[LLVMdev] Changes to the PTX calling conventions

[Justin Holewinski]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Carlos Sánchez de La Lama <
carlos.delalama at urjc.es> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> >>> I would favor calling conventions over metadata for the simple
> >>> reason that this maps more cleanly to the device model.  Device and
> >>> kernel functions are represented differently in PTX, including
> >>> (sometimes) the way parameters are passed.
>
> >> For the record, marking the kernels with "calling conventions"
> >> instead of metadata is fine also for the pocl use case. It's enough
> >> if there is a way to differentiate OpenCL C kernels from the "device
> >> functions" for the reason I discussed in the previous email. That is,
> >> in the pocl point of view we just need a way to pick the
> >> "host-callable" kernel functions as they need the special treatment
> >> before they can be called (like a C function).
>
> Remember OpenCL kernels are also callable from inside another
> kernels. It is not a big deal though, as calling conventions in LLVM
> IR are just markers to the code generation, they do not have any
> effect before that (AFAIK).
>
> What it is needed is a way to differentiate at LLVM IR level between:
> 1) Normal functions
> 2) Functions callable from outside and inside (OpenCL kernels would fall
>   in this category).
> 3) Functions callable only from outside (I there is such case; I am
>   not so familiar with CUDA so I do not know if such functions exist on
>   CUDA).
>
> At least 1 and 2 are needed for OpenCL. Whether this is calling
> conventions, metadata, or attributes, do not make such a big
> difference, in practical terms. Code generation can apply different
> calling conventions based on metadata/attributes, and can also detect
> the kernels based on calling conventions, so the options are
> interchangeable.
>
> >> BTW what about the other OpenCL data like required_wg_size
> >> affect the possible "kernel treatment" of pocl and can be converted
> >> to some special instructions (I suppose) for the SIMT targets?
> >> Currently only the TCE target in Clang adds metadata for the
> >> required_wg_size kernel attribute (as we need it in "offline
> >> compilation") but IMHO that could be useful in general, as a default
> >> metadata (to enable its support in pocl for all targets, for
> >> example).
>
> > Ideally, we would need some standard way of representing this in
> > Clang.  The back-end would then need to convert it to whatever form
> > the target OpenCL run-time expects.
>
> This is an interesting point. And there might be more information
> present on .cl files that needs to get transported into LLVM IR. While
> there has been the argument around that OpenCL "is C" so clang should
> not need to generate extra stuff for OpenCL input files, the fact is
> that it is not plain C. Basically there are two ways to go on:
>
> a) OpenCL is a C-based language (C plus additions) and clang can parse
>   it, so *all* the information on the .cl file has to be present in
>   LLVM IR.
> b) OpenCL is just C, so clang does not need to care about extra things
>   and implementations should parse .cl files to get the extra
>   information, and potentially preprocess to transform the non-C
>   constructs into valid C code.
>
> Just staying in between is good for nothing. An given clang has a CL
> mode already (-x cl) recognizes the keywords and supports the non-C in
> OpenCL (like vector swizzle), I think (b) can be discarded right away.
> But then all the info should get in a generic way into the LLVM.
>

(b) can be also be discarded because the original OpenCL source is not
always available.  It is perfectly valid to compile OpenCL to a binary form
(PTX in the case of nVidia GPUs), and then load the binary as an OpenCL
program.  In this case, the original .cl file may not even be available.


>
> > This is a question for cfe-dev.
>
> So adding cfe-dev in copy.
>

Thanks.  I forgot to add that. :)


>
> BR
>
> Carlos
>
>


-- 

Thanks,

Justin Holewinski
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