[llvm-dev] [Openmp-dev] [cfe-dev] RFC: Proposing an LLVM subproject for parallelism runtime and support libraries

[Hal Finkel via llvm-dev]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "C Bergström via Openmp-dev" <openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> To: "Chandler Carruth" <chandlerc at gmail.com>
> Cc: "llvm-dev" <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "cfe-dev" <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>, openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org
> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 12:51:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [Openmp-dev] [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] RFC: Proposing an LLVM subproject for parallelism runtime and support
> libraries
> 
> Speaking from 1st hand experience -
> 
> The off-the-cuff high level benefits
> 1) Better interopt of different programming models - For example what
> if someone wants to mix SE+OMP(4). Having the same runtime on the
> backend should make this a lot easier. (Maybe this particular example
> may never happen, but I hope you get what I'm talking about)
> 2) Less duplication of effort for common things.
> 3) Easier time for new programming models
> 
> By ignoring the current technical issues it's just playing
> kick-the-can for someone less intimate with SE or OMP.
> 
> I hate to pushback on SE for this general requirement, but it seems
> like the right time to do it. If not now - At which point does it
> make
> sense?
> -------------
> My real honest motivation here is for Google and Intel to join
> together on this. I believe SE will be much better long term if major
> stakeholders are aligned.

This is also my long-term desire, and having spoken offline with folks on both sides, I think that everyone shares the desire to merge and deduplicate where that makes technical sense. We'd all like LLVM's runtime picture to truly be an infrastructure, not a patchwork of semi-related overlapping things.

However, at this point we have two separate projects representing significant independent planning and developer effort, user communities for both, and a desire to have both in LLVM. It seems logical that there may be reuse to be exploited between the two, but frankly, I don't even thing we know exactly what the layering would be. What we need at this point are concrete proposals, and patches, to merge functionality. Having these kinds of discussions in the abstract is difficult, the code is too large, and its design constraints are too complicated, for that to be productive. This process could occur out-of-tree, but that's suboptimal. We want the full engagement and relative transparency of the LLVM community, and our community infrastructure, to facilitate this process. Trying to get these issues worked out behind the scenes is unlikely to be successful, and while I agree that the community has pre-commit leverage, the most effective way to use that leverage is to make it clear to the parties involved that the community expects cross-pollination to happen: by code integration, or just by intellectual contribution.

Let's get both things committed. Committing them does not freeze the API, or otherwise commit us to support for the current implementations. Once that's done, we'll be in a much stronger, and better informed, position to discuss further refactoring.

Thanks again,
Hal

> 
> How many dsisjoint and fragmented programming models do "we" really
> need.. (I don't think SE falls into this category, but if we have a
> PHI and Intel backend.. why can't it be used)
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 1:38 AM, Chandler Carruth
> <chandlerc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:14 PM C Bergström
> > <cbergstrom at pathscale.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> I can't comment on all the things not directly used by llvm
> >> community,
> >> but I feel pretty strongly that
> >> 1) An independent project like liboffload should exist ; which
> >> 2) Projects like SE and OpenMP should both be using it ; and
> >> further
> >> 3) SE shouldn't just do their own thing because they haven't
> >> figured
> >> out how to make it work with other projects that already have some
> >> overlapping behaviour
> >> ---------
> >> If my points above are invalid - can someone clarify that SE and
> >> the
> >> "stuff" in OpenMP-llvm doesn't actually overlap in functionality.
> >
> >
> > It isn't that any of these points are invalid, it's just that I
> > don't think
> > we know how or if these projects have a useful overlap to extract
> > and keep
> > separate. That was the whole point of my email suggesting that we
> > shouldn't
> > try to force some hypothetical refactoring that we don't even know
> > will work
> > to happen. Several serious technical challenges have been raised
> > with doing
> > this refactoring, so its not just avoiding it for the sake of
> > avoiding it.
> >
> > Even if/when these issues are sorted out and it is feasible to
> > refactor
> > things to have a common layer, it still isn't clear whether the
> > overlap is
> > actually that useful. I think we're over analyzing and designing
> > this when
> > we don't even have the code in place to see if there is an
> > interesting
> > problem to solve here.
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-- 
Hal Finkel
Assistant Computational Scientist
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory