[flang-commits] [clang-tools-extra] [llvm] [libc] [flang] [clang] [compiler-rt] [DirectX][docs] Architecture and design philosophy of DXIL support (PR #78221)

[Chris B via flang-commits]

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+===============================================
+Architecture and Design of DXIL Support in LLVM
+===============================================
+
+.. contents::
+   :local:
+
+.. toctree::
+   :hidden:
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+LLVM supports reading and writing the `DirectX Intermediate Language.
+<https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/blob/main/docs/DXIL.rst>`_,
+or DXIL. DXIL is essentially LLVM 3.7 era bitcode with some
+restrictions and various semantically important operations and
+metadata.
+
+LLVM's implementation philosophy for DXIL support is to treat DXIL as
+merely a representation format as much as possible. When reading DXIL,
+we should translate everyting to generic LLVM constructs when
+possible. Similarly, we should introduce DXIL-specific constructs as
+late as possible in the process of lowering to the format.
+
+There are three places to look for DXIL related code in LLVM: The
+`DirectX` backend, for writing DXIL; The `DXILUpgrade` pass, for
+reading; and in library code that is shared between writing and
+reading. We'll describe these in reverse order.
+
+Common Code for Reading and Writing
+===================================
+
+There's quite a bit of logic that needs to be shared between reading
+and writing DXIL in order to avoid code duplication. While we don't
+have a hard and fast rule about where such code should live, there are
+generally three sensible places. Simple definitions of enums and
+values that must stay fixed to match DXIL's ABI can be found in
+`Support/DXILABI.h`, utilities to translate bidirectionally between
+DXIL and modern LLVM constructs live in `lib/Transforms/Utils`, and
+more analyses that are needed to derive or preserve information are
+implemented as typical `lib/Analysis` passes.
+
+The DXILUpgrade Pass
+====================
+
+Translating DXIL to LLVM IR takes advantage of the fact that DXIL is
+compatible with LLVM 3.7 bitcode, and that modern LLVM is capable of
+"upgrading" older bitcode into modern IR. Simply relying on the
+bitcode upgrade process isn't sufficient though, since that leaves a
+number of DXIL specific constructs around. Thus, we have the
+`DXILUpgrade` pass to transform DXIL operations to LLVM operations and
+smooth over differences in metadata representation.
+
+The DirectX Backend
+===================
+
+The DirectX backend lowers LLVM IR into DXIL. As we're transforming to
+an intermediate format rather than a specific ISA, this backend does
+not follow the instruction selection patterns you might be familiar
+with from other backends. There are two parts to lowering DXIL - a set
+of passes that mutate various constructs into a form that matches how
+DXIL represents those constructs, followed by a limited bitcode
+"downgrader pass".
+
+Before emitting DXIL, the DirectX backend needs to modify the LLVM IR
+such that external operations, types, and metadata is represented in
+the way that DXIL expects. For example, `DXILOpLowering` translates
+intrinsics into `dx.op` calls. It's encouraged to implement parts of
+the DXIL lowering as these kinds of IR to IR passes when possible, as
+that means that they can be easily tested with `opt` and `FileCheck`
+without the need for external tooling.
+
+The second part of DXIL emission is more or less an LLVM bitcode
+downgrader. We need to emit bitcode that matches the LLVM 3.7
+representation. For this, we have `DXILWriter`, which is an alternate
+version of LLVM's `BitcodeWriter`. At present, this is able to
+leverage LLVM's current bitcode libraries to do a lot of the work, but
+it's possible that at some point in the future it will need to be
+completely separate as modern LLVM bitcode evolves.
+
+Testing
----------------
llvm-beanz wrote:

I don't want to in any way diminish the importance of execution testing (because it is very important), but I know that both @bogner, and myself have worked on backend implementations for hardware that didn't yet exist and the development and testing strategies that are common in LLVM have allowed us to do so with very high levels of confidence in the compiler implementation.

For the purposes of this document I think it is valuable to focus on compiler unit testing and leave execution testing as a separate problem because it is a large and complicated problem that needs its own separate design. The approach we currently take in DXC is too limited for the goals of our Clang implementation so we'll really need to come up with something much more ambitious (although it certainly can draw inspiration and experience from what we did in DXC).

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/78221