Manual Assembly vs GCC

Question

For those who wonder what the generated code comes from, first note that when GCC compile myAbs with stack protection it transform it into this form

long myAbs(long j) {
    uintptr_t canary = __stack_chk_guard;

    register long result = j < 0 ? -j : j;

    if ( (canary = canary ^ __stack_chk_guard) != 0 )
        __stack_chk_fail();
}

The code to simply perform j < 0 ? -j : j; is

movq    %rdi, %rdx     ;RDX = j
movq    %rdi, %rax     ;RAX = j
sarq    $63, %rdx      ;RDX = 0 if j >=0, 0fff...ffh if j < 0
xorq    %rdx, %rax     ;Note: x xor 0ff...ffh = Not X, x xor 0 = x
                       ;RAX = j if j >=0, ~j if j < 0
subq    %rdx, %rax     ;Note: 0fff...ffh = -1
                       ;RAX = j+0 = j if j >= 0, ~j+1 = -j if j < 0
                       ;~j+1 = -j in two complement

Analyzing the generated code we get

    pushq   %rbp
    movq    %rsp, %rbp       ;Standard prologue

    subq    $4144, %rsp      ;Allocate slight more than 4 KiB     
    orq     $0, (%rsp)       ;Perform a useless RW operation to test if there is enough stack space for __stack_chk_fail

    addq    $4128, %rsp      ;This leave 16 byte allocated for local vars

    movq    %rdi, %rdx       ;See above
    sarq    $63, %rdx        ;See above

    movq    %fs:40, %rax     ;Get the canary
    movq    %rax, -8(%rbp)   ;Save it as a local var
    xorl    %eax, %eax       ;Clear it

    movq    %rdi, %rax       ;See above
    xorq    %rdx, %rax       ;See above
    subq    %rdx, %rax       ;See above

    movq    -8(%rbp), %rcx   ;RCX = Canary
    xorq    %fs:40, %rcx     ;Check if equal to the original value
    jne     .L5              ;If not fail

    leave
    ret
.L5:
    call    __stack_chk_fail@PLT  ;__stack_chk_fail is noreturn

So all the extra instructions are for implementing the Stack Smashing Protector.

Thanks to FUZxxl for pointing out the use of the first instructions after the prologue.

Many of the beginning calls are to setup the stack and save the return address (something which you are not doing). Seems like theres are some stack protection going on. Perhaps you could tune your compiler settings to get rid of some overhead.

Perhaps adding flags to you compiler such as: -fno-stack-protector could minimise this difference.

Yes this probably is slower than your handwritten assembly, but offers much more protection and is probably worth the slight overhead.

As for why the stack protection still exists even though it is a leaf function see here.