[llvm-dev] CreateNot when the operand is a Scalable Vector

[Roger Ferrer Ibáñez via llvm-dev]

Hi all,

IRBuilder has a method CreateNot which may invoke
BinaryOperator::CreateNot. However there isn't actually a `not` operation
in LLVM IR so BinaryOperator::CreateNot acts as a helper by creating a
`xor` against a suitable constant of all ones, the exact nature of such
constant depends on the operand and may end being a (fixed-size) vector.

However the creation of the "all ones" constant is not feasible when the
operand we want to `not` is a scalable vector (vector constants are
described by extension).

I guess we can change IRBuilder::CreateNot to check this case and emit the
LLVM IR we customarily use for splats via IRBuilder::CreateVectorSplat so
we get a value of a scalable vector of "all ones".

However, a cursory `grep` reveals a few direct users of
BinaryOperator::CreateNot (note that this is a pessimistic stance as not
all of them may end being invoked on vectors) so we might want to do better
here.

I don't have a good solution here but I will assume that introducing a
"splatted constant" in LLVM IR is not desirable.

One option may be asserting in BinaryOperator::CreateNot (and other helpers
impacted by the same issue). This seems a bit hostile for users of
BinaryOperator.

Maybe move around the code in IRBuilder::CreateVectorSplat so it is useable
outside IRBuilder and then use it in BinaryOperator::CreateNot?

Perhaps there are better alternatives already used in practice for those
working with scalable vectors?

Thanks a lot,

-- 
Roger Ferrer Ibáñez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20191126/618b1add/attachment.html>