[cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets

Dmitriev, Serguei N via cfe-dev cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
Wed Sep 5 15:36:21 PDT 2018


Hi Hal,

I forgot to mention one more thing about the wrapper object proposal – it would simplify enabling of OpenMP offloading on Windows (where it is not supported now). I do not know if there is much interest in OpenMP on Windows, but, anyway, enabling Windows would require solving a number of issues. One of these issues is the use of a linker script for (a) embedding device binaries into the host binary and (b) defining begin/end symbols for the offload entries table. Linker scripts are not available on Windows, thus a new solution would be needed for that. It can probably be something Windows specific or we can come up with something platform independent.

The wrapper object proposal provides platform independent solution for (a). Moreover, I think that it can be enhanced to also implement (b) on Windows – the wrapper object can also define begin/end symbols for the offload entries table (can employ section grouping mechanism on Windows to ensure that sections defining begin/end symbol are placed before/after the offload entries sections from regular object files).

So with the wrapper object proposal in place, the linker script solution will be used only for (b) on Linux like targets, but, it has limitations even on Linux – f.e. it cannot be used with gold linker because it does not seem to support “insert before …” command (is used by the OpenMP linker script). So, perhaps, the linker script solution for (b) would need a replacement even on Linux.

Thanks,
Serguei

From: Dmitriev, Serguei N
Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2018 10:04 AM
To: Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov>; Alexey Bataev <a.bataev at outlook.com>
Cc: cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
Subject: RE: [cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets

Hi Hal,

Yes, I think it will also work. There should not be lot of unique combinations of offloading targets, thus the number of offload initialization calls will be pretty small. That will be less efficient than having one initialization call, but still acceptable.

Thanks,
Serguei

From: Hal Finkel [mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov]
Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2018 8:53 AM
To: Dmitriev, Serguei N <serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com<mailto:serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com>>; Alexey Bataev <a.bataev at outlook.com<mailto:a.bataev at outlook.com>>
Cc: cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets


On 08/02/2018 10:32 AM, Dmitriev, Serguei N wrote:
Hi Hal,

The offload initialization code is pretty simple, in pseudo code it would look like this

// The device image information.
struct __tgt_device_image {
  void *ImageStart;                  // Pointer to the target code start
  void *ImageEnd;                    // Pointer to the target code end
...
};

// Target binary descriptor.
struct __tgt_bin_desc {
  int32_t NumDeviceImages;           // Number of device images
  __tgt_device_image *DeviceImages;  // Array of device images
...
};

// External symbols for start/end addresses for all N target images.
// These symbols are defined by the linker script which is dynamically
// generated by the clang driver for host link action.
extern char ImageStart1[];
extern char ImageEnd1[];
...
extern char ImageStartN[];
extern char ImageEndN[];

static __tgt_device_image TargetImages[] = {
  { ImageStart1, ImageEnd1, ...},
...
  { ImageStartN, ImageEndN, ...},
};

static __tgt_device_image BinaryDesc = {
  sizeof(TargetImages)/sizeof(__tgt_device_image),  // NumDeviceImages
  TargetImages,                                     // DeviceImages
...
};

// Constructor && destructor which registers/unregisters device binaries
static void registerBinaryDesc() __attribute__((constructor(0))) {
  __tgt_register_lib(&BinaryDesc);
}
static void unregisterBinaryDesc() __attribute__((destructor(0))) {
  __tgt_unregister_lib(&BinaryDesc);
}

Front end adds such code to every host object containing omp offload constructs. It is sufficient to execute it once at program startup, so it is created in comdat for efficiency. And for the current implementation it is Ok to have it in comdat because changing the list of offload targets between objects is now allowed now. Therefore all host objects are expected to have the same init code and thus it does not matter what instance is eventually linked in.

Technically, making offload init code non-comdat together with Alexey’s fix which adds weak linkage to external references from init code would resolve this problem. That would force offload init code from all objects to be executed on startup (not just a single instance) and thus all target images will eventually be registered, but it would be less efficient than executing only one instance of init code.

Thanks for the details. Would my suggestion of hashing/encoding the list of offloading targets into the comdat name/key also work? This seems like it would be a simple solution and would limit the number of initialization calls to one per unique target combination (which should be no more than a few).

 -Hal


What I suggested below is completely removing offload init code from host objects and moving it to a separate object (I called it wrapper object) which is dynamically created by the clang driver for host link action with a help of the new clang-offload-wrapper tool. This object will have all target images as data and offload init code which registers the images. Such change would make host objects completely independent from offloading targets that were specified at compile time. And offload initialization will still be efficient since it will be done only once.

Thanks,
Serguei

From: Hal Finkel [mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 1:51 PM
To: Dmitriev, Serguei N <serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com><mailto:serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com>; Alexey Bataev <a.bataev at outlook.com><mailto:a.bataev at outlook.com>
Cc: cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets


On 08/01/2018 03:32 PM, Dmitriev, Serguei N wrote:
Hi Alexey,

Empty object file produced by the bundler is one of the problems with that example, but I was talking about the different issue which is related to the offload initialization code.

Front end, as part of the generating offload initialization code, creates the target binary descriptor object which is passed to the libomptarget registration API. The binary descriptor object besides the start/end addresses of all target images contains the number of target images which need to be registered and compiler initializes this field to the number of offload targets that were specified in command line. So, in that example below, both a.o and b.o will have initialization code for registering only one target image because only one offload target was specified in command line. The initialization code is generated as a comdat group, so linker will choose either a.o’s or b.o’s instance of this code at link stage, but in any case it will register only one target image instead of two. So that example will not work as expected even if offload bundler problem is fixed. Delaying generation of the offload initialization code till link time would resolve this issue.

I suspect there would also be problems with the offload entry table besides these two issues. The number of offload entries on the host side and target images won’t match, and I guess libomptarget cannot handle this correctly, so I assume runtime would require some changes as well.

That certainly seems like a problem. We don't want varying lists of offloading targets between objects to create implicit ODR problems. Is the initialization code/tables large? Is it important that they're in comdat? Alternatively, we could hash/encode the list of targets in the comdat key, so we'll only get one copy of the init code per unique combination. That might be better than actually having each object contain an initializer?

 -Hal



Thanks,
Serguei

From: Alexey Bataev [mailto:a.bataev at outlook.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 11:45 AM
To: Dmitriev, Serguei N <serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com><mailto:serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com>
Cc: cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>; Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov><mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov>
Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets


Hi Serguei,

I don't see a lot of problems with this example. As I can see there is only one problem: clang-offload-bundler generates an empty object file that cannot be recognized by the linker. If we teach clang-offload-bundler to generate correct empty object files (what we need to do anyway, because currently it may produce wrong utout), your example will work without any changes.

-------------

Best regards,

Alexey Bataev
31.07.2018 16:50, Dmitriev, Serguei N пишет:
Hi Alexey,

Such change would fix the link issue, but I believe it would be a short term solution that will still be revised in future.

Let me explain my concerns. Current implementation has one more limitation which I assume would also be addressed in future – target binaries are expected to have entries for all OpenMP target regions in the program, though it seems to be too restrictive. I assume there would be use cases when you would want to tune target regions in your program for particular targets and offloading to other targets would not make much sense for those regions (or probably won’t even be possible due to limitations of a particular target). It seems reasonable to compile those region only for the targets they were tuned for, thus I assume compiler will support the following usage model in future

clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=nvptx64-nvidia-cuda -c a.c
clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu -c b.c
clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=nvptx64-nvidia-cuda,x86_64-pc-linux-gnu a.o b.o

And such usage model would anyway require redesigning the way how offload initialization code is generated. It has to be delayed till link time because the final set of offload targets that need to be registered in runtime would be known only at link step and thus compiler cannot create correct target binary descriptor object (which is a part of the offload initialization code) at compile time as it is done now.

Does that sound reasonable?

Thanks,
Serguei

From: Alexey Bataev [mailto:a.bataev at outlook.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 9:55 AM
To: Dmitriev, Serguei N <serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com><mailto:serguei.n.dmitriev at intel.com>; cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets


Hi Serguei,

Actually your problem can be fixed easily with a simple patch that changes the linkage of the

`.omp_offloading.img_[start|end]` symbols from external to external weak. After this change your example compiles and works perfectly without any additional changes. I'm going to commit this patch in few minutes.

-------------

Best regards,

Alexey Bataev
30.07.2018 19:50, Dmitriev, Serguei N via cfe-dev пишет:

Motivation



The existing OpenMP offloading implementation in clang does not allow dropping

offload targets at link time. That is, if an object file is created with one set

of offload targets you must use exactly the same set of offload targets at the

link stage. Otherwise, linking will fail



$ clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu,nvptx64-nvidia-cuda foo.c -c

$ clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu foo.o

/tmp/foo-dd79f7.o:(.rodata..omp_offloading.device_images[.omp_offloading.descriptor_reg]+0x20): undefined reference to `.omp_offloading.img_start.nvptx64-nvidia-cuda'

/tmp/foo-dd79f7.o:(.rodata..omp_offloading.device_images[.omp_offloading.descriptor_reg]+0x28): undefined reference to `.omp_offloading.img_end.nvptx64-nvidia-cuda'

clang-7: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

$



This limits OpenMP offload usability. So far, this has not been a high priority

issue but the importance of this problem will grow once clang offload starts

supporting static libraries with offload functionality. For instance, this

limitation won't allow creating general purpose static libraries targeting

multiple types of offload devices and later linking them into a program that

uses only one offload target.



Problem description



Offload targets cannot be dropped at the link phase because object files

produced by the compiler for the host have dependencies on the offload targets

specified during compilation. These dependencies arise from the offload

initialization code.



The clang front-end adds offload initialization code to each host object in

addition to all necessary processing of OpenMP constructs. This initialization

code is intended to register target binaries for all offload targets in the

runtime library at program startup. This code consists of two compiler-generated

routines. One of these routines is added to the list of global constructors and

the other to the global destructors. The constructor routine calls a

libomptarget API which registers the target binaries and the destructor

correspondingly calls a similar API for unregistering target binaries.



Both these APIs accept a pointer to the target binary descriptor object which

specifies the number of offload target binaries to register and the start/end

addresses of target binary images. Since the start/end addresses of target

binaries are not available at compile time, the target binary descriptors are

initialized using link-time constants which reference (undefined) symbols

containing the start/end addresses of all target images. These symbols are

created by the dynamically-generated linker script which the clang driver

creates for the host link action.



References to the target specific symbols from host objects make them dependent

on particular offload targets and prevents dropping offload targets at the link

step. Therefore, the OpenMP offload initialization needs to be redesigned to

make offload targets discardable.



Proposed change



Host objects should be independent of offload targets in order to allow dropping

code for offload targets. That can be achieved by removing offload

initialization code from host objects. The compiler should not inject this code

into host objects.



However, offload initialization should still be done, so it is proposed to move

the initialization code into a special dynamically generated object file

(referred to as 'wrapper object' here onwards), which, besides the

initialization code, will also contain embedded images for offload targets.



The wrapper object file will be generated by the clang driver with the help of

a new tool: clang-offload-wrapper. This tool will take offload target binaries

as input and produce bitcode files containing offload initialization code and

embedded target images. The output bitcode is then passed to the backend and

assembler tools from the host toolchain to produce the wrapper object which is

then added as an input to the linker for host linking.



The offload action builder in the clang driver needs to be changed to use this

tool while building the actions graph for OpenMP offload compilations.



Current status



A patch with initial implementation of the proposed changes has been uploaded to

phabricator for review - https://reviews.llvm.org/D49510.



Looking for a feedback for this proposal.



Thanks,

Sergey







--

Hal Finkel

Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages

Leadership Computing Facility

Argonne National Laboratory


--

Hal Finkel

Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages

Leadership Computing Facility

Argonne National Laboratory
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