[LLVMdev] target specific ways to extend ConstantExpr

[Yuan Lin]

The particular case we are looking at is converting a pointer from one address space to another address space. There is one operand and one output, both are the same pointer type, except for their address space. The pointers are of the same size. The operation is a bit-changing operation.

We are using intrinsic functions for the instructions. We need a solution for the ConstantExpr.

Instead of adding one target specific expression, it would be better to have a more generic scheme in LLVM.


From: Chris Lattner [mailto:clattner at apple.com]
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 12:48 PM
To: Yuan Lin
Cc: llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] target specific ways to extend ConstantExpr


On Dec 17, 2012, at 11:26 AM, Yuan Lin <yulin at nvidia.com<mailto:yulin at nvidia.com>> wrote:


I am looking for a way to allow ConstantExpr to express target specific operations, which will be used in global initializers.

The recommended way to extend LLVM IR is using intrinsic functions. But this does not work for ConstantExpr, which the global initializer uses.

Should we make ConstantExpr to support some kind of side-effect free intrinsic function calls? If we want to work on such a patch, what are the things we should look out for?

http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=10368 seems also express this desire.


That PR is still accurate as to the direction I think ConstantExprs should go.  What specifically does this target-specific constant need to look like?

-Chris


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