[llvm-dev] How to get the loop hotness data in a suite ?

[Min-Yih Hsu via llvm-dev]

> On Sep 30, 2020, at 5:44 PM, Stefanos Baziotis via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I'm trying to get loop hotness data across a suite (e.g. the llvm test-suite). Ideally,
> this would be a list that for each loop would list how many times it was entered and what
> was its iteration count (at least the latter). The closest thing I could come up with is:
> - clang -fprofile-instr-generate (without opts) to get a .profraw
> - Get the .profdata
> - Give that back to clang with -fprofile-instr-use and generate .ll
> - I note that here we get "branch_weights" stats, so if a branch is a back-edge,
> it basically gives us the iteration count. For example, check the bottom of this file: https://pastebin.com/ZnQqJdTN <https://pastebin.com/ZnQqJdTN> which was created with the procedure above.
> - Then, create a custom pass that goes through every loop and gathers this "branch_weights" data.
I second on this approach

> 
> I feel like this is both not very accurate and overly complicated for something that I
> guess a lot of people probably have needed to gather in the past. Is there an easier
> solution?
I don’t think PGO-based approach is very cumbersome. And it’s a lot more accurate than pure static approach. In case you don’t know, LLVM Test Suite has native support to build different stages of PGO program by toggling some cmake variable.
If I remember correctly, here are the steps:
1. Set cmake variable TEST_SUITE_PROFILE_GENERATE=ON, TEST_SUITE_IR_PGO=ON
2. `ninja all` + `llvm-lit -sv .` to build  and collect profile data
3. Modify variables in CMakeCache: TEST_SUITE_PROFILE_GENERATE=OFF, TEST_SUITE_PROFILE_USE=ON
4. ninja all

> 
> Thanks,
> Stefanos
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