[llvm-dev] [FP] Constant folding math library functions

Wed Apr 17 13:08:45 PDT 2019

Scott,

Yes, LLVM uses host routines for constant-folding math functions (e.g., sin, cos). For arithmetic operations, LLVM has its own builtin implementations (called APFloat). I know people have talked about having our own implementations of trigonometric functions, etc., but I don't believe that anyone has viewed this as a high-priority item. We wouldn't use MPFR as a core dependency for licensing reasons, but in general, we shy away from any external dependencies that would affect the output of the compiler. In any case, as you say, this doesn't solve the problem of matching the libm at runtime.

This can cause issues for cross compiling for the same reason it can cause issues when the runtime libm doesn't match the one used by LLVM itself. The values are properly encoded for the target regardless, however, so there's no endianness concern. We only ever fold the float and double variants of these calls, so we don't need to worry about host support for 128-bit float formats (see lib/Analysis/ConstantFolding.cpp).

 -Hal

Hal Finkel
Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory

________________________________
From: Scott Manley <rscottmanley at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2019 2:35 PM
To: Finkel, Hal J.
Cc: Amara Emerson; Kaylor, Andrew; llvm-dev
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] [FP] Constant folding math library functions

Hi,

I don't mean to hijack this thread but after reading through some discussion here and poking around in the constant folder myself just now, is my understanding correct in that LLVM only uses host routines for constant folding? Has there been discussion in the past about using MPFR or something like it instead? (I'm aware that doing so wouldn't solve the original problem in the general case -- I'm asking out of curiosity).

What happens currently when cross compiling and endianness does not match between host/target? What about folding types that are unsupported on the host (such as __float128)? Does LLVM reject the fold in those cases?

Regards,

Scott

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 10:31 AM Finkel, Hal J. via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:

On 4/16/19 4:18 PM, Amara Emerson wrote:

On Apr 16, 2019, at 1:47 PM, Kaylor, Andrew via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:

Thanks, Hal.

I hear what you are saying about the accuracy. The problem, from my perspective, is trying to explain to users what they are going to get. The constant folding may be as accurate as the lib call would have been, but it isn’t necessarily value safe. I’ve been operating on the assumption that LLVM’s FP optimizations are value safe unless fast math flags are used. For the most part that appears to be true. This case breaks my assumption.

I realize that any call to a library function puts claims of value safety on shaky ground, but the standard I’m going for is that you’ll get the same bitwise results compiling at -O0 as you will at -O2 (for instance).

That said, I agree that the difference between constant folding a library call and substituting an approximate calculation is significant. Most users would probably prefer to have this optimization enabled by default. It just leads to a kind of murky answer to the question of whether or not we’re value safe by default for the users who do care about that.
I guess what I’m saying is that I do like the idea of a separate flag for this, though as I recall we’re running out of bits for fast math flags. I’m also not sure whether it should be on by default. If we want to permit this transformation by default, then it shouldn’t be a fast math flag. Probably an attribute on the call site is better? And in that case it feels like we’d be circling back toward “nobuiltin” but can the front end identify which call sites would need that?
Could this not be a function attribute if it’s intended to be consistent across entire functions/programs?

I agree with Hal that afn doesn’t sound like the right approach, and in terms of how the compiler actually treats these calls (I’m thinking about more than constant folding here) then it seems to be that this is the same as -fno-builtin. For example, can the optimizer assume some properties about the result value of a call if it knowns some (partial) information about the argument (e.g. sign)? If we prevent constant folding then that also precludes this kind of optimization. Perhaps an umbrella flag like -fno-builtin-math-lib that would turn on -fno-builtin for all of the libm functions?

I certainly think that the umbrella flag is a good approach. The tricky part is implementing it so that Clang does not need to have a list of the relevant functions that LLVM's optimizer knows about (thus, I don't think that we can implement this just by having Clang add metadata to a predefined list of math functions).

 -Hal

Amara

-Andy

From: Finkel, Hal J. <hfinkel at anl.gov<mailto:hfinkel at anl.gov>>
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 1:01 PM
To: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>; Kaylor, Andrew <andrew.kaylor at intel.com<mailto:andrew.kaylor at intel.com>>
Subject: Re: [FP] Constant folding math library functions

Hi, Andy,

This is somewhat tricky. 'afn' is for approximate functions, to "allow substitution of approximate calculations for functions", but in this case, the answers aren't any more approximate than the original function calls. Different, but likely no less accurate. This has long caused these kinds of subtle differences when cross compiling, etc. but it's not clear what the best thing to do actually is. Users often want the constant folding, and I've certainly seen code where the performance depends critically on it, and yet, the compiler will likely never be able to exactly replicate the behavior of whatever libm implementation is used at runtime. Maybe having a dedicated flag to disable just this behavior, aside from suggesting that users use -fno-builtin=..., would be useful for users who depend on the compiler not folding these kinds of expressions in ways that might differ from their runtime libm behavior?

 -Hal

Hal Finkel
Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory

________________________________
From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org>> on behalf of Kaylor, Andrew via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 2:23 PM
To: llvm-dev
Subject: [llvm-dev] [FP] Constant folding math library functions

Hi everyone,

I noticed today that LLVM’s constant folding of math library functions can lead to minor differences in results. A colleague sent me the following test case which demonstrates the issue:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

typedef union {
  double d;
  unsigned long long i;
} my_dbl;

int main(void) {
  my_dbl res, x;
  x.i = 0x3feeb39556255de2ull;
  res.d = tanh(x.d);
  printf("tanh(%f) = %f = %016LX\n", x.d, res.d, res.i);
  return 0;
}

Compiling with “clang -O2 -g0 -emit-llvm” I get this:

define dso_local i32 @main() local_unnamed_addr #0 {
  %1 = tail call double @tanh(double 0x3FEEB39556255DE2) #2
  %2 = tail call i32 (i8*, ...) @printf(i8* getelementptr inbounds ([24 x i8], [24 x i8]* @.str, i64 0, i64 0),
                                                             double 0x3FEEB39556255DE2, double 0x3FE7CF009CE7F169,
                                                             i64 4604876745549017449)
  ret i32 0
}

We’re still calling ‘tanh’ but all the values passed to printf are constant folded. The constant folding is based on a call to tanh made by the compiler. The problem with this is that if I am linking my program against a different version of the math library than was used by the compiler I may get a different result.

I can prevent this constant folding with either the ‘nobuiltin’ or ‘strictfp’ attribute. However, it seems to me like this optimization should really be checking the ‘afn’ fast math flag.

Opinions?

Thanks,
Andy

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--
Hal Finkel
Lead, Compiler Technology and Programming Languages
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory

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