[llvm-dev] [RFC] Changes to llvm.experimental.vector.reduce intrinsics

Sander De Smalen via llvm-dev llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Wed Apr 10 05:58:24 PDT 2019


> On 7 Apr 2019, at 14:56, Simon Pilgrim via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> On 05/04/2019 16:26, Sander De Smalen wrote:
>> Hi Simon,
>> 
>> Thanks for your feedback! See my comments inline.
>> 
>>> On 5 Apr 2019, at 09:47, Simon Pilgrim via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 05/04/2019 09:37, Simon Pilgrim via llvm-dev wrote:
>>>> On 04/04/2019 14:11, Sander De Smalen wrote:
>>>>> Proposed change:
>>>>> ----------------------------
>>>>> In this RFC I propose changing the intrinsics for llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.fadd and llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.fmul (see options A and B). I also propose renaming the 'accumulator' operand to 'start value' because for fmul this is the start value of the reduction, rather than a value to which the fmul reduction is accumulated into.
>>>>>  
>>>>> [Option A] Always using the start value operand in the reduction (https://reviews.llvm.org/D60261)
>>>>>  
>>>>>   declare float @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.v2.fadd.f32.v4f32(float %start_value, <4 x float> %vec)
>>>>>  
>>>>> This means that if the start value is 'undef', the result will be undef and all code creating such a reduction will need to ensure it has a sensible start value (e.g. 0.0 for fadd, 1.0 for fmul). When using 'fast' or ‘reassoc’ on the call it will be implemented using an unordered reduction, otherwise it will be implemented with an ordered reduction. Note that a new intrinsic is required to capture the new semantics. In this proposal the intrinsic is prefixed with a 'v2' for the time being, with the expectation this will be dropped when we remove 'experimental' from the reduction intrinsics in the future.
>>>>>  
>>>>> [Option B] Having separate ordered and unordered intrinsics (https://reviews.llvm.org/D60262).
>>>>>  
>>>>>   declare float @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.ordered.fadd.f32.v4f32(float %start_value, <4 x float> %vec)
>>>>>   declare float @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.unordered.fadd.f32.v4f32(<4 x float> %vec)
>>>>>  
>>>>> This will mean that the behaviour is explicit from the intrinsic and the use of 'fast' or ‘reassoc’ on the call has no effect on how that intrinsic is lowered. The ordered reduction intrinsic will take a scalar start-value operand, where the unordered reduction intrinsic will only take a vector operand.
>>>>>  
>>>>> Both options auto-upgrade the IR to use the new (version of the) intrinsics. I'm personally slightly in favour of [Option B], because it better aligns with the definition of the SelectionDAG nodes and is more explicit in its semantics. We also avoid having to use an artificial 'v2' like prefix to denote the new behaviour of the intrinsic.
>>>> Do we have any targets with instructions that can actually use the start value? TBH I'd be tempted to suggest we just make the initial extractelement/fadd/insertelement pattern a manual extra stage and avoid having having that argument entirely. 
>>>> 
>> ARM SVE has the FADDA instruction for strict fadd reductions (see for example test/MC/AArch64/SVE/fadda.s). This instruction takes an explicit start-value operand. The reduction intrinsics were originally introduced for SVE where we modelled the fadd/fmul reductions with this instruction in mind.
>> 
>> Just to clarify, is this what you are suggesting regarding extract/fadd/insert?
>> 
>>   %first = extractelement <4 x float> %input, i32 0
>>   %first.new = fadd float %start, %first
>>   %input.new = insertelement <4 x float> %input, float %first.new, i32 0
>>   %red = call float @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.ordered.fadd.f32.v4f32(<4 x float> %input.new)
>> 
>> My only reservation here is that LLVM might obfuscate this code so that CodeGen couldn't easily match the extract/fadd/insert pattern, thus adding the extra fadd instruction. This could for example happen if the loop would be rotated/pipelined to load the next iteration and doing the first 'fadd' before the next iteration. In such case having the extra operand would be more descriptive.
> Yes that was the IR I had in mind, but you're right in that its probably useful for chained fadd reductions as well as the SVE specific instruction. If we're getting rid of the fast math 'undef' special case and we expect a 'identity' start value (fadd = 0.0f, fmul = 1.0f) that we can optimize away then I've no objections.
Correct. A common use-case for these reduction intrinsics are to work inside vectorized loops, where chaining happens through the reduction value's PHI node (i.e. the scalar reduction value from one iteration will be the input to the next vector iteration). Indeed if this intrinsic is scalarized the identitiy value can be optimized away.

> 
>>>>> Further efforts:
>>>>> ----------------------------
>>>>> Here a non-exhaustive list of items I think work towards making the intrinsics non-experimental:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 	• Adding SelectionDAG legalization for the  _STRICT reduction SDNodes. After some great work from Nikita in D58015, unordered reductions are now legalized/expanded in SelectionDAG, so if we add expansion in SelectionDAG for strict reductions this would make the ExpandReductionsPass redundant.
>>>>> 	• Better enforcing the constraints of the intrinsics (see https://reviews.llvm.org/D60260 ).
>>>>> 
>>>>> 	• I think we'll also want to be able to overload the result operand based on the vector element type for the intrinsics having the constraint that the result type must match the vector element type. e.g. dropping the redundant 'i32' in:
>>>>>   i32 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.and.i32.v4i32(<4 x i32> %a) => i32 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.and.v4i32(<4 x i32> %a)
>>>>> since i32 is implied by <4 x i32>. This would have the added benefit that LLVM would automatically check for the operands to match.
>>>>> 
>>>> Won't this cause issues with overflow? Isn't the point  of an add (or mul....) reduction of say, <64 x i8> giving a larger (i32 or i64) result so we don't lose anything? I agree for bitop reductions it doesn't make sense though.
>>>> 
>>> Sorry - I forgot to add: which asks the question - should we be considering signed/unsigned add/mul and possibly saturation reductions?
>> The current intrinsics explicitly specify that:
>>    "The return type matches the element-type of the vector input"
>> 
>> This was done to avoid having explicit signed/unsigned add reductions, reasoning that zero- and sign-extension can be done on the input values to the reduction. We had a bit of debate on this internally, and it would come down to similar reasons as for the extra 'start value' operand to fadd reductions. I think we'd welcome the signed/unsigned variants as they would be more descriptive and would safeguard the code from transformations that make it difficult to fold the sign/zero extend into the operation during CodeGen. The downside however is that for signed/unsigned add reductions it would mean that both operations are the same when the result type equals the element type.
> An alternative would be that we limit the existing add/mul cases to the same result type (along with and/or/xor/smax/smin/umax/umin) and we add sadd/uadd/smul/umul extending reductions as well.
If we add signed/unsigned variants as separate intrinsics alongside the existing 'add' and 'mul', then we have the benefit that LLVM can canonicalise to use the existing intrinsics for cases where the result- and element types are the same. The intrinsics would then be:

  i32 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.add.v4i32(<4 x i32> %input)      ; reduce elements into i32 result
  i64 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.sadd.i64.v4i32(<4 x i32> %input) ; sign extend input elements and reduce into i64 result
  i64 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.uadd.i64.v4i32(<4 x i32> %input) ; zero extend input elements and reduce into i64 result

(note that for the first intrinsic, I've left out the extra '.i32' to emphasise the constraint that the element type must match the result type, although the future work to overload this operand is mentioned above)

> 
>> Saturating vector reductions sound sensible, but are there any targets that implement these at the moment?
> X86/SSE has the v8i16 HADDS/HSUBS horizontal signed saturation instructions, and X86/XOP has extend+horizontal-add/sub instructions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOP_instruction_set).
Since these intrinsics would be ordered, I guess they would also require a start value for the same reasons as the ordered fadd/fmul reductions. The signedness of the operation matters so there is little benefit for keeping a generic 'saturating.add', leaving us with:

 i64 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.saturating.sadd.i64.v4i32(i64 %start, <4 x i32> %input)
	  ; sign extend input elements and ordered signed reduction into i64 result, saturating to min_val(i64) or max_val(i64)

 i64 @llvm.experimental.vector.reduce.saturating.uadd.i64.v4i32(i64 %start, <4 x i32> %input)
	  ; zero extend input elements and ordered unsigned reduction into i64 result, saturating to max_val(i64)



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