[llvm-dev] [RFC] dereferenceable metadata

[Dinar Temirbulatov via llvm-dev]

Hi,
While working on PR21780, I used "dereferenceable_or_null" metadata
and I realized now that it is not correct for my solution to use this
metadata type since it might point to an address that it is not
dereferenceable but null.  I think that we need another new metadata
type, something  like  "dereferenceable" with that we could annotate
any load (not just pointer type like with dereferenceable_or_null).
For example, we could annotate this load : "%ld0 = load double,
double* %ptr, align 8" with dereferenceable<2> and that means that for
%ptr address memory with length 16-bytes  is known to be
accessible(dereferenceable). Originally in PR21780, InstCombine pass
removed some loads as dead(in a Scalar IR form) and later that
prevented us to vectorize the operation, but before removing such
loads we could annotate the remaining loads in the series with
"dereferenceable" and later restore IR in a way that is suitable for
vectorization(see https://reviews.llvm.org/D35139 ). Also, please note
that’s the information that is lost when InstCombine kills the last
load in the series and there is no way to restore this information
later in following passes.
                                         Thanks, Dinar.