[PATCH] D15600: AArch64: Add option to use shared epilogues in compiler-rt

[Kristof Beyls via llvm-commits]

kristof.beyls added a comment.

I think the general idea of sharing epilogues is a good idea - at the very least when optimizing for size.
Did you also happen to measure the impact on performance?

Overall, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to let the compiler put the epilogue functions in comdat sections (or the equivalent for non-ELF object formats), rather than having them in compiler-rt. I think doing so would have the following advantages:

- It's possible to catch all epilogues, not just the N (16 in the attached patch) most often used ones as seen in a benchmark corpus.
- The epilogues can more easily be tuned for specific cores when the epilogues are produced by the compiler rather than being stored in compiler-rt. E.g. I've been told that this technique also has been used effectively in other compilers when targeting AArch32. On some AArch32 cores using LDRD tends to be more efficient than using LDM.
- My gut feel is that if over time we want to modify epilogues; a scheme where the compiler still emits the epilogues is the most flexible. Retaining all versions of epilogues in compiler-rt potentially required by all LLVM revisions ever used may end up being a bookkeeping nightmare.

Obviously, a well-defined naming scheme will be needed to define the epilogue functions (e.g. should they contain a version number?), but I think that's true no matter whether the epilogue functions are produced by the compiler or inserted into compiler-rt.

This also made me wonder if something similar could be done for function prologues? I couldn't immediately think of why it would be impossible - but the overheads involved probably will be higher than with epilogues, e.g. having to do a call to a prologue function, rather than doing a branch to an epilogue function?


Repository:
  rL LLVM

http://reviews.llvm.org/D15600