[LLVMdev] Proposal for ""llvm.mem.vectorize.safelen"

[Robison, Arch]

> I recommend that you send patches for an implementation 
> (including the Loop::GetAnnotatedVectorSafelen function 
>  and associated updates to the vectorizer) for review. 

I expect to send the patches for review later this week.

> Make sure to remember LangRef updates!

Thanks for the reminder.

> Also, looking at the original proposal again, I see no reason 
> to restrict this to an i32: we might as well allow it to be an 
> i64 obviously we don't have billion-lane vectors, but the 
> metadata can also be useful for other kinds of analysis).

I doubt there is much advantage between knowing the minimum loop-carried
dependence difference is 1u<<31 or 1u<<63.  Unless there is a clear
need for the higher values less than infinity, It would seem simpler
for now to adopt the same conventions as llvm.loop.vectorize.width
so that some processing infrastructure can be shared easily.

> I don't like using the name 'safelen' however. I can forgive OpenMP 
> for choosing such a short name because people need to type it, 
> but I'd prefer that the metadata have a more-descriptive name. 
> minimum_dependency_distance is perhaps better.

I'm open to naming suggestions, though I'm wondering if sticking with 
what is now a term of art in OpenMP might be the least of all evils,
because the semantics turn out to be a little more subtle than
just a minimum dependence distance.  My current wording of the semantics 
for safelen of k are: 

  /// The loop can be assumed to have no loop-carried
  /// lexically backward dependencies with distance less than k.

- Arch D. Robison
  Intel Corporation