[cfe-dev] [PROPOSAL] Reintroduce guards for Intel intrinsic headers

Eric Christopher echristo at gmail.com
Mon Aug 3 15:40:41 PDT 2015


On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 3:30 PM Richard Smith <richard at metafoo.co.uk> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 1:37 PM, Hans Wennborg <hans at chromium.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 5:09 PM, Chandler Carruth <chandlerc at google.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Would cherrypicking the diagnostics to the 3.7 branch be better or
>> worse?
>> > (I'm of two minds, curious what others think...)
>>
>> The alternative of reverting would have the downside of missing out on
>> some of the target attribute functionality in 3.7. I haven't been
>> following closely enough to determine how great a loss that would be,
>> but as far as I understand, this is still a work in progress, right?
>>
>> The alternative of cherry-picking diagnostics has the problem that I
>> don't think any diagnostics have landed yet :-)
>>
>> My inclination is to revert back to safety here. The revert would be
>> pretty hairy though, as there have been a number of changes to these
>> files since r239883 landed. I'm still trying to figure this out.
>
>
> Here's my view: sometimes features don't make the completeness bar in time
> for a release. That's normal and not something to be apologetic / troubled
> about; we'll get the feature in the next release, and we shouldn't try to
> rush it in. This feature is unusual in that the transitional period has
> temporarily left us with (arguably) a regression, and that happened to be
> the state when the 3.7 branch was cut, but our normal philosophies should
> apply: we have time-based releases, not feature-based ones, and our first
> response to regressions is to revert to green. So I think reverting r239883
> is the way to go. If the diagnostic work is done in time, we can consider
> unreverting and patching it across.
>
>
That's perfectly ok to me. Working on the diagnostic at the moment.

-eric


> > On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 12:00 PM Justin Bogner <mail at justinbogner.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com> writes:
>> >> > On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 10:12 AM Reid Kleckner <rnk at google.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >     I'm opposed to this. Going forward, I would really like target
>> >> > intrinsics
>> >> >     to be available regardless of the current feature set, so users
>> >> > don't need
>> >> >     hacks like these.
>> >> >
>> >> > Agreed.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >     I see two ways to do this with different tradeoffs:
>> >> >     1. Diagnose missing target attributes when calling the intel
>> >> > intrinsics. I
>> >> >     was surprised to find that we don't already do this.
>> >> >
>> >> > Sorry. This is on my list of things to do.
>> >>
>> >> +hans
>> >>
>> >> I agree with the direction of moving to use target attributes instead
>> of
>> >> relying on flaky ifdefs, but without any errors or warnings here this
>> is
>> >> a pretty serious diagnostic regression.
>> >>
>> >> I think we should revert this on the 3.7 branch. It can stay as is on
>> >> trunk assuming the diagnostics are coming soon.
>> >>
>> >> Right now we end up in spaces where we get crashes in the backend
>> >> instead of a sensible error in far too many situations. Notably:
>> >>
>> >>   https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24125
>> >>   https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24087
>> >>   https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=24335
>> >>
>> >> Additionally, I'm told this causes issues with configure scripts
>> >> misdetecting available features, as well as strange compatibility
>> issues
>> >> like the one that led to this thread.
>> >>
>> >> This feature is woefully incomplete. We need the warnings/errors for it
>> >> to be acceptable quality.
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >     2. We could support some automatic transfer of the target
>> attribute
>> >> > to the
>> >> >     caller when calling these intrinsics, but I worry that this is
>> too
>> >> >     confusing.
>> >> >
>> >> > We could, but it's probably better to leave it as is.
>> >> >
>> >> > -eric
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >     Implicitly setting a target attribute may block inlining that the
>> >> > user
>> >> >     expected to happen, for example. Alternatively, there may be a
>> >> > dynamic
>> >> >     cpuid check in the same function between SSE2 and AVX variants of
>> >> > the same
>> >> >     algorithm, and now the SSE2 loop will unexpectedly use AVX
>> >> > instructions.
>> >> >
>> >> >     So we should probably settle with telling the user to add
>> -msseNN or
>> >> >     __atribute__((target(("sseNN")))).
>> >> >
>> >> >     On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Vedant Kumar <vsk at apple.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >         I've run into some code which no longer compiles because of
>> two
>> >> > recent
>> >> >         changes:
>> >> >
>> >> >           41885d3 Update the intel intrinsic headers to use the
>> target
>> >> >         attribute support.
>> >> >           695aff1 Use a define for per-file function attributes for
>> the
>> >> > Intel
>> >> >         intrinsic headers.
>> >> >
>> >> >         Specifically, one project defines its own SSE4.1 emulation
>> >> > routines
>> >> >         when the real intrinsics aren't available. This is a problem
>> >> > because
>> >> >         they've reused the names of the intrinsics. E.g;
>> >> >
>> >> >         > #ifndef __SSE4_1__
>> >> >         > #define _mm_extract_epi8(a_, ndx) ({ ... })
>> >> >         > static inline __m128i _mm_blendv_epi8(__m128i a, __m128i b,
>> >> > __m128i
>> >> >         mask) { ... }
>> >> >         > ...
>> >> >         > #endif
>> >> >
>> >> >         SSE4.1 intrinsics now leak into the project when it's being
>> >> > compiled
>> >> >         for targets without SSE4.1 support. Compilation fails with
>> >> > "error:
>> >> >         redefinition ...".
>> >> >
>> >> >         When these changes were initially being discussed, I think
>> our
>> >> > stance
>> >> >         was that we shouldn't support code like this [1]. However, we
>> >> > should
>> >> >         reconsider for the sake of avoiding breakage. AFAICT, we
>> would
>> >> > need to
>> >> >         revert just two types of changes:
>> >> >
>> >> >         In lib/Headers/__wmmintrin_aes.h:
>> >> >
>> >> >         > -#if defined (__SSE4_2__) || defined (__SSE4_1__)
>> >> >         >  #include <smmintrin.h>
>> >> >         > -#endif
>> >> >
>> >> >         In lib/Headers/smmintrin.h:
>> >> >
>> >> >         > -#ifndef __SSE4_1__
>> >> >         > -#error "SSE4.1 instruction set not enabled"
>> >> >         > -#else
>> >> >
>> >> >         I don't see any downsides to reintroducing these guards. If
>> >> > everyone's
>> >> >         OK with this, I can mail a patch in. The alternative is to
>> have
>> >> >         clients rewrite their emulation layers like this:
>> >> >
>> >> >         > #ifdef __SSE4_1__
>> >> >         > #define compat_mm_extract_epi8 _mm_extract_epi8
>> >> >         > static inline __m128i combat_mm_blendv_epi8(__m128i a,
>> __m128i
>> >> > b,
>> >> >         __m128i mask) __attribute__((__target__(("sse4.1")))) {
>> >> >         >   return _mm_blendv_epi8(a, b, mask);
>> >> >         > }
>> >> >         > ...
>> >> >         > #else /* OK, no native SSE 4.1. Define our own. */
>> >> >         > #define compat_mm_extract_epi8(a_, ndx) ({ ... })
>> >> >         > static inline __m128i compat_mm_blendv_epi8(__m128i a,
>> __m128i
>> >> > b,
>> >> >         __m128i mask) { ... }
>> >> >         > ...
>> >> >         > #endif
>> >> >
>> >> >         ... and then replace all calls to intrinsics with calls to
>> the
>> >> > new
>> >> >         compatibility routines. This seems like a lot of tedious
>> work,
>> >> > and I'd
>> >> >         love to help people avoid it :).
>> >> >
>> >> >         Let me know what you think!
>> >> >
>> >> >         vedant
>> >> >
>> >> >         [1] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-commits/
>> >> >         Week-of-Mon-20150615/131192.html
>>
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>
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