[LLVMdev] Attaching range metadata to IntrinsicInst
Nick Lewycky
nicholas at mxc.ca
Wed Jun 18 12:57:54 PDT 2014
Hal Finkel wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Eric Christopher"<echristo at gmail.com>
>> To: "Jingyue Wu"<jingyue at google.com>
>> Cc: "LLVM Developers Mailing List"<llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 4:43:28 PM
>> Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] Attaching range metadata to IntrinsicInst
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Jingyue Wu<jingyue at google.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Hi Eric,
>>>
>>> In the IR, besides "target datalayout" and "target triple", we have
>>> a
>>> special "target cpu" string which is set by the Clang front-end
>>> according to
>>> its -target-cpu flag. We also write a Module::getTargetCPU() method
>>> to
>>> retrieve this string from the IR.
>>>
>>
>> Not sure that I like this. Each function can have a target cpu
>> though.
>> That each subtarget cares about the value of the target cpu for how
>> the intrinsic works sounds a lot like TargetTransformInfo to me.
>>
>> -eric
>
> I also think we should avoid this; as I said earlier, ValueTracking is used during canonicalization, and the community consensus seems to be to try, to the extent possible, to make this canonical form backend independent (even for intrinsics).
The general optimizer parts recognize many functions for the behaviour
they're guaranteed to have, from malloc to strlen to sqrt. Before we had
a class that would answer the question "is the function named 'malloc'
really malloc", we relied on intrinsics to do this sort of thing.
Grabbing target intrinsics and making the most of them is safe in the
optimizer.
It may be a little weird that you can build llvm to only target one
target and have IR that uses intrinsics for all targets, or even x86
mips and arm intrinsics in a single function, but the mid-level
optimizer doesn't need to care.
The distinction I'm drawing is that it's correct that the canonicalizers
shouldn't need to care what backend is being targeted, which is
different from saying that they only work on target-independent IR. They
can optimize target-specific intrinsics without needing to care which
backend will be used later, so long as they don't produce such intrinsics.
Nick
Having Clang add the range metadata seems preferable in this case
(and, as a side effect, gives us a new generally-useful capability).
>
> -Hal
>
>>
>>> Jingyue
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:22 PM, Eric Christopher
>>> <echristo at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Eh? How do you envision this?
>>>>
>>>> -eric
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Jingyue Wu<jingyue at google.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi Nick,
>>>>>
>>>>> That makes sense. I think a main issue here is that the ranges
>>>>> of these
>>>>> PTX
>>>>> special registers (e.g., threadIdx.x) depend on -target-cpu
>>>>> which is
>>>>> only
>>>>> visible to clang and llc. Would you mind we specify "target cpu"
>>>>> in the
>>>>> IR
>>>>> similar to what we did for "target triple"?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Jingyue
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Nick Lewycky
>>>>> <nlewycky at google.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 17 June 2014 06:41, Eli Bendersky<eliben at google.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 1:38 AM, Nick Lewycky
>>>>>>> <nicholas at mxc.ca> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Chandler Carruth wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This seems fine to me, but I'd like to make sure it looks OK
>>>>>>>>> to Nick
>>>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>>>> well.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I strongly prefer baking in knowledge about the intrinsics
>>>>>>>> themselves
>>>>>>>> into the passes if possible. Metadata will always be
>>>>>>>> secondary.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So you're saying that in this particular case you'd prefer
>>>>>>> LLVM passes
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>> know about the range of these PTX intrinsics, rather than
>>>>>>> Clang adding
>>>>>>> them
>>>>>>> as metadata?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yep.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ValueTracking.cpp already has some iffy target knowledge
>>>>>>> (someone
>>>>>>> sneaked
>>>>>>> a direct Intrinsic::x86_sse42_crc32_64_64 check in there),
>>>>>>> but
>>>>>>> extending it
>>>>>>> to other intrinsics in other targets seems like too much...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That's not iffy. That's exactly how it should work, and we
>>>>>> should have
>>>>>> more of that. There is a major gotcha and that's dealing with
>>>>>> the case
>>>>>> where
>>>>>> the intrinsics don't exist because the backend wasn't compiled
>>>>>> in. If
>>>>>> x86_sse42_crc32_64_64 is in there (and also in instcombine
>>>>>> btw),
>>>>>> presumably
>>>>>> that problem is solved somehow? Or does llvm actually not build
>>>>>> if you
>>>>>> don't
>>>>>> enable the x86 target? I feel like we would've heard about
>>>>>> that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nick
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So should target info be passed into it in some way? Any
>>>>>>> suggestions
>>>>>>> where to put it? TargetLibraryInfo? TargetTransformInfo? In
>>>>>>> any case
>>>>>>> this
>>>>>>> seems like the target interface will have to be augmented, and
>>>>>>> we'll
>>>>>>> have to
>>>>>>> carry an object around into ValueTracking's compute*
>>>>>>> functions. If
>>>>>>> this is
>>>>>>> the right way, then this is the way it will be done - design
>>>>>>> ideas are
>>>>>>> appreciated.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Eli
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Separately, should value tracking look use range metadata
>>>>>>>> when it's
>>>>>>>> available? Absolutely.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think it should apply to all CallInst not just
>>>>>>>> IntrinsicInst (which
>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>> derived from CallInst).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nick
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:37 AM, Jingyue Wu
>>>>>>>>> <jingyue at google.com
>>>>>>>>> <mailto:jingyue at google.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The range metadata can only be attached to LoadInst for
>>>>>>>>> now. I
>>>>>>>>> am
>>>>>>>>> considering extending its usage to IntrinsicInst so that
>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> frontend can annotate the range of the return value of
>>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>>> intrinsic
>>>>>>>>> call. e.g.,
>>>>>>>>> %a = call i32 @llvm.xxx(), !range !0
>>>>>>>>> !0 = metadata !{ i32 0, i23 1024 }
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The motivation behind this extension is some
>>>>>>>>> optimizations we
>>>>>>>>> are
>>>>>>>>> working on for CUDA programs. Some special registers in
>>>>>>>>> CUDA
>>>>>>>>> (e.g.,
>>>>>>>>> threadIdx.x) are bounded per CUDA programming guide, and
>>>>>>>>> knowing
>>>>>>>>> their ranges can improve the precision of ValueTracking
>>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>> benefit
>>>>>>>>> optimizations such as InstCombine.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> To implement this idea, we need ValueTracking to be
>>>>>>>>> aware of the
>>>>>>>>> ranges of these special variables. These special
>>>>>>>>> registers are
>>>>>>>>> so
>>>>>>>>> far read-only and accessed using intrinsics. e.g.,
>>>>>>>>> %threadIdx.x = call i32
>>>>>>>>> @llvm.nvvm.read.ptx.sreg.tid.x().
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> One possible approach is to have ValueTracking compute
>>>>>>>>> the known
>>>>>>>>> bits of these intrinsics as special cases. This approach
>>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>>> already
>>>>>>>>> taken for the x86_sse42_crc32_64_64 intrinsic. However,
>>>>>>>>> this
>>>>>>>>> approach may not be elegant because the ranges of these
>>>>>>>>> CUDA
>>>>>>>>> special
>>>>>>>>> registers depend on the GPU compute capability specified
>>>>>>>>> by
>>>>>>>>> -target-cpu. For instance, blockIdx.x is bounded by
>>>>>>>>> 65535 in
>>>>>>>>> sm_20
>>>>>>>>> but 2^31-1 in sm_30. Exposing -target-cpu to
>>>>>>>>> ValueTracking is
>>>>>>>>> probably discouraged.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Therefore, the approach I am considering is to have
>>>>>>>>> clang
>>>>>>>>> annotate
>>>>>>>>> the ranges of these CUDA special registers according to
>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> -target-cpu flag, and have ValueTracking pick the range
>>>>>>>>> metadata
>>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>>> optimization. By doing so, we hide the target-specific
>>>>>>>>> info from
>>>>>>>>> ValueTracking.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The code change in llvm minus clang won't be large. The
>>>>>>>>> core
>>>>>>>>> change
>>>>>>>>> is only a few lines:
>>>>>>>>> http://reviews.llvm.org/differential/diff/10464/. If
>>>>>>>>> this
>>>>>>>>> extension
>>>>>>>>> sounds good to you, I'll definitely add more tests and
>>>>>>>>> revise
>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> documents on range metadata.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>>>> Jingyue
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>>>>>>>> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu<mailto:LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu>
>>>>>>>>> http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>
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