[LLVMdev] Proposal for adding rounding variant of fpto?i instructions

[Peter Collingbourne]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 05:28:43PM +0100, Anton Lokhmotov wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> > I would appreciate comments/feedback on this proposal to extend the
> > fpto?i instructions to support rounding.
> I think this might be useful. Actually, LLVM specifies that fpto?i convert
> their operand into the nearest (rounding towards zero) signed integer value.
> Do you have other rounding modes in mind? Currently I use custom metadata to
> represent conversions with other rounding modes.

Hi Anton,

I wanted to stick to round-to-zero (as we have now) plus the current
FPU rounding mode.  We could add other rounding modes, but I don't
think it would be sensible to do this for fpto?i alone without also
affecting the other FP operations in a similar way.  That would be a
project that would go far beyond my current needs, especially since
most architectures do not have a way to specify the rounding mode in
the instruction (requiring, I would imagine, an legalisation pass and
a new set of intrinsics and/or SelectionDAG nodes for manipulating
the rounding mode).

OTOH, fpto?i with current rounding mode seemed to be supported on
approx half of the architectures I surveyed, and would bring fpto?i
in line (operation-wise) with the other FP operations, which makes
a more compelling argument for this being (initially) supported as
an instruction.

In terms of adding other rounding modes, the proposed design is
extensible in that the immediate argument to FP_TO_?INT in the
SelectionDAG can be used in the future to indicate an arbitrary
rounding mode (or a special value meaning "current rounding mode").
The same format rounding mode argument can also be added to other
FP operations.

Thanks,
-- 
Peter