[Mlir-commits] [mlir] [MLIR][Linalg][Docs] Add forms to Linalg rationale docs (PR #156859)

[Jacques Pienaar]

================
@@ -506,6 +506,58 @@ potential by introducing lower-level IR ops and *smaller* Linalg ops.
 This gradually reduces the potential, all the way to Loops + VectorOps
 and LLVMIR.
 
+### Interchangeability of Forms<a name="forms"></a>
+
+#### The Linalg Forms
+
+The core Linalg operation tree has three forms:
+* **Generic:** Represented by `linalg.generic` and can encode all perfectly-nested
+loop operations.
+* **Category:** Represented by `linalg.contract` and `linalg.elementwise`,
+which are special (einsum) forms of the `generic` operation. In the future, other
+category operations are planned (e.g.: `linalg.convolution` and `linalg.pooling`).
+* **Named:** All _named_ forms that can lower to either _category_ or
+_generic_ forms. For example, `linalg.matmul`, `linalg.add`, etc.
+
+Unlike lowering to loops, the different Linalg forms that are derived from
+`linalg.generic` are *equivalent*. It should always be possible to convert
+a named operation into a generic and back to named, if the semantics are
+preserved. The various forms in the Linalg dialect are meant to facilitate
+pattern matching (single operations or DAGs) and to be able to consider
+different forms as *canonical* for different transforms.
+
+In addition to the three forms above, there's a separate class that does not
+belong to the tree, as it does not generalize. These are **composite:** operations
+that compose multiple Linalg operations, for example `linalg.softmax` and
+`linalg.winograd*`. These can be converted to a DAG of Linalg operations.
+
+Linalg's various forms (named, generic) also carry information, and that
+information should be preserved as much as possible during the progressive
+lowering. A `matmul` operation is a special case of a `contract` operation,
+which in turn is a special case of `generic` operation. Transformations on
+the more special forms should not be converted to the more generic ones
+unnecessarily, in the same way that they should not be broken down into
+loops + arithmetic if they can still be represented as a Linalg op.
+
+#### Canonical Forms<a name="canonical_forms"></a>
+
+With multiple (often exchangeable) forms, and with transformation simplicity
+in mind, compilers should aim for reducing matching and replacing complexity
+as much as possible. When matching a single operation with a complex pattern,
+having all the information in a `generic` is useful to iteratively match
+different patterns in turn. However, when assembling a DAG of operations to
+form a pattern, it's much simpler to match against named operations (like
+`max` + `div` + `reduce` + `broadcast`) than their generic counterparts.
+
+This is where the interchangeability of forms comes in handy. Linalg has the
+ability to specialize and generalize in order to convert the IR to a form that
+is easier for a particular type of transform. With forms being semantically
+equivalent, one can convert back-and-forth throughout the various transforms
----------------
jpienaar wrote:

Is this an actual conversion or matching on interface?

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/156859