[llvm-dev] killing undef and spreading poison

[Peter Lawrence via llvm-dev]

Sanjoy,
            My belief is that this is a register allocation problem
that should not be addressed in the IR.

However you have changed the subject, and we still need an example
showing why the proposed definition for branch is the right one.


Peter Lawrence.


> On Jun 16, 2017, at 7:39 PM, Sanjoy Das <sanjoy at playingwithpointers.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi  Peter,
> 
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Peter Lawrence via llvm-dev
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>> Nuno,
>>          we still need some examples showing that the definition
>> “Branching on poison is immediate-UB” is the best choice,
>> so far we only have arguments against it (the one for loop-switching).
> 
> The alternative that allows us to propagate equalities in GVN (which
> you seem to be alluding at) is to use an undef "instruction" that
> produces a fixed but arbitrary value (just like "freeze(poison)" would
> today).  However, that's bad for codegen since in some cases we will
> have to keep around a live register containing consistent garbage.
> Having both freeze and poison lets us use poison when we can (with
> better codegen), and freeze when we must (with worse codegen) -- this
> is the having-our-cake-and-eating-it-too scenario I was referring to
> earlier.
> 
> -- Sanjoy
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Excerpts from the Paper [1]
>> 
>> Here’s the example you give for GVN
>> 
>>        t = x + 1;
>>        if (t == y) {
>>          w = x + 1;
>>          foo(w);
>>        }
>>        Therefore, GVN can pick y as the representative value and transform
>> the code into:
>>        t = x + 1;
>>        if (t == y) {
>>          foo(y);
>>        }
>>        However, if y is a poison value and w is not
>> 
>> This really hinges on an incorrect choice for representative value of  w.
>> 
>> Any value with the “poison” attribute is not a valid representative for any
>> seemingly equivalent value.  If GVN is actually doing this it is a bug in
>> GVN.
>> 
>> So this example doesn’t really show anything about branching.
>> 
>> 
>> Peter Lawrence.
>> 
>> 
>> [1.  http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/undef-pldi17.pdf ]
>> 
>> 
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