[LLVMdev] Inlining and virtualization in Clang/LLVM

[Matthieu Monrocq]

Hello,

at the moment the devirtualization of calls is performed in Clang (as
far as I understand) whilst inlining and constant propagation are the
optimizer's (LLVM) job.

It is probably necessary for Clang to perform "some" devirtualization
(the meaning of `final` is not known to LLVM), however all the stuff
to determine what the dynamic type of a variable is seems redundant
with LLVM, and is incomplete (in a way) when it's not perform *after*
inlining and constant propagation.


It seems to me therefore that because of this we are missing
optimization opportunities. Suppose the following example program:

#include <cstdio>

struct Base { virtual void foo() = 0; };

struct NothingDerived: Base { virtual void foo() {} };

struct PrintDerived: Base { virtual void foo() { printf("Hello World!"); } };

Base& select(int i) {
    static NothingDerived nd;
    static PrintDerived pd;
    if (i % 2 == 0) { return nd; }
    return pd;
}

int main() {
    Base& b = select(0);
    b.foo();
}


Which gives the following main function (using Try out LLVM and Clang):

define i32 @main() uwtable {
[...]

_Z6selecti.exit:                                  ; preds = %13, %10, %7
  %14 = load void (%struct.Base*)*** bitcast (%struct.NothingDerived*
@_ZZ6selectiE2nd to void (%struct.Base*)***), align 8
  %15 = load void (%struct.Base*)** %14, align 8
  tail call void %15(%struct.Base* getelementptr inbounds
(%struct.NothingDerived* @_ZZ6selectiE2nd, i64 0, i32 0))
  ret i32 0
}


LLVM trivially sees through the select call and rightly deduce that we
have to do with NothingDerived. However it does not go any step
further and directly select NothingDerived::foo's function. Instead it
dutifully performs all the bitcasting / pointer arithmetic necessary
to access the pointer to function stored in the VTable and calls it
through a pointer to function.

I understand it would be awkward to have LLVM be aware of the virtual
table implementation. Especially since even in C++ it varies from one
implementation to another. However it seems to me that LLVM could
still perform this optimization:

 - LLVM having deduced the exact value to use (select(int)::nd) should
be able to get directly to its v-ptr (the first field of Base)

%struct.NothingDerived = type { %struct.Base }
%struct.Base = type { i32 (...)** }


 - the v-ptr (after construction) always point to the same v-table,
which is a constant

store i32 (...)** bitcast (i8** getelementptr inbounds ([3 x i8*]*
@_ZTV14NothingDerived, i64 0, i64 2) to i32 (...)**), i32 (...)***
getelementptr inbounds (%struct.NothingDerived* @_ZZ6selectiE2nd, i64
0, i32 0, i32 0), align 8


- the offset in the v-table is "static"

getelementptr inbounds (%struct.NothingDerived* @_ZZ6selectiE2nd, i64 0, i32 0)


- the v-table being constant, what is stored at that offset is
perfectly deducible as well

@_ZTV14NothingDerived = linkonce_odr unnamed_addr constant [3 x i8*]
[i8* null, i8* bitcast ({ i8*, i8*, i8* }* @_ZTI14NothingDerived to
i8*), i8* bitcast (void (%struct.NothingDerived*)*
@_ZN14NothingDerived3fooEv to i8*)]


So the question is, what is lacking for LLVM to perform this optimization ?

- Is it because of the loss of information in having the v-table
stored as a "blob" of bytes ? (which means that Clang should pass more
typed information, without changing the exact layout obviously given
the ABI constraints)

- Or is it something internal to LLVM (the information is somehow
irremediably lost) ?


I admit that reducing the virtual call overhead is probably not really
worth it (in general), however devirtualizing calls also expose more
inlining/context opportunities and it's hard (for me) to quantify what
such an optimization could bring here. We should also consider the
simplification in Clang (and other frontends) if LLVM could perform
the job on its own.

-- Matthieu