried out on the single,
-double and quad precision floating-point LOAD-FP and STORE-FP operations,
-which fit the exact same instruction format. Thus all three types
-(unit, stride and indexed) may be fitted into FLW, FLD and FLQ,
-as well as FSW, FSD and FSQ.
-
-Notes:
-
-* LOAD remains functionally (topologically) identical to RVV LOAD
- (for both integer and floating-point variants).
-* Predication CSR-marking register is not explicitly shown in instruction, it's
- implicit based on the CSR predicate state for the rd (destination) register
-* rs2, the source, may *also be marked as a vector*, which implicitly
- is taken to indicate "Indexed Load" (LD.X)
-* Bit 30 indicates "element stride" or "constant-stride" (LD or LD.S)
-* Bit 31 is reserved (ideas under consideration: auto-increment)
-* **TODO**: include CSR SIMD bitwidth in the pseudo-code below.
-* **TODO**: clarify where width maps to elsize
-
-Pseudo-code (excludes CSR SIMD bitwidth for simplicity):
-
- if (unit-strided) stride = elsize;
- else stride = areg[as2]; // constant-strided
-
- preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
-
- for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
- if ([!]preg[rd] & 1<<i)
- for (int j=0; j<seglen+1; j++)
- {
- if CSRvectorised[rs2])
- offs = vreg[rs2+i]
- else
- offs = i*(seglen+1)*stride;
- vreg[rd+j][i] = mem[sreg[base] + offs + j*stride];
- }
-
-Taking CSR (SIMD) bitwidth into account involves using the vector
-length and register encoding according to the "Bitwidth Virtual Register
-Reordering" scheme shown in the Appendix (see function "regoffs").
-
-A similar instruction exists for STORE, with identical topological
-translation of all features. **TODO**
-
-## Compressed LOAD / STORE Instructions
-
-Compressed LOAD and STORE are of the same format, where bits 2-4 are
-a src register instead of dest:
-
-[[!table data="""
-15 13 | 12 10 | 9 7 | 6 5 | 4 2 | 1 0 |
-funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | rd0 | op |
-3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
-C.LW | offset[5:3] | base | offset[2|6] | dest | C0 |
-"""]]
-
-Unfortunately it is not possible to fit the full functionality
-of vectorised LOAD / STORE into C.LD / C.ST: the "X" variants (Indexed)
-require another operand (rs2) in addition to the operand width
-(which is also missing), offset, base, and src/dest.
-
-However a close approximation may be achieved by taking the top bit
-of the offset in each of the five types of LD (and ST), reducing the
-offset to 4 bits and utilising the 5th bit to indicate whether "stride"
-is to be enabled. In this way it is at least possible to introduce
-that functionality.
-
-(**TODO**: *assess whether the loss of one bit from offset is worth having
-"stride" capability.*)
-
-We also assume (including for the "stride" variant) that the "width"
-parameter, which is missing, is derived and implicit, just as it is
-with the standard Compressed LOAD/STORE instructions. For C.LW, C.LD
-and C.LQ, the width is implicitly 4, 8 and 16 respectively, whilst for
-C.FLW and C.FLD the width is implicitly 4 and 8 respectively.
-
-Interestingly we note that the Vectorised Simple-V variant of
-LOAD/STORE (Compressed and otherwise), due to it effectively using the
-standard register file(s), is the direct functional equivalent of
-standard load-multiple and store-multiple instructions found in other
-processors.
-
-In Section 12.3 riscv-isa manual V2.3-draft it is noted the comments on
-page 76, "For virtual memory systems some data accesses could be resident
-in physical memory and some not". The interesting question then arises:
-how does RVV deal with the exact same scenario?
-Expired U.S. Patent 5895501 (Filing Date Sep 3 1996) describes a method
-of detecting early page / segmentation faults and adjusting the TLB
-in advance, accordingly: other strategies are explored in the Appendix
-Section "Virtual Memory Page Faults".
-
-## Vectorised Copy/Move (and conversion) instructions
-
-There is a series of 2-operand instructions involving copying (and
-alteration): C.MV, FMV, FNEG, FABS, FCVT, FSGNJ. These operations all
-follow the same pattern, as it is *both* the source *and* destination
-predication masks that are taken into account. This is different from
-the three-operand arithmetic instructions, where the predication mask
-is taken from the *destination* register, and applied uniformly to the
-elements of the source register(s), element-for-element.
-
-### C.MV Instruction <a name="c_mv"></a>
-
-There is no MV instruction in RV however there is a C.MV instruction.
-It is used for copying integer-to-integer registers (vectorised FMV
-is used for copying floating-point).
-
-If either the source or the destination register are marked as vectors
-C.MV is reinterpreted to be a vectorised (multi-register) predicated
-move operation. The actual instruction's format does not change:
-
-[[!table data="""
-15 12 | 11 7 | 6 2 | 1 0 |
-funct4 | rd | rs | op |
-4 | 5 | 5 | 2 |
-C.MV | dest | src | C0 |
-"""]]
-
-A simplified version of the pseudocode for this operation is as follows:
-
- function op_mv(rd, rs) # MV not VMV!
- rd = int_vec[rd].isvector ? int_vec[rd].regidx : rd;
- rs = int_vec[rs].isvector ? int_vec[rs].regidx : rs;
- ps = get_pred_val(FALSE, rs); # predication on src
- pd = get_pred_val(FALSE, rd); # ... AND on dest
- for (int i = 0, int j = 0; i < VL && j < VL;):
- if (int_vec[rs].isvec) while (!(ps & 1<<i)) i++;
- if (int_vec[rd].isvec) while (!(pd & 1<<j)) j++;
- ireg[rd+j] <= ireg[rs+i];
- if (int_vec[rs].isvec) i++;
- if (int_vec[rd].isvec) j++;
-
-Note that:
-
-* elwidth (SIMD) is not covered above
-* ending the loop early in scalar cases (VINSERT, VEXTRACT) is also
- not covered
-
-There are several different instructions from RVV that are covered by
-this one opcode:
-
-[[!table data="""
-src | dest | predication | op |
-scalar | vector | none | VSPLAT |
-scalar | vector | destination | sparse VSPLAT |
-scalar | vector | 1-bit dest | VINSERT |
-vector | scalar | 1-bit? src | VEXTRACT |
-vector | vector | none | VCOPY |
-vector | vector | src | Vector Gather |
-vector | vector | dest | Vector Scatter |
-vector | vector | src & dest | Gather/Scatter |
-vector | vector | src == dest | sparse VCOPY |
-"""]]
-
-Also, VMERGE may be implemented as back-to-back (macro-op fused) C.MV
-operations with inversion on the src and dest predication for one of the
-two C.MV operations.
-
-Note that in the instance where the Compressed Extension is not implemented,
-MV may be used, but that is a pseudo-operation mapping to addi rd, x0, rs.
-Note that the behaviour is **different** from C.MV because with addi the
-predication mask to use is taken **only** from rd and is applied against
-all elements: rs[i] = rd[i].
### FMV, FNEG and FABS Instructions
--- /dev/null
+# Variable-width Variable-packed SIMD / Simple-V / Parallelism Extension Proposal
+
+Key insight: Simple-V is intended as an abstraction layer to provide
+a consistent "API" to parallelisation of existing *and future* operations.
+*Actual* internal hardware-level parallelism is *not* required, such
+that Simple-V may be viewed as providing a "compact" or "consolidated"
+means of issuing multiple near-identical arithmetic instructions to an
+instruction queue (FIFO), pending execution.
+
+*Actual* parallelism, if added independently of Simple-V in the form
+of Out-of-order restructuring (including parallel ALU lanes) or VLIW
+implementations, or SIMD, or anything else, would then benefit from
+the uniformity of a consistent API.
+
+**No arithmetic operations are added or required to be added.** SV is purely a parallelism API and consequentially is suitable for use even with RV32E.
+
+Talk slides: <http://hands.com/~lkcl/simple_v_chennai_2018.pdf>
+
+[[!toc ]]
+
+# Introduction
+
+# CSRs <a name="csrs"></a>
+
+There are two CSR tables needed to create lookup tables which are used at
+the register decode phase.
+
+## MAXVECTORLENGTH
+
+MAXVECTORLENGTH is the same concept as MVL in RVV. However in Simple-V,
+given that its primary (base, unextended) purpose is for 3D, Video and
+other purposes (not requiring supercomputing capability), it makes sense
+to limit MAXVECTORDEPTH to the regfile bitwidth (32 for RV32, 64 for RV64
+and so on).
+
+The reason for setting this limit is so that predication registers, when
+marked as such, may fit into a single register as opposed to fanning out
+over several registers. This keeps the implementation a little simpler.
+Note also (as also described in the VSETVL section) that the *minimum*
+for MAXVECTORDEPTH must be the total number of registers (15 for RV32E
+and 31 for RV32 or RV64).
+
+Note that RVV on top of Simple-V may choose to over-ride this decision.
+
+## MAXVECTORLENGTH
+
+MAXVECTORLENGTH is the same concept as MVL in RVV. However in Simple-V,
+given that its primary (base, unextended) purpose is for 3D, Video and
+other purposes (not requiring supercomputing capability), it makes sense
+to limit MAXVECTORDEPTH to the regfile bitwidth (32 for RV32, 64 for RV64
+and so on).
+
+The reason for setting this limit is so that predication registers, when
+marked as such, may fit into a single register as opposed to fanning out
+over several registers. This keeps the implementation a little simpler.
+Note also (as also described in the VSETVL section) that the *minimum*
+for MAXVECTORDEPTH must be the total number of registers (15 for RV32E
+and 31 for RV32 or RV64).
+
+Note that RVV on top of Simple-V may choose to over-ride this decision.
+
+## Predication CSR <a name="predication_csr_table"></a>
+
+The Predication CSR is a key-value store indicating whether, if a given
+destination register (integer or floating-point) is referred to in an
+instruction, it is to be predicated. However it is important to note
+that the *actual* register is *different* from the one that ends up
+being used, due to the level of indirection through the lookup table.
+
+* regidx is the actual register that in combination with the
+ i/f flag, if that integer or floating-point register is referred to,
+ results in the lookup table being referenced to find the predication
+ mask to use on the operation in which that (regidx) register has
+ been used
+* predidx (in combination with the bank bit in the future) is the
+ *actual* register to be used for the predication mask. Note:
+ in effect predidx is actually a 6-bit register address, as the bank
+ bit is the MSB (and is nominally set to zero for now).
+* inv indicates that the predication mask bits are to be inverted
+ prior to use *without* actually modifying the contents of the
+ register itself.
+* zeroing is either 1 or 0, and if set to 1, the operation must
+ place zeros in any element position where the predication mask is
+ set to zero. If zeroing is set to 0, unpredicated elements *must*
+ be left alone. Some microarchitectures may choose to interpret
+ this as skipping the operation entirely. Others which wish to
+ stick more closely to a SIMD architecture may choose instead to
+ interpret unpredicated elements as an internal "copy element"
+ operation (which would be necessary in SIMD microarchitectures
+ that perform register-renaming)
+
+| PrCSR | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | (9..5) | (4..0) |
+| ----- | - | - | - | - | ------- | ------- |
+| 0 | bank0 | zero0 | inv0 | i/f | regidx | predkey |
+| 1 | bank1 | zero1 | inv1 | i/f | regidx | predkey |
+| .. | bank.. | zero.. | inv.. | i/f | regidx | predkey |
+| 15 | bank15 | zero15 | inv15 | i/f | regidx | predkey |
+
+The Predication CSR Table is a key-value store, so implementation-wise
+it will be faster to turn the table around (maintain topologically
+equivalent state):
+
+ struct pred {
+ bool zero;
+ bool inv;
+ bool bank; // 0 for now, 1=rsvd
+ bool enabled;
+ int predidx; // redirection: actual int register to use
+ }
+
+ struct pred fp_pred_reg[32]; // 64 in future (bank=1)
+ struct pred int_pred_reg[32]; // 64 in future (bank=1)
+
+ for (i = 0; i < 16; i++)
+ tb = int_pred_reg if CSRpred[i].type == 0 else fp_pred_reg;
+ idx = CSRpred[i].regidx
+ tb[idx].zero = CSRpred[i].zero
+ tb[idx].inv = CSRpred[i].inv
+ tb[idx].bank = CSRpred[i].bank
+ tb[idx].predidx = CSRpred[i].predidx
+ tb[idx].enabled = true
+
+So when an operation is to be predicated, it is the internal state that
+is used. In Section 6.4.2 of Hwacha's Manual (EECS-2015-262) the following
+pseudo-code for operations is given, where p is the explicit (direct)
+reference to the predication register to be used:
+
+ for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
+ if ([!]preg[p][i])
+ (d ? vreg[rd][i] : sreg[rd]) =
+ iop(s1 ? vreg[rs1][i] : sreg[rs1],
+ s2 ? vreg[rs2][i] : sreg[rs2]); // for insts with 2 inputs
+
+This instead becomes an *indirect* reference using the *internal* state
+table generated from the Predication CSR key-value store, which iwws used
+as follows.
+
+ if type(iop) == INT:
+ preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
+ else:
+ preg = fp_pred_reg[rd]
+
+ for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
+ predidx = preg[rd].predidx; // the indirection takes place HERE
+ if (!preg[rd].enabled)
+ predicate = ~0x0; // all parallel ops enabled
+ else:
+ predicate = intregfile[predidx]; // get actual reg contents HERE
+ if (preg[rd].inv) // invert if requested
+ predicate = ~predicate;
+ if (predicate && (1<<i))
+ (d ? regfile[rd+i] : regfile[rd]) =
+ iop(s1 ? regfile[rs1+i] : regfile[rs1],
+ s2 ? regfile[rs2+i] : regfile[rs2]); // for insts with 2 inputs
+ else if (preg[rd].zero)
+ // TODO: place zero in dest reg
+
+Note:
+
+* d, s1 and s2 are booleans indicating whether destination,
+ source1 and source2 are vector or scalar
+* key-value CSR-redirection of rd, rs1 and rs2 have NOT been included
+ above, for clarity. rd, rs1 and rs2 all also must ALSO go through
+ register-level redirection (from the Register CSR table) if they are
+ vectors.
+
+If written as a function, obtaining the predication mask (but not whether
+zeroing takes place) may be done as follows:
+
+ def get_pred_val(bool is_fp_op, int reg):
+ tb = int_pred if is_fp_op else fp_pred
+ if (!tb[reg].enabled):
+ return ~0x0 // all ops enabled
+ predidx = tb[reg].predidx // redirection occurs HERE
+ predicate = intreg[predidx] // actual predicate HERE
+ if (tb[reg].inv):
+ predicate = ~predicate // invert ALL bits
+ return predicate
+
+## Register CSR key-value (CAM) table
+
+The purpose of the Register CSR table is four-fold:
+
+* To mark integer and floating-point registers as requiring "redirection"
+ if it is ever used as a source or destination in any given operation.
+ This involves a level of indirection through a 5-to-6-bit lookup table
+ (where the 6th bit - bank - is always set to 0 for now).
+* To indicate whether, after redirection through the lookup table, the
+ register is a vector (or remains a scalar).
+* To over-ride the implicit or explicit bitwidth that the operation would
+ normally give the register.
+* To indicate if the register is to be interpreted as "packed" (SIMD)
+ i.e. containing multiple contiguous elements of size equal to "bitwidth".
+
+| RgCSR | 15 | 14 | 13 | (12..11) | 10 | (9..5) | (4..0) |
+| ----- | - | - | - | - | - | ------- | ------- |
+| 0 | simd0 | bank0 | isvec0 | vew0 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
+| 1 | simd1 | bank1 | isvec1 | vew1 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
+| .. | simd.. | bank.. | isvec.. | vew.. | i/f | regidx | predidx |
+| 15 | simd15 | bank15 | isvec15 | vew15 | i/f | regidx | predidx |
+
+vew may be one of the following (giving a table "bytestable", used below):
+
+| vew | bitwidth |
+| --- | --------- |
+| 00 | default |
+| 01 | default/2 |
+| 10 | 8 |
+| 11 | 16 |
+
+Extending this table (with extra bits) is covered in the section
+"Implementing RVV on top of Simple-V".
+
+As the above table is a CAM (key-value store) it may be appropriate
+to expand it as follows:
+
+ struct vectorised fp_vec[32], int_vec[32]; // 64 in future
+
+ for (i = 0; i < 16; i++) // 16 CSRs?
+ tb = int_vec if CSRvec[i].type == 0 else fp_vec
+ idx = CSRvec[i].regkey // INT/FP src/dst reg in opcode
+ tb[idx].elwidth = CSRvec[i].elwidth
+ tb[idx].regidx = CSRvec[i].regidx // indirection
+ tb[idx].isvector = CSRvec[i].isvector // 0=scalar
+ tb[idx].packed = CSRvec[i].packed // SIMD or not
+ tb[idx].bank = CSRvec[i].bank // 0 (1=rsvd)
+
+TODO: move elsewhere
+
+ # TODO: use elsewhere (retire for now)
+ vew = CSRbitwidth[rs1]
+ if (vew == 0)
+ bytesperreg = (XLEN/8) # or FLEN as appropriate
+ elif (vew == 1)
+ bytesperreg = (XLEN/4) # or FLEN/2 as appropriate
+ else:
+ bytesperreg = bytestable[vew] # 8 or 16
+ simdmult = (XLEN/8) / bytesperreg # or FLEN as appropriate
+ vlen = CSRvectorlen[rs1] * simdmult
+ CSRvlength = MIN(MIN(vlen, MAXVECTORDEPTH), rs2)
+
+The reason for multiplying the vector length by the number of SIMD elements
+(in each individual register) is so that each SIMD element may optionally be
+predicated.
+
+An example of how to subdivide the register file when bitwidth != default
+is given in the section "Bitwidth Virtual Register Reordering".
+
+# Instructions
+
+Despite being a 98% complete and accurate topological remap of RVV
+concepts and functionality, no new instructions are needed.
+*All* RVV instructions can be re-mapped, however xBitManip
+becomes a critical dependency for efficient manipulation of predication
+masks (as a bit-field). Despite the removal of all but VSETVL and VGETVL,
+*all instructions from RVV are topologically re-mapped and retain their
+complete functionality, intact*.
+
+Three instructions, VSELECT, VCLIP and VCLIPI, do not have RV Standard
+equivalents, so are left out of Simple-V. VSELECT could be included if
+there existed a MV.X instruction in RV (MV.X is a hypothetical
+non-immediate variant of MV that would allow another register to
+specify which register was to be copied). Note that if any of these three
+instructions are added to any given RV extension, their functionality
+will be inherently parallelised.
+
+## Instruction Format
+
+The instruction format for Simple-V does not actually have *any* explicit
+compare operations, *any* arithmetic, floating point or *any*
+memory instructions. There are in fact **no operations added at all**.
+Instead it *overloads* pre-existing branch operations into predicated
+variants, and implicitly overloads arithmetic operations, MV,
+FCVT, and LOAD/STORE
+depending on CSR configurations for bitwidth and
+predication. **Everything** becomes parallelised. *This includes
+Compressed instructions* as well as any
+future instructions and Custom Extensions.
+
+## VSETVL
+
+NOTE TODO: 28may2018: VSETVL may need to be *really* different from RVV,
+with the instruction format remaining the same.
+
+VSETVL is slightly different from RVV in that the minimum vector length
+is required to be at least the number of registers in the register file,
+and no more than XLEN. This allows vector LOAD/STORE to be used to switch
+the entire bank of registers using a single instruction (see Appendix,
+"Context Switch Example"). The reason for limiting VSETVL to XLEN is
+down to the fact that predication bits fit into a single register of length
+XLEN bits.
+
+The second change is that when VSETVL is requested to be stored
+into x0, it is *ignored* silently (VSETVL x0, x5, #4)
+
+The third change is that there is an additional immediate added to VSETVL,
+to which VL is set after first going through MIN-filtering.
+So When using the "vsetl rs1, rs2, #vlen" instruction, it becomes:
+
+ VL = MIN(MIN(vlen, MAXVECTORDEPTH), rs2)
+
+where RegfileLen <= MAXVECTORDEPTH < XLEN
+
+This has implication for the microarchitecture, as VL is required to be
+set (limits from MAXVECTORDEPTH notwithstanding) to the actual value
+requested in the #immediate parameter. RVV has the option to set VL
+to an arbitrary value that suits the conditions and the micro-architecture:
+SV does *not* permit that.
+
+The reason is so that if SV is to be used for a context-switch or as a
+substitute for LOAD/STORE-Multiple, the operation can be done with only
+2-3 instructions (setup of the CSRs, VSETVL x0, x0, #{regfilelen-1},
+single LD/ST operation). If VL does *not* get set to the register file
+length when VSETVL is called, then a software-loop would be needed.
+To avoid this need, VL *must* be set to exactly what is requested
+(limits notwithstanding).
+
+Therefore, in turn, unlike RVV, implementors *must* provide
+pseudo-parallelism (using sequential loops in hardware) if actual
+hardware-parallelism in the ALUs is not deployed. A hybrid is also
+permitted (as used in Broadcom's VideoCore-IV) however this must be
+*entirely* transparent to the ISA.
+
+## Branch Instruction:
+
+Branch operations use standard RV opcodes that are reinterpreted to
+be "predicate variants" in the instance where either of the two src
+registers are marked as vectors (isvector=1). When this reinterpretation
+is enabled the "immediate" field of the branch operation is taken to be a
+predication target register, rs3. The predicate target register rs3 is
+to be treated as a bitfield (up to a maximum of XLEN bits corresponding
+to a maximum of XLEN elements).
+
+If either of src1 or src2 are scalars (CSRvectorlen[src] == 0) the comparison
+goes ahead as vector-scalar or scalar-vector. Implementors should note that
+this could require considerable multi-porting of the register file in order
+to parallelise properly, so may have to involve the use of register cacheing
+and transparent copying (see Multiple-Banked Register File Architectures
+paper).
+
+In instances where no vectorisation is detected on either src registers
+the operation is treated as an absolutely standard scalar branch operation.
+
+This is the overloaded table for Integer-base Branch operations. Opcode
+(bits 6..0) is set in all cases to 1100011.
+
+[[!table data="""
+31 .. 25 |24 ... 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 .. 8 | 7 | 6 ... 0 |
+imm[12,10:5]| rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | imm[4:1] | imm[11] | opcode |
+7 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | BPR | predicate rs3 || BRANCH |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 000 | predicate rs3 || BEQ |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 001 | predicate rs3 || BNE |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 010 | predicate rs3 || rsvd |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 011 | predicate rs3 || rsvd |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 100 | predicate rs3 || BLT |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 101 | predicate rs3 || BGE |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 110 | predicate rs3 || BLTU |
+reserved | src2 | src1 | 111 | predicate rs3 || BGEU |
+"""]]
+
+Note that just as with the standard (scalar, non-predicated) branch
+operations, BLE, BGT, BLEU and BTGU may be synthesised by inverting
+src1 and src2.
+
+Below is the overloaded table for Floating-point Predication operations.
+Interestingly no change is needed to the instruction format because
+FP Compare already stores a 1 or a zero in its "rd" integer register
+target, i.e. it's not actually a Branch at all: it's a compare.
+The target needs to simply change to be a predication bitfield (done
+implicitly).
+
+As with
+Standard RVF/D/Q, Opcode (bits 6..0) is set in all cases to 1010011.
+Likewise Single-precision, fmt bits 26..25) is still set to 00.
+Double-precision is still set to 01, whilst Quad-precision
+appears not to have a definition in V2.3-Draft (but should be unaffected).
+
+It is however noted that an entry "FNE" (the opposite of FEQ) is missing,
+and whilst in ordinary branch code this is fine because the standard
+RVF compare can always be followed up with an integer BEQ or a BNE (or
+a compressed comparison to zero or non-zero), in predication terms that
+becomes more of an impact. To deal with this, SV's predication has
+had "invert" added to it.
+
+[[!table data="""
+31 .. 27| 26 .. 25 |24 ... 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 .. 7 | 6 ... 0 |
+funct5 | fmt | rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | rd | opcode |
+5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 7 |
+10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 010 | pred rs3 | FEQ |
+10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | **011**| pred rs3 | rsvd |
+10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 001 | pred rs3 | FLT |
+10100 | 00/01/11 | src2 | src1 | 000 | pred rs3 | FLE |
+"""]]
+
+Note (**TBD**): floating-point exceptions will need to be extended
+to cater for multiple exceptions (and statuses of the same). The
+usual approach is to have an array of status codes and bit-fields,
+and one exception, rather than throw separate exceptions for each
+Vector element.
+
+In Hwacha EECS-2015-262 Section 6.7.2 the following pseudocode is given
+for predicated compare operations of function "cmp":
+
+ for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
+ if ([!]preg[p][i])
+ preg[pd][i] = cmp(s1 ? vreg[rs1][i] : sreg[rs1],
+ s2 ? vreg[rs2][i] : sreg[rs2]);
+
+With associated predication, vector-length adjustments and so on,
+and temporarily ignoring bitwidth (which makes the comparisons more
+complex), this becomes:
+
+ if I/F == INT: # integer type cmp
+ preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
+ reg = int_regfile
+ else:
+ preg = fp_pred_reg[rd]
+ reg = fp_regfile
+
+ s1 = reg_is_vectorised(src1);
+ s2 = reg_is_vectorised(src2);
+ if (!s2 && !s1) goto branch;
+ for (int i = 0; i < VL; ++i)
+ if (cmp(s1 ? reg[src1+i]:reg[src1],
+ s2 ? reg[src2+i]:reg[src2])
+ preg[rs3] |= 1<<i; # bitfield not vector
+
+Notes:
+
+* Predicated SIMD comparisons would break src1 and src2 further down
+ into bitwidth-sized chunks (see Appendix "Bitwidth Virtual Register
+ Reordering") setting Vector-Length times (number of SIMD elements) bits
+ in Predicate Register rs3 as opposed to just Vector-Length bits.
+* Predicated Branches do not actually have an adjustment to the Program
+ Counter, so all of bits 25 through 30 in every case are not needed.
+* There are plenty of reserved opcodes for which bits 25 through 30 could
+ be put to good use if there is a suitable use-case.
+ FLT and FLE may be inverted to FGT and FGE if needed by swapping
+ src1 and src2 (likewise the integer counterparts).
+
+## Compressed Branch Instruction:
+
+Compressed Branch instructions are likewise re-interpreted as predicated
+2-register operations, with the result going into rs3. All the bits of
+the immediate are re-interpreted for different purposes, to extend the
+number of comparator operations to beyond the original specification,
+but also to cater for floating-point comparisons as well as integer ones.
+
+[[!table data="""
+15..13 | 12...10 | 9..7 | 6..5 | 4..2 | 1..0 | name |
+funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | | op | |
+3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |
+C.BPR | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F B | src2 | C1 | |
+110 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 0 | src2 | C1 | P.EQ |
+111 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 0 | src2 | C1 | P.NE |
+110 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 1 | src2 | C1 | P.LT |
+111 | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F 1 | src2 | C1 | P.LE |
+"""]]
+
+Notes:
+
+* Bits 5 13 14 and 15 make up the comparator type
+* Bit 6 indicates whether to use integer or floating-point comparisons
+* In both floating-point and integer cases there are four predication
+ comparators: EQ/NEQ/LT/LE (with GT and GE being synthesised by inverting
+ src1 and src2).
+
+## LOAD / STORE Instructions <a name="load_store"></a>
+
+For full analysis of topological adaptation of RVV LOAD/STORE
+see [[v_comparative_analysis]]. All three types (LD, LD.S and LD.X)
+may be implicitly overloaded into the one base RV LOAD instruction,
+and likewise for STORE.
+
+Revised LOAD:
+
+[[!table data="""
+31 | 30 | 29 25 | 24 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 7 | 6 0 |
+imm[11:0] |||| rs1 | funct3 | rd | opcode |
+1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
+? | s | rs2 | imm[4:0] | base | width | dest | LOAD |
+"""]]
+
+The exact same corresponding adaptation is also carried out on the single,
+double and quad precision floating-point LOAD-FP and STORE-FP operations,
+which fit the exact same instruction format. Thus all three types
+(unit, stride and indexed) may be fitted into FLW, FLD and FLQ,
+as well as FSW, FSD and FSQ.
+
+Notes:
+
+* LOAD remains functionally (topologically) identical to RVV LOAD
+ (for both integer and floating-point variants).
+* Predication CSR-marking register is not explicitly shown in instruction, it's
+ implicit based on the CSR predicate state for the rd (destination) register
+* rs2, the source, may *also be marked as a vector*, which implicitly
+ is taken to indicate "Indexed Load" (LD.X)
+* Bit 30 indicates "element stride" or "constant-stride" (LD or LD.S)
+* Bit 31 is reserved (ideas under consideration: auto-increment)
+* **TODO**: include CSR SIMD bitwidth in the pseudo-code below.
+* **TODO**: clarify where width maps to elsize
+
+Pseudo-code (excludes CSR SIMD bitwidth for simplicity):
+
+ if (unit-strided) stride = elsize;
+ else stride = areg[as2]; // constant-strided
+
+ preg = int_pred_reg[rd]
+
+ for (int i=0; i<vl; ++i)
+ if ([!]preg[rd] & 1<<i)
+ for (int j=0; j<seglen+1; j++)
+ {
+ if CSRvectorised[rs2])
+ offs = vreg[rs2+i]
+ else
+ offs = i*(seglen+1)*stride;
+ vreg[rd+j][i] = mem[sreg[base] + offs + j*stride];
+ }
+
+Taking CSR (SIMD) bitwidth into account involves using the vector
+length and register encoding according to the "Bitwidth Virtual Register
+Reordering" scheme shown in the Appendix (see function "regoffs").
+
+A similar instruction exists for STORE, with identical topological
+translation of all features. **TODO**
+
+## Compressed LOAD / STORE Instructions
+
+Compressed LOAD and STORE are of the same format, where bits 2-4 are
+a src register instead of dest:
+
+[[!table data="""
+15 13 | 12 10 | 9 7 | 6 5 | 4 2 | 1 0 |
+funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | rd0 | op |
+3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
+C.LW | offset[5:3] | base | offset[2|6] | dest | C0 |
+"""]]
+
+Unfortunately it is not possible to fit the full functionality
+of vectorised LOAD / STORE into C.LD / C.ST: the "X" variants (Indexed)
+require another operand (rs2) in addition to the operand width
+(which is also missing), offset, base, and src/dest.
+
+However a close approximation may be achieved by taking the top bit
+of the offset in each of the five types of LD (and ST), reducing the
+offset to 4 bits and utilising the 5th bit to indicate whether "stride"
+is to be enabled. In this way it is at least possible to introduce
+that functionality.
+
+(**TODO**: *assess whether the loss of one bit from offset is worth having
+"stride" capability.*)
+
+We also assume (including for the "stride" variant) that the "width"
+parameter, which is missing, is derived and implicit, just as it is
+with the standard Compressed LOAD/STORE instructions. For C.LW, C.LD
+and C.LQ, the width is implicitly 4, 8 and 16 respectively, whilst for
+C.FLW and C.FLD the width is implicitly 4 and 8 respectively.
+
+Interestingly we note that the Vectorised Simple-V variant of
+LOAD/STORE (Compressed and otherwise), due to it effectively using the
+standard register file(s), is the direct functional equivalent of
+standard load-multiple and store-multiple instructions found in other
+processors.
+
+In Section 12.3 riscv-isa manual V2.3-draft it is noted the comments on
+page 76, "For virtual memory systems some data accesses could be resident
+in physical memory and some not". The interesting question then arises:
+how does RVV deal with the exact same scenario?
+Expired U.S. Patent 5895501 (Filing Date Sep 3 1996) describes a method
+of detecting early page / segmentation faults and adjusting the TLB
+in advance, accordingly: other strategies are explored in the Appendix
+Section "Virtual Memory Page Faults".
+
+## Vectorised Copy/Move (and conversion) instructions
+
+There is a series of 2-operand instructions involving copying (and
+alteration): C.MV, FMV, FNEG, FABS, FCVT, FSGNJ. These operations all
+follow the same pattern, as it is *both* the source *and* destination
+predication masks that are taken into account. This is different from
+the three-operand arithmetic instructions, where the predication mask
+is taken from the *destination* register, and applied uniformly to the
+elements of the source register(s), element-for-element.
+
+### C.MV Instruction <a name="c_mv"></a>
+
+There is no MV instruction in RV however there is a C.MV instruction.
+It is used for copying integer-to-integer registers (vectorised FMV
+is used for copying floating-point).
+
+If either the source or the destination register are marked as vectors
+C.MV is reinterpreted to be a vectorised (multi-register) predicated
+move operation. The actual instruction's format does not change:
+
+[[!table data="""
+15 12 | 11 7 | 6 2 | 1 0 |
+funct4 | rd | rs | op |
+4 | 5 | 5 | 2 |
+C.MV | dest | src | C0 |
+"""]]
+
+A simplified version of the pseudocode for this operation is as follows:
+
+ function op_mv(rd, rs) # MV not VMV!
+ rd = int_vec[rd].isvector ? int_vec[rd].regidx : rd;
+ rs = int_vec[rs].isvector ? int_vec[rs].regidx : rs;
+ ps = get_pred_val(FALSE, rs); # predication on src
+ pd = get_pred_val(FALSE, rd); # ... AND on dest
+ for (int i = 0, int j = 0; i < VL && j < VL;):
+ if (int_vec[rs].isvec) while (!(ps & 1<<i)) i++;
+ if (int_vec[rd].isvec) while (!(pd & 1<<j)) j++;
+ ireg[rd+j] <= ireg[rs+i];
+ if (int_vec[rs].isvec) i++;
+ if (int_vec[rd].isvec) j++;
+
+Note that:
+
+* elwidth (SIMD) is not covered above
+* ending the loop early in scalar cases (VINSERT, VEXTRACT) is also
+ not covered
+
+There are several different instructions from RVV that are covered by
+this one opcode:
+
+[[!table data="""
+src | dest | predication | op |
+scalar | vector | none | VSPLAT |
+scalar | vector | destination | sparse VSPLAT |
+scalar | vector | 1-bit dest | VINSERT |
+vector | scalar | 1-bit? src | VEXTRACT |
+vector | vector | none | VCOPY |
+vector | vector | src | Vector Gather |
+vector | vector | dest | Vector Scatter |
+vector | vector | src & dest | Gather/Scatter |
+vector | vector | src == dest | sparse VCOPY |
+"""]]
+
+Also, VMERGE may be implemented as back-to-back (macro-op fused) C.MV
+operations with inversion on the src and dest predication for one of the
+two C.MV operations.
+
+Note that in the instance where the Compressed Extension is not implemented,
+MV may be used, but that is a pseudo-operation mapping to addi rd, x0, rs.
+Note that the behaviour is **different** from C.MV because with addi the
+predication mask to use is taken **only** from rd and is applied against
+all elements: rs[i] = rd[i].
+
+### FMV, FNEG and FABS Instructions
+
+These are identical in form to C.MV, except covering floating-point
+register copying. The same double-predication rules also apply.
+However when elwidth is not set to default the instruction is implicitly
+and automatic converted to a (vectorised) floating-point type conversion
+operation of the appropriate size covering the source and destination
+register bitwidths.
+
+(Note that FMV, FNEG and FABS are all actually pseudo-instructions)
+
+### FVCT Instructions
+
+These are again identical in form to C.MV, except that they cover
+floating-point to integer and integer to floating-point. When element
+width in each vector is set to default, the instructions behave exactly
+as they are defined for standard RV (scalar) operations, except vectorised
+in exactly the same fashion as outlined in C.MV.
+
+However when the source or destination element width is not set to default,
+the opcode's explicit element widths are *over-ridden* to new definitions,
+and the opcode's element width is taken as indicative of the SIMD width
+(if applicable i.e. if packed SIMD is requested) instead.
+
+For example FCVT.S.L would normally be used to convert a 64-bit
+integer in register rs1 to a 64-bit floating-point number in rd.
+If however the source rs1 is set to be a vector, where elwidth is set to
+default/2 and "packed SIMD" is enabled, then the first 32 bits of
+rs1 are converted to a floating-point number to be stored in rd's
+first element and the higher 32-bits *also* converted to floating-point
+and stored in the second. The 32 bit size comes from the fact that
+FCVT.S.L's integer width is 64 bit, and with elwidth on rs1 set to
+divide that by two it means that rs1 element width is to be taken as 32.
+
+Similar rules apply to the destination register.
+
+# Exceptions
+
+> What does an ADD of two different-sized vectors do in simple-V?
+
+* if the two source operands are not the same, throw an exception.
+* if the destination operand is also a vector, and the source is longer
+ than the destination, throw an exception.
+
+> And what about instructions like JALR?
+> What does jumping to a vector do?
+
+* Throw an exception. Whether that actually results in spawning threads
+ as part of the trap-handling remains to be seen.
+
+# Under consideration <a name="issues"></a>
+
+## Retro-fitting Predication into branch-explicit ISA <a name="predication_retrofit"></a>
+
+One of the goals of this parallelism proposal is to avoid instruction
+duplication. However, with the base ISA having been designed explictly
+to *avoid* condition-codes entirely, shoe-horning predication into it
+bcomes quite challenging.
+
+However what if all branch instructions, if referencing a vectorised
+register, were instead given *completely new analogous meanings* that
+resulted in a parallel bit-wise predication register being set? This
+would have to be done for both C.BEQZ and C.BNEZ, as well as BEQ, BNE,
+BLT and BGE.
+
+We might imagine that FEQ, FLT and FLT would also need to be converted,
+however these are effectively *already* in the precise form needed and
+do not need to be converted *at all*! The difference is that FEQ, FLT
+and FLE *specifically* write a 1 to an integer register if the condition
+holds, and 0 if not. All that needs to be done here is to say, "if
+the integer register is tagged with a bit that says it is a predication
+register, the **bit** in the integer register is set based on the
+current vector index" instead.
+
+There is, in the standard Conditional Branch instruction, more than
+adequate space to interpret it in a similar fashion:
+
+[[!table data="""
+31 |30 ..... 25 |24..20|19..15| 14...12| 11.....8 | 7 | 6....0 |
+imm[12] | imm[10:5] |rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | imm[4:1] | imm[11] | opcode |
+ 1 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
+ offset[12,10:5] || src2 | src1 | BEQ | offset[11,4:1] || BRANCH |
+"""]]
+
+This would become:
+
+[[!table data="""
+31 | 30 .. 25 |24 ... 20 | 19 15 | 14 12 | 11 .. 8 | 7 | 6 ... 0 |
+imm[12] | imm[10:5]| rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | imm[4:1] | imm[11] | opcode |
+1 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
+reserved || src2 | src1 | BEQ | predicate rs3 || BRANCH |
+"""]]
+
+Similarly the C.BEQZ and C.BNEZ instruction format may be retro-fitted,
+with the interesting side-effect that there is space within what is presently
+the "immediate offset" field to reinterpret that to add in not only a bit
+field to distinguish between floating-point compare and integer compare,
+not only to add in a second source register, but also use some of the bits as
+a predication target as well.
+
+[[!table data="""
+15..13 | 12 ....... 10 | 9...7 | 6 ......... 2 | 1 .. 0 |
+funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | op |
+3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
+C.BEQZ | offset[8,4:3] | src | offset[7:6,2:1,5] | C1 |
+"""]]
+
+Now uses the CS format:
+
+[[!table data="""
+15..13 | 12 . 10 | 9 .. 7 | 6 .. 5 | 4..2 | 1 .. 0 |
+funct3 | imm | rs10 | imm | | op |
+3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
+C.BEQZ | pred rs3 | src1 | I/F B | src2 | C1 |
+"""]]
+
+Bit 6 would be decoded as "operation refers to Integer or Float" including
+interpreting src1 and src2 accordingly as outlined in Table 12.2 of the
+"C" Standard, version 2.0,
+whilst Bit 5 would allow the operation to be extended, in combination with
+funct3 = 110 or 111: a combination of four distinct (predicated) comparison
+operators. In both floating-point and integer cases those could be
+EQ/NEQ/LT/LE (with GT and GE being synthesised by inverting src1 and src2).
+
+
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