[LLVMdev] Generating superblocks (SEME regions w/o loops and calls) in LLVM

[Tobias Grosser]

On 12/14/2011 04:22 PM, Alexander Potapenko wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> While developing compile-time instrumentation for ThreadSanitizer
> (http://code.google.com/p/data-race-test) I need to generate SEME
> regions without loop and call instructions
> (I'll call them superblocks hereafter, although some researchers do
> allow loops in their definition of superblocks).
>
> This is necessary to get the largest piece of IR in which the memory
> operations can be enumerated in order to record the addresses of the
> memory accesses into a fixed-size buffer.
>
> So far I was using my home-brewed structure to hold the superblocks:
>
> struct SBlock {
>    BlockSet blocks;
>    llvm::BasicBlock *entry;
>    BlockSet exits;
>    InstSet mops_to_instrument;
>    int num_mops;
>    SBlock() : num_mops(0) {}
> };
>
> and several functions that split basic blocks to eliminate calls from
> them, traverse the call graph and create the SBlock instances from the
> basic blocks.
>
> Now I want to simplify my instrumentation pass and move that
> superblock creation logic out of it.
> Is there a strong need to make such a functionality common? Can other
> passes benefit from it?
>
> There's also the Trace class, which can be used to hold the
> superblocks, but I haven't found any code that generates them at
> compile time (in my case those should not depend on any dynamic
> analysis).

Hi Alexander,

did you have a look at the RegionInfo pass? It currently detects some 
kind of refinded SESE regions. I use them in Polly and as far as I know 
the Intel OpenCL SDK also uses them in some way. It is not SEME, but it 
may either fit your needs or we may think about extending it.

If you want to give it a try you can use:

opt -view-regions-only file.ll

It would be great if we could have just a single RegionInfo analysis 
that can then be used by other passes to detect and/or generate the kind 
of regions they need.

Cheers
Tobi