[Libre-soc-dev] fantastically-weird regfile

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

i had an idea about the CR regfile when it's vectorised.  this is one
of the oddest designs but there is a reason for it. see
https://libre-soc.org/openpower/sv/svp_rewrite/svp64/discussion/ for
full details

the issue we've got is that scalar CRs were not intended to be
vectorised.  so in scalar OpenPOWER there's only 8 of them.  they're
"dedicated": CR0 is for INT/Logical, CR1 for FP, CR6 for SIMD VSX.

so here's the problem when we apply SV, which normally applies
"sequential" increments: any SV-Vectorised Rc=1 INT operation is
*automatically* going to wipe out CR1.

what if, then, the numbering went:

    0 8 16 24 32 40 48 56
    1 9 17 ....

that way it would only be vector INT operations longer than 8 that
would destroy CR1.

that in turn would imply that the CRs would be treated as an 8x8
matrix, dual-ported, reading horizontally *and vertically*!  which is
just so spectacularly weird i feel it has merit just for fits and
giggles.

thoughts?

l.