[llvm-dev] [RFC] Polly Status and Integration

[Hal Finkel via llvm-dev]

On 09/13/2017 07:30 AM, C Bergström wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 8:05 PM, Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov 
> <mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov>> wrote:
>
>
>     On 09/13/2017 06:53 AM, C Bergström wrote:
>>
>>
>>     On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 7:43 PM, Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov
>>     <mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>         On 09/13/2017 02:16 AM, C Bergström wrote:
>>>         A completely non-technical point, but what's the current
>>>         "polly" license? Does integrating that code conflict in any
>>>         way with the work being done to relicense llvm?
>>
>>         Good question. I discussed this explicitly with Tobias, and
>>         his general feeling is that relicensing isl again would be
>>         doable if necessary (we already did this once, to an MIT
>>         license, in order to enable better LLVM integration).
>>
>>>
>>>         Does adding polly expose any additional legal risks? Some
>>>         people from Reservoir labs have explicitly stated to me that
>>>         some of their patents target polyhedral optimizations. You
>>>         should almost certainly review their portfolio or contact them.
>>>
>>>         If at some point someone wants to add real loop
>>>         optimizations - will there be a conflict?
>>
>>         Can you define "real loop optimizations"?
>>
>>
>>     I think most readers here will understand what I mean. I can go
>>     find specific chapters of textbooks if it's unclear. Maybe the
>>     word "real" could be replaced with traditional, well tested,
>>     industry standard or something else. (ok I'll stop being snarky)
>
>     That's what I thought you meant. No, I believe there's not a
>     conflict. In fact, this will provide infrastructure to make this
>     easier. While you can handle a bunch of these as one problem using
>     this kind of framework, you don't need to do so.
>
>
>
> By this I think you either mean A) the polly stuff will provide a 
> better analysis pass or B) the llvm side will have a better analysis 
> pass, correct?
>
> If you mean A, then that's cool. I was unaware that poly had an 
> interface and could be used like this.

It does now (I believe that it was developed as part of a GSoC project 
last year: 
http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/polly/trunk/include/polly/DependenceInfo.h). 


> The cost model aspect is very important. I'm mildly curious how it 
> builds this.
>
> (correct me if I'm wrong please) It's my lay understanding that poly 
> optimizations are an either or and do not generally play well with 
> tradtional methods. More specifically, after poly things are "messed 
> up" and it would be difficult to do another (traditional type) 
> transformation that it missed.

Polly doesn't really use this currently, but isl has an incremental 
scheduling interface, and other ways to guide the transformation 
process, so it should be possible to build passes that use the 
infrastructure to do a restricted subset of transformations. In short, 
it can do a bunch of stuff at the same time, but doesn't have to be used 
that way. As such, you can actually use Polly's infrastructure to build 
many of these individual classical transformations (in what I believe is 
a relatively-simply way - although take this with a grain of salt 
because I don't know how much this has been tried in practice).

  -Hal

> Since llvm doesn't have or doesn't do the traditional side very well, 
> this is less a concern though.
>
>

-- 
Hal Finkel
Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory

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