[LLVMdev] [DRAFT] LLVM 1.7 release announcement notes [DRAFT]
Chris Lattner
sabre at nondot.org
Wed Apr 19 23:08:07 PDT 2006
On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Tanya Lattner wrote:
> Feedback below..
Updated, thanks!
-Chris
>> <will insert overview blurb here> Big new things: llvm-gcc4, new sparc
>> backend, Generic vector/SSE/Altivec support, X86 Scalar SSE support,
>> debugging support, many target-independent codegen improvements, inline
>> asm, llvm.org/web-reg.
>>
>>
>> Core LLVM IR Improvements:
>>
>> * The LLVM IR now has full support for representing target-specific
>> inline assembly code, as general as GCC's inline assembly.
>> * Rob Bocchino added new LLVM insertelement and extractelement
>> instructions, for accessing/updating scalar elements of a vector.
>> * LLVM now has a new shufflevector instruction, for permuting the
>> elements of a vector. http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html#vectorops
>> * LLVM now supports first class global ctor/dtor initialization lists, no
>> longer forcing targets to use "__main".
>> * LLVM supports assigning globals and functions to a particular section
>> in the result executable.
>>
>>
>> LLVM Intrinsic Improvements:
>>
>> * Adding target-specific intrinsics to LLVM is now really easy: entries
>> are added to .td files and necessary support code is generated from it.
>
> say TableGen (.td) files
>
>> * Reid contributed flexible support for "autoupgrading" intrinsics. This
>> is useful when we decide to change an intrinsic in a new releases of
>> LLVM: .ll and .bc files from old releases get upgraded to the new
>> form.*
>
> <new line> before *
>
>> Andrew added support for a new LLVM "readcyclecounter" intrinsic, for
>> accessing low-level target timing interfaces.
>> * LLVM now supports llvm.stacksave/llvm.stackrestore intrinsics, for
>> proper C99 Variable Length Array support.
>> * Reid changed many intrinsics to have fixed types instead of being
>> overloaded based on type.
>>
>>
>> Mid-Level Analysis and Transformation Improvements:
>>
>> * The -loop-unswitch pass has had several bugs fixed, has several new
>> features, and is enabled by default now.
>> * Evan improved the loop strength reduction pass to use a parameterized
>> target interface and to take advantage of strided loads on targets
>> that support them (e.g. X86).
>> * The -instcombine pass has a framework and implementation for simplifying
>> code based on whether computed bits are demanded or not, based on
>> Nate's design and implementation in the code generator.
>
> Try to reword and get rid of one "based on".
>
>> * Nate reimplemented post-dominator analysis using the Lengauer and
>> Tarjan algorithm, replacing the old iterative implementation. On one
>> extreme example his implementation is 40x faster than the old one
>> (PR681) and uses far less memory.
>> * Daniel Berlin contributed an ET-Forest implementation, which
>> replaces the old LLVM DominatorSet with a far more efficient data
>> structure (in both space and time).
>> * Andrew wrote a new "reg2mem" which transforms an LLVM function so that
>> there are no SSA values live across basic blocks.
>> * The -scalarrepl pass can now promote simple unions to registers.
>> * The inliner can now inline functions that have dynamic 'alloca'
>> instructions in them (without increasing stack usage).
>> * The -reassociate pass knows how to factor expressions in several ways,
>> e.g. turning (A*A+A*B) into (A*(A+B)) and (X+X+Y+Y) into ((X+Y) << 1)
>> * Saem Ghani contributed support to allow different implementations of
>> the abstract callgraph interface, e.g., based on pointer analysis.
>>
>>
>> Debugging Support Improvements:
>>
>> * Jim implemented almost complete debugging support in the llvm-gcc 4.0
>> front-end and the x86/powerpc darwin backends. This includes line
>> number information, variable information, function information, frame
>> information etc. This is a huge leap in debug support over previous
>> releases, the only major missing piece is support for debugging
>> optimized code.
>> * Jim added support to the C backend for turning line number information
>> into #line directives in the output C file.
>> * Jim expanded http://llvm.org/docs/SourceLevelDebugging.html and filled
>> in many details.
>>
>>
>> Target-Independent Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * Nate contributed the foundation of vector support including instruction
>> selection and tblgen pieces.
>> * Evan contributed a new target-independent bottom-up list scheduler.
>> * The new list scheduler was enhanced to support top-down scheduling and
>> to support target-specific priority functions and resource conflict
>> detectors.
>> * The code generator now supports many simple inline assembly
>> expressions, though there are still cases that are not handled. If you
>> get errors or assertions using inline assembly, please file a bugzilla
>> bug. Inline assembly is not currently supported in the JIT or C backend.
>> * Evan contributed extensive additions to 'tblgen', the code
>> generator generator, providing more expressive .td files.
>> * Nate integrated switch statement lowering directly into the
>> SelectionDAG machinery, instead of depending on the lower-switch pass
>> to reduce them to branches. In the process, he improved to algorithm
>> to avoid emiting some dead comparisons.
>
> improved the algorithm
>
>> * Evan significantly improved SelectionDAG support for chain and flag
>> handling, and added support for describing these nodes in .td files.
>> * Nate contributed a framework and implementation for simplifying code
>> based on whether computed bits are demanded or not, which works well on
>> bitfield manipulations and other bit-twiddling code, particularly for
>> removing unneeded sign extensions.
>> * Evan added support for adding per-instruction predicates that
>> enable/disable specific instructions. This is used to disable
>> instructions that are not supported by specific subtargets, etc.
>> * LLC has a new -fast option, instructing it to generate code quickly
>> instead of optimizing the generated code.
>> * Many compile-time speedups in the code generator.
>> * The target-independent AsmPrinter module has many new features, such as
>> support for emitting ".asciz" instead of ".ascii" when possible,
>> support for .zerofill, support for targets that accept quoted labels,
>> etc, and it reduces the amount of target-specific code that needs to
>> be written.
>> * Nate added support for byte-swap and bit rotate nodes.
>> * The legalizer pass is now non-iterative (==faster), more simple, and
>> several nasty libcall insertion bugs are now fixed.
>> * The register spiller is better at optimizing inserted spill code.
>> * Evan modified the instruction selector generator to produce code that
>> doesn't run out of stack space when compiled with GCC 4.x.
>> * Evan added support for lowering memset/memcpy with small fixed sizes
>> into discrete load and store instructions.
>> * LLVM can now inline the copysign C99/FORTRAN functions.
>>
>>
>> X86-Specific Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * Evan added a new DAG-DAG instruction selector for X86,
>> replacing the 'pattern' selector.
>> * Evan added Scalar SSE support, which provides significantly
>> better performance than the LLVM FP stack code.
>> * Evan added a register-pressure reducing scheduler priority function,
>> which is now used by default on X86.
>> * Evan added support for -fpic and -static codegen on Darwin.
>> * Evan added initial support for subtargets in the X86 backend, including
>> a broad range of -mcpu=* values.
>> * Evan improved the loop strength reduction on X86, and it is now turned
>> on by default.
>> * Evan added support for generation of SSE3 instructions (e.g. fisttp) on
>> subtargets that support it.
>>
>>
>> PowerPC-Specific Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * Full support for the Altivec instruction set, accessible with the GCC
>> generic vector extension and the altivec.h intrinsics (llvmgcc4 only),
>> including support for -faltivec and -maltivec.
>> * Nate greatly simplified the PowerPC branch selector, making it more
>> aggressive and removing support code from the target-independent code
>> in the process.
>> * Support for -static and -fpic codegen on Darwin.
>> * Many improvements in the generated code.
>>
>>
>> IA64-Specific Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * Duraid transitioned the code generator to the new DAG-to-DAG isel
>> framework, which is more reliable and produces better code.
>> * The Itanium backend now has a bundling pass, which improves performance
>> by ~10% and reduces code size. Bundling can be improved in the future
>> by implementing a hazard recognizer for the scheduler to build better
>> bundles.
>> * LLVM has been built with the HP aCC compiler and stdcxx, the Apache C++
>> Standard Library (see http://incubator.apache.org/stdcxx/ ). While
>> building with compilers other than g++ is not supported, doing so
>> should now be more straightforward.
>>
>>
>> Alpha-specific Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * Andrew rewrote the alpha instruction selector to use the new DAG-to-DAG
>> instruction selection framework.
>> * Andrew fixed several bugs handling weak and linkonce linkage.
>>
>>
>> SPARC-Specific Code Generator Improvements:
>>
>> * LLVM 1.7 includes a completely rewritten SPARC backend. This backend
>> has several advantages over the previous LLVM SPARC backend, and will
>> replace it entirely in LLVM 1.8. This backend is about 3700 lines of
>> code (making it a good reference for new targets), supports Sparc V8
>> and V9 instructions, and produces code that is slightly better than GCC
>> on SPEC2000. For more details:
>> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2006-February/005228.html
>>
>>
>> llvm-gcc 4.0:
>>
>> * llvm-gcc4 is a new C/C++/ObjC/ObjC++ front-end, rewritten from scratch,
>> based on GCC 4.0.1. This front-end is currently only supported on
>> Mac OS/X PowerPC and Intel systems, but we hope to extend support to
>> the other LLVM-supported systems in the future.
>> * Supports for the GCC "section", "used" and "align" attributes.
>> * Full support for the GCC generic vector extension.
>> * Full support for PowerPC/Altivec and IA32/SSE intrinsics.
>> * Full support for GCC inline assembly (note that there are currently
>> some limitations in the code generator though).
>> * Full support for C99 Variable Length Arrays.
>> * llvm-gcc 4.0 fixes a broad range of long term bugs that have afflicted
>> llvm-gcc3 in areas such as ABI compliance, union layout, and bitfield
>> handling. There are 28 bugs dependent on http://llvm.org/PR498.
>>
>>
>> Other Improvements:
>>
>> * The primary LLVM domain name is now http://llvm.org/.
>> * Web form registration is no longer required to download LLVM releases.
>> * Eric Kidd contributed the llvm-config utility, to make it easier to
>> build and link programs against the LLVM libraries:
>> http://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/html/llvm-config.html
>> * Saem Ghani extended the PostOrderIterator class to permit external
>> storage.
>> * The nightly tester output now color codes performance deltas to make it
>> easier to read at a glance.
>> * Reid added support for multiple -rpath options to the linker.
>> * Reid finished consolidating the host specific code into the libsystem
>> library.
>> * Reid removed use of fork() from bugpoint, allowing it to work on Win32
>> systems.
>> * Andrew improved bugpoint's handling of dynamically loaded
>> optimization plugins.
>> * Morten contributed patches for better support of Visual C++ 2005.
>>
>> In addition to the new features and infrastructure we have built, we
>> have also fixed many minor bugs and have made many small optimization
>> improvements. LLVM 1.7 is the clearly our best release yet, and upgrading
>> from a previous release is highly recommended.
>>
>> As usual, if you have any questions or comments about LLVM or any of the
>> features in this status update, please feel free to contact the LLVMdev
>> mailing list (llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu)!
>>
>> Finally, here is the previous status report, the LLVM 1.6 announcement:
>> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvm-announce/2005-November/000017.html
>>
>> -Chris
>>
>> --
>> http://nondot.org/sabre/
>> http://llvm.org/
>>
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>
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-Chris
--
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