18.26 Defining coprocessor specifics for MIPS targets.

The MIPS specification allows MIPS implementations to have as many as 4 coprocessors, each with as many as 32 private registers. GCC supports accessing these registers and transferring values between the registers and memory using asm-ized variables. For example:

  register unsigned int cp0count asm ("c0r1");
  unsigned int d;

  d = cp0count + 3;

(“c0r1” is the default name of register 1 in coprocessor 0; alternate names may be added as described below, or the default names may be overridden entirely in SUBTARGET_CONDITIONAL_REGISTER_USAGE.)

Coprocessor registers are assumed to be epilogue-used; sets to them will be preserved even if it does not appear that the register is used again later in the function.

Another note: according to the MIPS spec, coprocessor 1 (if present) is the FPU. One accesses COP1 registers through standard mips floating-point support; they are not included in this mechanism.