[LLVMdev] ABI: how to let the backend know that an aggregate should be allocated on stack

[Manman Ren]

I will look into that, thanks

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 23, 2012, at 4:39 PM, Eli Friedman <eli.friedman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 11:22 AM, manman ren <mren at apple.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> I am trying to handle the Homogeneous Aggregate for ARM-VFP according to the
>> spec:
>> 
>> C.1.vfp If the argument is a VFP CPRC and there are sufficient consecutive
>> VFP registers of the appropriate type unallocated then the argument is
>> allocated to the lowest-numbered sequence of such registers.
>> 
>> C.2.vfp If the argument is a VFP CPRC then any VFP registers that are
>> unallocated are marked as unavailable. The NSAA is adjusted upwards until it
>> is correctly aligned for the argument and the argument is copied to the
>> stack at the adjusted NSAA. The NSAA is further incremented by the size of
>> the argument. The argument has now been allocated.
>> 
>> We currently expand the Homogeneous Aggregate in Clang, but that does not
>> conform to the standard when we have a few VFP registers available but not
>> enough.
>> 
>> In that case, the beginning members of HA will be allocated to VFP, and the
>> rest will go on stack.
>> 
>> To fix the problem, it will be great if we can let the backend know the HA
>> will be on stack and later VPF CPRCs will be on stack as well.
>> There are some discussions on this, at least from the comments in
>> TargetInfo.cpp:
>> // This assumption is optimistic, as there could be free registers available
>> // when we need to pass this argument in memory, and LLVM could try to pass
>> // the argument in the free register. This does not seem to happen
>> currently,
>> // but this code would be much safer if we could mark the argument with
>> // 'onstack'. See PR12193.
>> 
>> I am just wondering whether it is necessary to add onstack flag and is there
>> any issue related to that?
>> 
>> Another option, suggested by Daniel, is to convert HA to a convenient
>> similar type the backend won't pass in registers.
>> I tried to pass a struct with vector types, but the backend will expand the
>> struct
>> See llvm::ComputeValueVTs
>> // Given a struct type, recursively traverse the elements.
>> 
>> I tried to use indirect in Clang, it does not work out as I wish.
> 
> See MipsABIInfo::getPaddingType; a similar sort of approach should
> work here.  (Granted, onstack would be more convenient, but it doesn't
> exist at the moment.)
> 
> -Eli