<html>
    <head>
      <base href="https://bugs.llvm.org/">
    </head>
    <body><table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8">
        <tr>
          <th>Bug ID</th>
          <td><a class="bz_bug_link 
          bz_status_NEW "
   title="NEW - Add pragma for loop aligning"
   href="https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49380">49380</a>
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Summary</th>
          <td>Add pragma for loop aligning
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Product</th>
          <td>clang
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Version</th>
          <td>unspecified
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Hardware</th>
          <td>PC
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>OS</th>
          <td>All
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Status</th>
          <td>NEW
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Severity</th>
          <td>enhancement
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Priority</th>
          <td>P
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Component</th>
          <td>C
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Assignee</th>
          <td>unassignedclangbugs@nondot.org
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Reporter</th>
          <td>ibogosavljevic@gmail.com
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>CC</th>
          <td>blitzrakete@gmail.com, dgregor@apple.com, erik.pilkington@gmail.com, llvm-bugs@lists.llvm.org, richard-llvm@metafoo.co.uk
          </td>
        </tr></table>
      <p>
        <div>
        <pre>On modern x86 CPUs, the performance of the loop can vary up to 50% if the loop
instructions are not aligned properly. Aligning the loop start on a 32-byte
boundary can help get the best performance out of my critical loop, but there
is no guarantee that CLANG will align the loops properly.

Workarounds: Putting assembler nops or assembler align directives doesn't help,
because the actual assembler loop can have a header of assembly instructions. 

This issue is a very well known one, e.g.:
<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45298870/why-does-loop-alignment-on-32-byte-make-code-faster">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45298870/why-does-loop-alignment-on-32-byte-make-code-faster</a>

Repro: I can provide a working example where the same code has different speeds
depending on the loop alignment.

Intel's compiler already has a similar pragma:
<a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intelr-compiler-170-new-feature-code-alignment-for-loops.html">https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intelr-compiler-170-new-feature-code-alignment-for-loops.html</a>

E.g. pragma

     for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
        int min = a[i];
        int min_index = i;
        #pragma clang loop code_align(32)
        for (int j = i+1; j < len; j++) {
            if (a[j] < min) {
                min = a[j];
                min_index = j;
            }
        }
        std::swap(a[i], a[min_index]);
    }</pre>
        </div>
      </p>


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