[LLVMdev] tblgen multiclasses

[Roman Levenstein]

> > Basically, flag operands are a hack used to handle resources that
> are not
> > accurately modeled in the scheduler (e.g. condition codes, explicit
> > register assignments, etc).  The basic idea of the flag operand is
> that
> > they require the scheduler to keep the "flagged" nodes stuck
> together in
> > the output machine instructions.
> 
> >From an user point of view, flags have two different uses
> 

> 1) Forcing a value to be in a particular register.

  How does it do it? I cannot remember that it does so explicitly. Or
do you mean that it forces the InFlag argument of an insn to be the
same register as the OutFlag of another instruction?
 
> 2) As a hack when a machine state is not made explicit. For example,
> in the ARM backend I haven't declared the "FP status" and the
> "status"
> registers. So the FMSTAT instruction needs a flag.

  OK. Their usage as a mean to tarnsfer a status directly is more clear
now. The insn with incoming flag basically reuses the outflag of
another insn. If I understand correctly, any intruction that can change
status (usually a status register, or are there any other examples???) 
should/can produce an OutFlag. And any instruction that can need a
flag, should be decalred with InFlag. What about instructions that use
status, but do not change it (like conditional jumps) - should they
also have an outFlag to indicate that they propagate a status?

  And what about such instructions like jumps or calls, where chains
are used. What is the exact meaning of the chain? What it refers to? Is
it a chain of operands? Is it a chain of instructions?  How is it
propagated? What is a guideline to use it? If a new backend is to be
developed,  what are the criteria to ecide that a chain should be used
for a given instruction?

For example, if we have something like:
cmp %a, %b
jmp lt, label1
jmp gt, label2
call f1

What should be propagated as In/Out flags in this example and what and
why should be propagated as chains?
 
> It should be possible to remove all uses of 2 by a writing a more
> complete description. Maybe the uses of 1 could be abstracted with a
> higher lever interface... 

-Roman

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