[LLVMdev] Attribute to mark that function only access memory through it's arguments

[Philip Reames]

On 06/18/2015 09:15 PM, Nick Lewycky wrote:
>
>     Currently in AliasAnalysis we can model ModRef behaviour for
>     functions which
>     only access memory through their pointer arguments. However we can't
>     express this propery as a function attribute.
>
>     For example, for intrinsics we can specify ReadWriteArgMem or
>     ReadArgMem
>     attributes in tablegen definitions. But due to the lack of the
>     related function
>     attributes on the llvm ir level, this intrinsics would be modelled
>     as if they
>     were clobbering arbitrary memory.
>
>     It feels very naturall to add new function attribute which can
>     cover such cases.
>
>     I have a patch (http://reviews.llvm.org/D10398
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__reviews.llvm.org_D10398&d=AwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=Mfk2qtn1LTDThVkh6-oGglNfMADXfJdty4_bhmuhMHA&m=6QD3kOt2shxvhEw0pkmPGL_NzzjWw6s3ZTzBo-rwkUs&s=MJrrF5wf5KOXiTUsfpoJMSDYvyM_nZ3L79ZSsA9iXaA&e=>)
>     in which I added this
>     attribute. Currently there is some discussion on how to name it
>     and how it should
>     behave when defined together with other fucntion attributes.
>
>
> What does it mean? Can it only touch memory that is directly referred 
> to by an argument? Or if that argument points to another pointer, can 
> we follow it?
I just want to point out that the notion Igor is introducing as an 
attribute is not a new one.  It's a prexisting notion which is already 
implemented within LLVM today; it's simply been restricted to 
intrinsics.  Here's the definition from Intrinsics.td:
// IntrReadWriteArgMem - This intrinsic reads and writes only from 
memory that
// one of its arguments points to, but may access an unspecified 
amount.  The
// reads and writes may be volatile, but except for this it has no other 
side
// effects.
def IntrReadWriteArgMem : IntrinsicProperty;

I did point out in the review that I think the notion of ReadsArgMem is 
redundant given the existing notions of ReadWriteArgMem and ReadOnly, 
but that's somewhat orthogonal.  It's true of the existing 
implementation, not just Igor's patch.  It may be worth settling on this 
to clarify naming (i.e. are we ever going to need an attribute like 
reads_arg_mem?  Or can we be more generic and use accesses_arg_mem + 
readonly for the same purpose?), but I don't think that really changes 
the semantics in major ways.

Philip

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