Pause flag not present in cpuinfo?

0
votes

I read here something I would try but when i do "cat /proc/cpuinfo", there is no pause flag for an intel cpu. Some other cpus have it.

So :

1) Does it really means that pause is not activated on this cpu ? (core 2 duo 2006, sse2 flag is there)

2) I should use the "rep nop" alternative then ?

Thank you

1
assemblyx86intel
This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about programming or development. See What topics can I ask about here in the Help Center. Perhaps Super User or Unix & Linux Stack Exchange would be a better place to ask. – jww
why do you think cpuinfo flags should include the pause item? There is no such flag in arch/x86/kernel/cpu/capflags.c – wRAR
@wRAR: I saw it on other cpus. Weird. – Kroma
@jww: oops, i am sorry ! – Kroma
@jww it is on topic, because he is asking how to write asm code for a cpu that does not have the pause instruction. – Jester

1 Answers

1
votes

The intel instruction set reference says:

This instruction was introduced in the Pentium 4 processors,
but is backward compatible with all IA-32 processors.
In earlier IA-32 processors, the PAUSE instruction operates
like a NOP instruction. The Pentium 4 and Intel Xeon processors
implement  the PAUSE instruction as a delay.

So your core 2 duo does have it, but even on processors that don't it will still work like a NOP.