[llvm-dev] Liveness of AL, AH and AX in x86 backend

[Krzysztof Parzyszek via llvm-dev]

On 5/25/2016 12:35 PM, Quentin Colombet wrote:
>
> Doing that would say that we override the other lanes of EAX, which is
> not what we want. In what cases, do we need to add those implicit arguments?

If you had
   AL<def> = ...
   AH<def> = ...
   ... = AX

you'd need implicit uses/defs to define AX.  This sort of thing happens 
on Hexagon very often: general purpose registers can be paired into 
64-bit registers (and used as a whole in 64-bit instructions) and it is 
not uncommon that the elements of the pair will be defined individually.

In the above case you'd need something like
   AL<def> = ..., AX<imp-def>
   AH<def> = ..., AX<imp-def>, AX<imp-use>
   ... = AX

I was trying to replicate a similar situation in the X86 backend to see 
what it would do.  However, this is not needed anymore, because 
subregister liveness tracking looks very promising in eliminating this 
problem altogether.  Now, if only the anti-dep problem was fixed, things 
would look peachy... :)

-Krzysztof

-- 
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of Code Aurora Forum, 
hosted by The Linux Foundation