[llvm-dev] [RFC] Profile guided section layout

[Tobias Edler von Koch via llvm-dev]

Hi Michael,

This is cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

On 06/15/2017 11:51 AM, Michael Spencer via llvm-dev wrote:
> The first is a new llvm pass which uses branch frequency info to get 
> counts for each call instruction and then adds a module flags 
> metatdata table of function -> function edges along with their counts.
>
> The second takes the module flags metadata and writes it into a 
> .note.llvm.callgraph section in the object file. This currently just 
> dumps it as text, but could save space by reusing the string table.
Have you considered reading the profile in the linker and extracting 
that information directly from the profile? The profile should contain 
call sites and their sample counts and you could match these up with 
relocations (calls) in the section?

> It doesn't currently work for LTO as the llvm pass needs to be run 
> after all inlining decisions have been made and LTO codegen has to be 
> done with -ffunction-sections.
So this is just an implementation issue, right? You can make LTO run 
with -ffunction-sections (by setting 
TargetOptions.FunctionSections=true) and insert your pass in the 
appropriate place in the pipeline.

Thanks,
Tobias

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