We currently output FMA instructions on targets which support both FMA4 + FMA (i.e. later Bulldozer CPUS bdver2/bdver3/bdver4).
This patch flips this so FMA4 is preferred; this is for several reasons:
1 - FMA4 is non-destructive reducing the need for mov instructions.
2 - Its more straighforward to commute and fold inputs (although the recent work on FMA has reduced this difference).
3 - All supported targets have FMA4 performance equal or better to FMA - Piledriver (bdver2) in particular has half the throughput when executing FMA instructions.
Its looks like no future AMD processor lines will support FMA4 after the Bulldozer series so we're not causing problems for later CPUs.
(Craig - it looks like it only took 3 years to make this change after your original patch at r162454!)