[llvm-dev] canonical form loops

[Michael Kruse via llvm-dev]

SCEV is the de-facto right approach for induction variable analysis.
Any pass not using it will be sensitive to irrelevant variations in
patterns. Indeed, this decision has been made years ago, like most
design decisions.

The alternative is to canonicalize induction variables as
IndVarSimplify used to do. If you would like to change it, feel free
to send an RFC to the llvm-dev list. Justifying this change is
proposer's obligation, including measurements of compile time and
test-suite performance changes.

When I looked at it last time, the reason was that the canonicalized
induction variables introduces yet another induction variable. Typical
example is a loop iterating over a buffer:

for (char *p = start; p < end; ++p)
  foo(p);

Canonicalization yields something like:

for (size_t i = 0; i < (end-start); ++i)
  foo(start[i]);

That is, an new register for i to determine the number of iterations
that otherwise could also be done using the pointer.

@reames was mentioning that LoopStrengthReduce is supposed to undo
this again, but seems to not always be successful. I could imagine one
reason is that p would overflow earlier than i.

Michael

Am Mi., 1. Apr. 2020 um 05:53 Uhr schrieb Zaks, Ayal (Mobileye)
<ayal.zaks at intel.com>:
>
> Interesting, thanks for digging this up!
>
> > As a consequence, any loop structure that is recognized
> > by SCEV will (/should) not profit from rewriting.
>
> As discussed in https://reviews.llvm.org/D68577#1742745 and PR40816 showed, there is still merit and profit in further simplifying loop induction variables, or at-least the primary one; somewhat independent of continuing to rely on SCEV for analyzing loops.
>
>
> > enable-iv-rewrite=false was made the default in r139579 after finding that it
> > slows down many benchmarks.
>
> This was 8.5 years ago. Time to revisit and try to re-enable some of these iv-rewrites, with a better understanding why current downstream passes pessimize canonical iv's, if they still do?
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Michael
> > Kruse via llvm-dev
> > Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 12:33
> > To: Sjoerd Meijer <Sjoerd.Meijer at arm.com>
> > Cc: llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] canonical form loops
> >
> > The topic came up before, e.g. https://reviews.llvm.org/D60565#1484984
> >
> > > Some canonicalization passes are designed for this. In particular,
> > IndVarSimplify used to make canonical loops (i.e. start at zero, increment by
> > one). r133502 introduced -disable-iv-rewrite to rely more on ScalarEvolution
> > instead of "opcode/pattern matching" (cite from the commit message). -
> > enable-iv-rewrite=false was made the default in r139579 after finding that it
> > slows down many benchmarks. It was completely removed in r153260.
> >
> > The general approach in LLVM is to rely on SCEV for analyzing loops instead
> > of custom handling. As a consequence, any loop structure that is recognized
> > by SCEV will (/should) not profit from rewriting.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Am Do., 26. März 2020 um 15:56 Uhr schrieb Sjoerd Meijer via llvm-dev
> > <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>:
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Quick question to see if I haven't missed anything: I would like convert
> > counting down loops, i.e. loops with a constant -1 step value, to counting up
> > loops, because the vectoriser is able to better deal with these loops (see e.g.
> > D76838 that I was discussing today with Ayal). It looks like LoopSimplifyCFG
> > and IndVarSimplify don't do this. So was just curious if I haven't missed
> > anything here or in another pass I haven't yet considered. I was perhaps also
> > expecting this to be the canonical form of loops, but couldn't find any
> > evidence of that in [1] or in source-code.
> > > The obvious follow-up question is if there would be any objections to
> > adding this to e.g. LoopSimplifyCFG, and adding LoopSimplifyCFG to the
> > optimisation pipeline just before the vectoriser.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Sjoerd.
> > >
> > > [1] https://llvm.org/docs/LoopTerminology.html
> > >
> > >
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