[cfe-dev] Help with register allocation for undef inputs to inline asm

[Nathan Sidwell via cfe-dev]

On 7/8/21 11:35 AM, David Spickett via cfe-dev wrote:
> (since this is inline asm I'm sending this to cfe-dev, though it
> includes llvm's logic)
> 
> I've been looking at this bug report:
> https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50647
> (the initial report is for ARM but I've found it applies to any architecture)
> 
> Where an undef input to an inline asm statement isn't assigned its own
> register and overlaps a second input value. Here's a minimal version
> of it:
> void func(unsigned long long n)
> {
>      unsigned long long b;
>      n = 99;
> 
>      __asm__ volatile (
>          "add %[_b], %[_b], %[_b] \n\t" // Assigned register X
>          "add %[_n], %[_n], %[_n] \n\t" // Also assigned register X
>          :
>          : [_n] "r" (n), [_b] "r" (b)
>      );
> }
> 
> Godbolt: https://godbolt.org/z/bro9hde46
> 
> This produces an inline asm statement in IR where the input for "b" is undef.
> tail call void asm sideeffect "add $1, $1, $1 \0A\09add $0, $0, $0
> \0A\09", "r,r"(i64 99, i64 undef) #2, !dbg !22, !srcloc !23

forgive me, but isn't that asm just specifying inputs?  There are no 
outputs, so the allocator doesn't know anything's being clobbered?

Indeed, if I change it to:
    __asm__ volatile (
         "add %[_b], %[_b], %[_b] \n\t"
         "add %[_n], %[_n], %[_n] \n\t"
         : [_n] "+r" (n), [_b] "+r" (b)
         :
     );

I get different registers for _n and _b.

> 
> This makes sense and I can see intuitively why you wouldn't assign a
> unique register to an undef value. It has no value after all, it could
> be anything including the same value as the other input. I tracked
> this decision down to somewhere in the VirtRegRewriter pass but I
> haven't been able to pin down the exact place yet.
> 
> My question is:
> Would making an exception here for the inline asm case make sense? Or
> is this an instance of undef values gives you undef results, in a way
> that we would be happy to keep. (FWIW gcc does assign unique registers
> in this case)
> 
> Thanks,
> David Spickett.
> _______________________________________________
> cfe-dev mailing list
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
> 


-- 
Nathan Sidwell