[llvm-dev] Adding a NOP bitcode instruction

[Arno Puder via llvm-dev]

I'm taking my very first baby steps with LLVM and I figured a NOP is a
reasonable starting point. Of course you are right that for optimization
purposes this is nonsensical. Perhaps some simple new instruction with
input/output should be my next goal. If you are aware of a resource that
is a little more detailed than the ExtendingLLVM.html page, I'd
appreciate it.

Either way, thanks for your response.

Arno


On 7/5/16 4:25 PM, Bruce Hoult wrote:
> I'm not really sure what a NOP even means in SSA. Sure, you can make the
> assembler and disassembler and interpreter do the right thing, but in
> any optimisation pass the right thing will be to delete them.
> 
> If you don't want them to be deleted then, as they have no inputs and no
> outputs, optimisation could well decide to move other instructions up
> past a NOP, move it out of loops, etc, until it ends up after the return
> instruction.
> 
> If you don't want instructions to be moved past it ... it will have to
> be like a memory barrier instruction, except even stricter.
> 
> What do you want it to do?
> 
> By the way, Apple's B3 optimiser in WebKit (which they wrote to replace
> LLVM there) does have a NOP instruction -- and an IDENTITY instruction,
> which also is meaningless in SSA. When an optimisation wants to delete
> an instruction it turns it into a NOP instead. When an optimisation in
> LLVM would do a "replace all uses with", B3 inserts an IDENTITY
> instruction. A later pass deletes all NOPs and propagates inputs of
> IDENTITYs to their (recursive) users.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Arno Puder via llvm-dev
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Hi,
> 
>     I'm trying to follow the instructions on how to add a new bitcode
>     instruction:
>     http://llvm.org/docs/ExtendingLLVM.html
> 
>     This is my first foray into the guts of LLVM and I'm not sure I'm doing
>     things the right way. I came up with a patch that adds a NOP (no
>     operation) that will work with llvm-as, llvm-dis, and lli. It would be
>     nice if one of the experts could take a look and give some quick
>     feedback:
>     https://github.com/apuder/llvm/commit/c58b0c65ac367c8a392a94063afe39b66daa01d4
> 
>     TIA,
>     Arno
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