Why does adding inline assembly comments cause such radical change in GCC's generated code?

Question

So, I had this code:

constexpr unsigned N = 1000;
void f1(char* sum, char* a, char* b) {
    for(int i = 0; i < N; ++i) {
        sum[i] = a[i] + b[i];
    }
}

void f2(char* sum, char* a, char* b) {
    char* end = sum + N;
    while(sum != end) {
        *sum++ = *a++ + *b++;
    }
}

I wanted to see the code that GCC 4.7.2 would generate. So I ran g++ -march=native -O3 -masm=intel -S a.c++ -std=c++11 And got the following output:

        .file   "a.c++"
        .intel_syntax noprefix
        .text
        .p2align 4,,15
        .globl  _Z2f1PcS_S_
        .type   _Z2f1PcS_S_, @function
_Z2f1PcS_S_:
.LFB0:
        .cfi_startproc
        lea     rcx, [rdx+16]
        lea     rax, [rdi+16]
        cmp     rdi, rcx
        setae   r8b
        cmp     rdx, rax
        setae   cl
        or      cl, r8b
        je      .L5
        lea     rcx, [rsi+16]
        cmp     rdi, rcx
        setae   cl
        cmp     rsi, rax
        setae   al
        or      cl, al
        je      .L5
        xor     eax, eax
        .p2align 4,,10
        .p2align 3
.L3:
        movdqu  xmm0, XMMWORD PTR [rdx+rax]
        movdqu  xmm1, XMMWORD PTR [rsi+rax]
        paddb   xmm0, xmm1
        movdqu  XMMWORD PTR [rdi+rax], xmm0
        add     rax, 16
        cmp     rax, 992
        jne     .L3
        mov     ax, 8
        mov     r9d, 992
.L2:
        sub     eax, 1
        lea     rcx, [rdx+r9]
        add     rdi, r9
        lea     r8, [rax+1]
        add     rsi, r9
        xor     eax, eax
        .p2align 4,,10
        .p2align 3
.L4:
        movzx   edx, BYTE PTR [rcx+rax]
        add     dl, BYTE PTR [rsi+rax]
        mov     BYTE PTR [rdi+rax], dl
        add     rax, 1
        cmp     rax, r8
        jne     .L4
        rep
        ret
.L5:
        mov     eax, 1000
        xor     r9d, r9d
        jmp     .L2
        .cfi_endproc
.LFE0:
        .size   _Z2f1PcS_S_, .-_Z2f1PcS_S_
        .p2align 4,,15
        .globl  _Z2f2PcS_S_
        .type   _Z2f2PcS_S_, @function
_Z2f2PcS_S_:
.LFB1:
        .cfi_startproc
        lea     rcx, [rdx+16]
        lea     rax, [rdi+16]
        cmp     rdi, rcx
        setae   r8b
        cmp     rdx, rax
        setae   cl
        or      cl, r8b
        je      .L19
        lea     rcx, [rsi+16]
        cmp     rdi, rcx
        setae   cl
        cmp     rsi, rax
        setae   al
        or      cl, al
        je      .L19
        xor     eax, eax
        .p2align 4,,10
        .p2align 3
.L17:
        movdqu  xmm0, XMMWORD PTR [rdx+rax]
        movdqu  xmm1, XMMWORD PTR [rsi+rax]
        paddb   xmm0, xmm1
        movdqu  XMMWORD PTR [rdi+rax], xmm0
        add     rax, 16
        cmp     rax, 992
        jne     .L17
        add     rdi, 992
        add     rsi, 992
        add     rdx, 992
        mov     r8d, 8
.L16:
        xor     eax, eax
        .p2align 4,,10
        .p2align 3
.L18:
        movzx   ecx, BYTE PTR [rdx+rax]
        add     cl, BYTE PTR [rsi+rax]
        mov     BYTE PTR [rdi+rax], cl
        add     rax, 1
        cmp     rax, r8
        jne     .L18
        rep
        ret
.L19:
        mov     r8d, 1000
        jmp     .L16
        .cfi_endproc
.LFE1:
        .size   _Z2f2PcS_S_, .-_Z2f2PcS_S_
        .ident  "GCC: (GNU) 4.7.2"
        .section        .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

I suck at reading assembly, so I decided to add some markers to know where the bodies of the loops went:

constexpr unsigned N = 1000;
void f1(char* sum, char* a, char* b) {
    for(int i = 0; i < N; ++i) {
        asm("# im in ur loop");
        sum[i] = a[i] + b[i];
    }
}

void f2(char* sum, char* a, char* b) {
    char* end = sum + N;
    while(sum != end) {
        asm("# im in ur loop");
        *sum++ = *a++ + *b++;
    }
}

And GCC spat this out:

    .file   "a.c++"
    .intel_syntax noprefix
    .text
    .p2align 4,,15
    .globl  _Z2f1PcS_S_
    .type   _Z2f1PcS_S_, @function
_Z2f1PcS_S_:
.LFB0:
    .cfi_startproc
    xor eax, eax
    .p2align 4,,10
    .p2align 3
.L2:
#APP
# 4 "a.c++" 1
    # im in ur loop
# 0 "" 2
#NO_APP
    movzx   ecx, BYTE PTR [rdx+rax]
    add cl, BYTE PTR [rsi+rax]
    mov BYTE PTR [rdi+rax], cl
    add rax, 1
    cmp rax, 1000
    jne .L2
    rep
    ret
    .cfi_endproc
.LFE0:
    .size   _Z2f1PcS_S_, .-_Z2f1PcS_S_
    .p2align 4,,15
    .globl  _Z2f2PcS_S_
    .type   _Z2f2PcS_S_, @function
_Z2f2PcS_S_:
.LFB1:
    .cfi_startproc
    xor eax, eax
    .p2align 4,,10
    .p2align 3
.L6:
#APP
# 12 "a.c++" 1
    # im in ur loop
# 0 "" 2
#NO_APP
    movzx   ecx, BYTE PTR [rdx+rax]
    add cl, BYTE PTR [rsi+rax]
    mov BYTE PTR [rdi+rax], cl
    add rax, 1
    cmp rax, 1000
    jne .L6
    rep
    ret
    .cfi_endproc
.LFE1:
    .size   _Z2f2PcS_S_, .-_Z2f2PcS_S_
    .ident  "GCC: (GNU) 4.7.2"
    .section    .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

This is considerably shorter, and has some significant differences like the lack of SIMD instructions. I was expecting the same output, with some comments somewhere in the middle of it. Am I making some wrong assumption here? Is GCC's optimizer hindered by asm comments?

Answer 1

The interactions with optimisations are explained about halfway down the "Assembler Instructions with C Expression Operands" page in the documentation.

GCC doesn't try to understand any of the actual assembly inside the asm; the only thing it knows about the content is what you (optionally) tell it in the output and input operand specification and the register clobber list.

In particular, note:

An asm instruction without any output operands will be treated identically to a volatile asm instruction.

and

The volatile keyword indicates that the instruction has important side-effects [...]

So the presence of the asm inside your loop has inhibited a vectorisation optimisation, because GCC assumes it has side effects.