[LLVMdev] Comparison of Alias Analysis in LLVM

[Jianzhou Zhao]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 4:55 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
> On Jan 3, 2012, at 1:53 PM, Jianzhou Zhao wrote:
>> I see. I asked the question because LLVM provides several alias
>> analysis, and I was wondering how to decide which one should be used
>> for compiling most programs.
>>
>> I think the basicaa is the default one, but by looking into its code,
>> it is not inter-procedural or context-sensitive (I am not 100% sure),
>> so does not provide interesting mod/ref information. Then, GVN(PRE)
>> and LICM may not have a lot of opportunities for optimizing calls. So,
>> I looked into the thesis for understanding how those inter-procedural
>> aa and other aa contribute. I guess basicaa has a better speed-up per
>> compiling-cost ratio for most common programs than others. Is this
>> correct?
>
> We do also use globalsmodref, and have a pass for inferring and propagating the readnone/readonly markers.  We also now have Type Based Alias Analysis for C languages.

I do not understand how the chaining works here. If I do opt
-globalsmodref-aa ..., does the globalsmodref pass call the analysis
implemented in AliasAnalysis or BasicAliasAnalysis class when
globalsmodref cannot decide Must or No Alias? I think it should be
AliasAnalysis, because globalsmodref subclasses AliasAnalysis.

The documents say that all the aa analysis are chained, and give an
example like opt -basicaa -ds-aa -licm. In this case, does ds-aa
automatically call basicaa for the case when ds-aa can only return
MayAlias? This looks magic to me. Is this handled by AnalysisGroup
magically?

>
> No one has really been pushing forward aliasing much lately.
>
> -Chris
>



-- 
Jianzhou