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| 5 | <title>LLVM Atomic Instructions and Concurrency Guide</title> |
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| 8 | </head> |
| 9 | <body> |
| 10 | |
| 11 | <h1> |
| 12 | LLVM Atomic Instructions and Concurrency Guide |
| 13 | </h1> |
| 14 | |
| 15 | <ol> |
| 16 | <li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li> |
| 17 | <li><a href="#loadstore">Load and store</a></li> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 18 | <li><a href="#otherinst">Other atomic instructions</a></li> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 19 | <li><a href="#ordering">Atomic orderings</a></li> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 20 | <li><a href="#iropt">Atomics and IR optimization</a></li> |
| 21 | <li><a href="#codegen">Atomics and Codegen</a></li> |
| 22 | </ol> |
| 23 | |
| 24 | <div class="doc_author"> |
| 25 | <p>Written by Eli Friedman</p> |
| 26 | </div> |
| 27 | |
| 28 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 29 | <h2> |
| 30 | <a name="introduction">Introduction</a> |
| 31 | </h2> |
| 32 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 33 | |
| 34 | <div> |
| 35 | |
| 36 | <p>Historically, LLVM has not had very strong support for concurrency; some |
| 37 | minimal intrinsics were provided, and <code>volatile</code> was used in some |
| 38 | cases to achieve rough semantics in the presence of concurrency. However, this |
| 39 | is changing; there are now new instructions which are well-defined in the |
| 40 | presence of threads and asynchronous signals, and the model for existing |
| 41 | instructions has been clarified in the IR.</p> |
| 42 | |
| 43 | <p>The atomic instructions are designed specifically to provide readable IR and |
| 44 | optimized code generation for the following:</p> |
| 45 | <ul> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 46 | <li>The new C++0x <code><atomic></code> header. |
| 47 | (<a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/">C++0x draft available here</a>.) |
| 48 | (<a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/">C1x draft available here</a>)</li> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 49 | <li>Proper semantics for Java-style memory, for both <code>volatile</code> and |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 50 | regular shared variables. |
| 51 | (<a href="http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/memory.html">Java Specification</a>)</li> |
| 52 | <li>gcc-compatible <code>__sync_*</code> builtins. |
| 53 | (<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Atomic-Builtins.html">Description</a>)</li> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 54 | <li>Other scenarios with atomic semantics, including <code>static</code> |
| 55 | variables with non-trivial constructors in C++.</li> |
| 56 | </ul> |
| 57 | |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 58 | <p>Atomic and volatile in the IR are orthogonal; "volatile" is the C/C++ |
| 59 | volatile, which ensures that every volatile load and store happens and is |
| 60 | performed in the stated order. A couple examples: if a |
| 61 | SequentiallyConsistent store is immediately followed by another |
| 62 | SequentiallyConsistent store to the same address, the first store can |
| 63 | be erased. This transformation is not allowed for a pair of volatile |
| 64 | stores. On the other hand, a non-volatile non-atomic load can be moved |
| 65 | across a volatile load freely, but not an Acquire load.</p> |
| 66 | |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 67 | <p>This document is intended to provide a guide to anyone either writing a |
| 68 | frontend for LLVM or working on optimization passes for LLVM with a guide |
| 69 | for how to deal with instructions with special semantics in the presence of |
| 70 | concurrency. This is not intended to be a precise guide to the semantics; |
| 71 | the details can get extremely complicated and unreadable, and are not |
| 72 | usually necessary.</p> |
| 73 | |
| 74 | </div> |
| 75 | |
| 76 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 77 | <h2> |
| 78 | <a name="loadstore">Load and store</a> |
| 79 | </h2> |
| 80 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 81 | |
| 82 | <div> |
| 83 | |
| 84 | <p>The basic <code>'load'</code> and <code>'store'</code> allow a variety of |
| 85 | optimizations, but can have unintuitive results in a concurrent environment. |
| 86 | For a frontend writer, the rule is essentially that all memory accessed |
| 87 | with basic loads and stores by multiple threads should be protected by a |
| 88 | lock or other synchronization; otherwise, you are likely to run into |
| 89 | undefined behavior. (Do not use volatile as a substitute for atomics; it |
| 90 | might work on some platforms, but does not provide the necessary guarantees |
| 91 | in general.)</p> |
| 92 | |
| 93 | <p>From the optimizer's point of view, the rule is that if there |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 94 | are not any instructions with atomic ordering involved, concurrency does |
| 95 | not matter, with one exception: if a variable might be visible to another |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 96 | thread or signal handler, a store cannot be inserted along a path where it |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 97 | might not execute otherwise. For example, suppose LICM wants to take all the |
| 98 | loads and stores in a loop to and from a particular address and promote them |
| 99 | to registers. LICM is not allowed to insert an unconditional store after |
| 100 | the loop with the computed value unless a store unconditionally executes |
| 101 | within the loop. Note that speculative loads are allowed; a load which |
| 102 | is part of a race returns <code>undef</code>, but does not have undefined |
| 103 | behavior.</p> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 104 | |
| 105 | <p>For cases where simple loads and stores are not sufficient, LLVM provides |
| 106 | atomic loads and stores with varying levels of guarantees.</p> |
| 107 | |
| 108 | </div> |
| 109 | |
| 110 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 111 | <h2> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 112 | <a name="otherinst">Other atomic instructions</a> |
| 113 | </h2> |
| 114 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 115 | |
| 116 | <div> |
| 117 | |
| 118 | <p><code>cmpxchg</code> and <code>atomicrmw</code> are essentially like an |
| 119 | atomic load followed by an atomic store (where the store is conditional for |
Eli Friedman | e2d8cf7 | 2011-08-10 20:17:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 120 | <code>cmpxchg</code>), but no other memory operation can happen between |
| 121 | the load and store. Note that our cmpxchg does not have quite as many |
| 122 | options for making cmpxchg weaker as the C++0x version.</p> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 123 | |
| 124 | <p>A <code>fence</code> provides Acquire and/or Release ordering which is not |
| 125 | part of another operation; it is normally used along with Monotonic memory |
| 126 | operations. A Monotonic load followed by an Acquire fence is roughly |
| 127 | equivalent to an Acquire load.</p> |
| 128 | |
| 129 | <p>Frontends generating atomic instructions generally need to be aware of the |
| 130 | target to some degree; atomic instructions are guaranteed to be lock-free, |
| 131 | and therefore an instruction which is wider than the target natively supports |
| 132 | can be impossible to generate.</p> |
| 133 | |
| 134 | </div> |
| 135 | |
| 136 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 137 | <h2> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 138 | <a name="ordering">Atomic orderings</a> |
| 139 | </h2> |
| 140 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 141 | |
| 142 | <div> |
| 143 | |
| 144 | <p>In order to achieve a balance between performance and necessary guarantees, |
| 145 | there are six levels of atomicity. They are listed in order of strength; |
| 146 | each level includes all the guarantees of the previous level except for |
| 147 | Acquire/Release.</p> |
| 148 | |
| 149 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 150 | <h3> |
| 151 | <a name="o_unordered">Unordered</a> |
| 152 | </h3> |
| 153 | |
| 154 | <div> |
| 155 | |
| 156 | <p>Unordered is the lowest level of atomicity. It essentially guarantees that |
| 157 | races produce somewhat sane results instead of having undefined behavior. |
| 158 | It also guarantees the operation to be lock-free, so it do not depend on |
| 159 | the data being part of a special atomic structure or depend on a separate |
| 160 | per-process global lock. Note that code generation will fail for |
| 161 | unsupported atomic operations; if you need such an operation, use explicit |
| 162 | locking.</p> |
| 163 | |
| 164 | <dl> |
| 165 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 166 | <dd>This is intended to match the Java memory model for shared |
| 167 | variables.</dd> |
| 168 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 169 | <dd>This cannot be used for synchronization, but is useful for Java and |
| 170 | other "safe" languages which need to guarantee that the generated |
| 171 | code never exhibits undefined behavior. Note that this guarantee |
| 172 | is cheap on common platforms for loads of a native width, but can |
| 173 | be expensive or unavailable for wider loads, like a 64-bit store |
| 174 | on ARM. (A frontend for Java or other "safe" languages would normally |
| 175 | split a 64-bit store on ARM into two 32-bit unordered stores.) |
| 176 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
| 177 | <dd>In terms of the optimizer, this prohibits any transformation that |
| 178 | transforms a single load into multiple loads, transforms a store |
| 179 | into multiple stores, narrows a store, or stores a value which |
| 180 | would not be stored otherwise. Some examples of unsafe optimizations |
| 181 | are narrowing an assignment into a bitfield, rematerializing |
| 182 | a load, and turning loads and stores into a memcpy call. Reordering |
| 183 | unordered operations is safe, though, and optimizers should take |
| 184 | advantage of that because unordered operations are common in |
| 185 | languages that need them.</dd> |
| 186 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
| 187 | <dd>These operations are required to be atomic in the sense that if you |
| 188 | use unordered loads and unordered stores, a load cannot see a value |
| 189 | which was never stored. A normal load or store instruction is usually |
| 190 | sufficient, but note that an unordered load or store cannot |
| 191 | be split into multiple instructions (or an instruction which |
| 192 | does multiple memory operations, like <code>LDRD</code> on ARM).</dd> |
| 193 | </dl> |
| 194 | |
| 195 | </div> |
| 196 | |
| 197 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 198 | <h3> |
| 199 | <a name="o_monotonic">Monotonic</a> |
| 200 | </h3> |
| 201 | |
| 202 | <div> |
| 203 | |
| 204 | <p>Monotonic is the weakest level of atomicity that can be used in |
| 205 | synchronization primitives, although it does not provide any general |
| 206 | synchronization. It essentially guarantees that if you take all the |
| 207 | operations affecting a specific address, a consistent ordering exists. |
| 208 | |
| 209 | <dl> |
| 210 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 211 | <dd>This corresponds to the C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_relaxed</code>; |
| 212 | see those standards for the exact definition. |
| 213 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 214 | <dd>If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution. |
| 215 | The guarantees in terms of synchronization are very weak, so make |
| 216 | sure these are only used in a pattern which you know is correct. |
| 217 | Generally, these would either be used for atomic operations which |
| 218 | do not protect other memory (like an atomic counter), or along with |
| 219 | a <code>fence</code>.</dd> |
| 220 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
| 221 | <dd>In terms of the optimizer, this can be treated as a read+write on the |
| 222 | relevant memory location (and alias analysis will take advantage of |
| 223 | that). In addition, it is legal to reorder non-atomic and Unordered |
| 224 | loads around Monotonic loads. CSE/DSE and a few other optimizations |
| 225 | are allowed, but Monotonic operations are unlikely to be used in ways |
| 226 | which would make those optimizations useful.</dd> |
| 227 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
| 228 | <dd>Code generation is essentially the same as that for unordered for loads |
| 229 | and stores. No fences is required. <code>cmpxchg</code> and |
| 230 | <code>atomicrmw</code> are required to appear as a single operation.</dd> |
| 231 | </dl> |
| 232 | |
| 233 | </div> |
| 234 | |
| 235 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 236 | <h3> |
| 237 | <a name="o_acquire">Acquire</a> |
| 238 | </h3> |
| 239 | |
| 240 | <div> |
| 241 | |
| 242 | <p>Acquire provides a barrier of the sort necessary to acquire a lock to access |
| 243 | other memory with normal loads and stores. |
| 244 | |
| 245 | <dl> |
| 246 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 247 | <dd>This corresponds to the C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_acquire</code>. It |
| 248 | should also be used for C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_consume</code>. |
| 249 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 250 | <dd>If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution. |
| 251 | Acquire only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Release |
| 252 | operation.</dd> |
| 253 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 254 | <dd>Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. |
Chris Lattner | 9a5ffbf | 2011-08-12 19:48:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 255 | It is also possible to move stores from before an Acquire load |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 256 | or read-modify-write operation to after it, and move non-Acquire |
| 257 | loads from before an Acquire operation to after it.</dd> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 258 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
| 259 | <dd>Architectures with weak memory ordering (essentially everything relevant |
| 260 | today except x86 and SPARC) require some sort of fence to maintain |
| 261 | the Acquire semantics. The precise fences required varies widely by |
| 262 | architecture, but for a simple implementation, most architectures provide |
| 263 | a barrier which is strong enough for everything (<code>dmb</code> on ARM, |
| 264 | <code>sync</code> on PowerPC, etc.). Putting such a fence after the |
| 265 | equivalent Monotonic operation is sufficient to maintain Acquire |
| 266 | semantics for a memory operation.</dd> |
| 267 | </dl> |
| 268 | |
| 269 | </div> |
| 270 | |
| 271 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 272 | <h3> |
| 273 | <a name="o_acquire">Release</a> |
| 274 | </h3> |
| 275 | |
| 276 | <div> |
| 277 | |
| 278 | <p>Release is similar to Acquire, but with a barrier of the sort necessary to |
| 279 | release a lock. |
| 280 | |
| 281 | <dl> |
| 282 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 283 | <dd>This corresponds to the C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_release</code>.</dd> |
| 284 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 285 | <dd>If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution. |
| 286 | Release only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Acquire |
| 287 | operation.</dd> |
| 288 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 289 | <dd>Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. |
| 290 | It is also possible to move loads from after a Release store |
| 291 | or read-modify-write operation to before it, and move non-Release |
| 292 | stores from after an Release operation to before it.</dd> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 293 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
Eli Friedman | d577a06 | 2011-08-12 01:26:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 294 | <dd>See the section on Acquire; a fence before the relevant operation is |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 295 | usually sufficient for Release. Note that a store-store fence is not |
Eli Friedman | d577a06 | 2011-08-12 01:26:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 296 | sufficient to implement Release semantics; store-store fences are |
| 297 | generally not exposed to IR because they are extremely difficult to |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 298 | use correctly.</dd> |
| 299 | </dl> |
| 300 | |
| 301 | </div> |
| 302 | |
| 303 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 304 | <h3> |
| 305 | <a name="o_acqrel">AcquireRelease</a> |
| 306 | </h3> |
| 307 | |
| 308 | <div> |
| 309 | |
| 310 | <p>AcquireRelease (<code>acq_rel</code> in IR) provides both an Acquire and a |
| 311 | Release barrier (for fences and operations which both read and write memory). |
| 312 | |
| 313 | <dl> |
| 314 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 315 | <dd>This corresponds to the C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_acq_rel</code>. |
| 316 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 317 | <dd>If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution. |
| 318 | Acquire only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Release |
| 319 | operation, and vice versa.</dd> |
| 320 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
| 321 | <dd>In general, optimizers should treat this like a nothrow call; the |
| 322 | the possible optimizations are usually not interesting.</dd> |
| 323 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
| 324 | <dd>This operation has Acquire and Release semantics; see the sections on |
Eli Friedman | 5093fe6 | 2011-08-11 23:48:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 325 | Acquire and Release.</dd> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 326 | </dl> |
| 327 | |
| 328 | </div> |
| 329 | |
| 330 | <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| 331 | <h3> |
| 332 | <a name="o_seqcst">SequentiallyConsistent</a> |
| 333 | </h3> |
| 334 | |
| 335 | <div> |
| 336 | |
Andrew Trick | a1b953b | 2011-08-12 00:36:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 337 | <p>SequentiallyConsistent (<code>seq_cst</code> in IR) provides |
| 338 | Acquire semantics for loads and Release semantics for |
| 339 | stores. Additionally, it guarantees that a total ordering exists |
| 340 | between all SequentiallyConsistent operations. |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 341 | |
| 342 | <dl> |
| 343 | <dt>Relevant standard</dt> |
| 344 | <dd>This corresponds to the C++0x/C1x <code>memory_order_seq_cst</code>, |
| 345 | Java volatile, and the gcc-compatible <code>__sync_*</code> builtins |
| 346 | which do not specify otherwise. |
| 347 | <dt>Notes for frontends</dt> |
| 348 | <dd>If a frontend is exposing atomic operations, these are much easier to |
| 349 | reason about for the programmer than other kinds of operations, and using |
| 350 | them is generally a practical performance tradeoff.</dd> |
| 351 | <dt>Notes for optimizers</dt> |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 352 | <dd>Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. |
| 353 | For SequentiallyConsistent loads and stores, the same reorderings are |
| 354 | allowed as for Acquire loads and Release stores, except that |
| 355 | SequentiallyConsistent operations may not be reordered.</dd> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 356 | <dt>Notes for code generation</dt> |
Andrew Trick | a1b953b | 2011-08-12 00:36:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 357 | <dd>SequentiallyConsistent loads minimally require the same barriers |
Eli Friedman | 79d7de7 | 2011-08-12 03:38:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 358 | as Acquire operations and SequeuentiallyConsistent stores require |
| 359 | Release barriers. Additionally, the code generator must enforce |
| 360 | ordering between SequeuentiallyConsistent stores followed by |
| 361 | SequeuentiallyConsistent loads. This is usually done by emitting |
| 362 | either a full fence before the loads or a full fence after the |
| 363 | stores; which is preferred varies by architecture.</dd> |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 364 | </dl> |
| 365 | |
| 366 | </div> |
| 367 | |
| 368 | </div> |
| 369 | |
| 370 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 371 | <h2> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 372 | <a name="iropt">Atomics and IR optimization</a> |
| 373 | </h2> |
| 374 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 375 | |
| 376 | <div> |
| 377 | |
| 378 | <p>Predicates for optimizer writers to query: |
| 379 | <ul> |
| 380 | <li>isSimple(): A load or store which is not volatile or atomic. This is |
| 381 | what, for example, memcpyopt would check for operations it might |
| 382 | transform. |
| 383 | <li>isUnordered(): A load or store which is not volatile and at most |
| 384 | Unordered. This would be checked, for example, by LICM before hoisting |
| 385 | an operation. |
| 386 | <li>mayReadFromMemory()/mayWriteToMemory(): Existing predicate, but note |
Eli Friedman | e2d8cf7 | 2011-08-10 20:17:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 387 | that they return true for any operation which is volatile or at least |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 388 | Monotonic. |
| 389 | <li>Alias analysis: Note that AA will return ModRef for anything Acquire or |
| 390 | Release, and for the address accessed by any Monotonic operation. |
| 391 | </ul> |
| 392 | |
| 393 | <p>There are essentially two components to supporting atomic operations. The |
| 394 | first is making sure to query isSimple() or isUnordered() instead |
| 395 | of isVolatile() before transforming an operation. The other piece is |
| 396 | making sure that a transform does not end up replacing, for example, an |
| 397 | Unordered operation with a non-atomic operation. Most of the other |
| 398 | necessary checks automatically fall out from existing predicates and |
| 399 | alias analysis queries.</p> |
| 400 | |
| 401 | <p>Some examples of how optimizations interact with various kinds of atomic |
| 402 | operations: |
| 403 | <ul> |
| 404 | <li>memcpyopt: An atomic operation cannot be optimized into part of a |
| 405 | memcpy/memset, including unordered loads/stores. It can pull operations |
| 406 | across some atomic operations. |
| 407 | <li>LICM: Unordered loads/stores can be moved out of a loop. It just treats |
| 408 | monotonic operations like a read+write to a memory location, and anything |
| 409 | stricter than that like a nothrow call. |
| 410 | <li>DSE: Unordered stores can be DSE'ed like normal stores. Monotonic stores |
| 411 | can be DSE'ed in some cases, but it's tricky to reason about, and not |
| 412 | especially important. |
| 413 | <li>Folding a load: Any atomic load from a constant global can be |
| 414 | constant-folded, because it cannot be observed. Similar reasoning allows |
| 415 | scalarrepl with atomic loads and stores. |
| 416 | </ul> |
| 417 | |
| 418 | </div> |
| 419 | |
| 420 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 421 | <h2> |
| 422 | <a name="codegen">Atomics and Codegen</a> |
| 423 | </h2> |
| 424 | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| 425 | |
| 426 | <div> |
| 427 | |
| 428 | <p>Atomic operations are represented in the SelectionDAG with |
| 429 | <code>ATOMIC_*</code> opcodes. On architectures which use barrier |
| 430 | instructions for all atomic ordering (like ARM), appropriate fences are |
| 431 | split out as the DAG is built.</p> |
| 432 | |
| 433 | <p>The MachineMemOperand for all atomic operations is currently marked as |
| 434 | volatile; this is not correct in the IR sense of volatile, but CodeGen |
| 435 | handles anything marked volatile very conservatively. This should get |
| 436 | fixed at some point.</p> |
| 437 | |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 438 | <p>Common architectures have some way of representing at least a pointer-sized |
| 439 | lock-free <code>cmpxchg</code>; such an operation can be used to implement |
| 440 | all the other atomic operations which can be represented in IR up to that |
| 441 | size. Backends are expected to implement all those operations, but not |
| 442 | operations which cannot be implemented in a lock-free manner. It is |
| 443 | expected that backends will give an error when given an operation which |
| 444 | cannot be implemented. (The LLVM code generator is not very helpful here |
| 445 | at the moment, but hopefully that will change.)</p> |
| 446 | |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 447 | <p>The implementation of atomics on LL/SC architectures (like ARM) is currently |
| 448 | a bit of a mess; there is a lot of copy-pasted code across targets, and |
| 449 | the representation is relatively unsuited to optimization (it would be nice |
| 450 | to be able to optimize loops involving cmpxchg etc.).</p> |
| 451 | |
| 452 | <p>On x86, all atomic loads generate a <code>MOV</code>. |
| 453 | SequentiallyConsistent stores generate an <code>XCHG</code>, other stores |
| 454 | generate a <code>MOV</code>. SequentiallyConsistent fences generate an |
| 455 | <code>MFENCE</code>, other fences do not cause any code to be generated. |
| 456 | cmpxchg uses the <code>LOCK CMPXCHG</code> instruction. |
| 457 | <code>atomicrmw xchg</code> uses <code>XCHG</code>, |
| 458 | <code>atomicrmw add</code> and <code>atomicrmw sub</code> use |
| 459 | <code>XADD</code>, and all other <code>atomicrmw</code> operations generate |
| 460 | a loop with <code>LOCK CMPXCHG</code>. Depending on the users of the |
| 461 | result, some <code>atomicrmw</code> operations can be translated into |
| 462 | operations like <code>LOCK AND</code>, but that does not work in |
| 463 | general.</p> |
| 464 | |
| 465 | <p>On ARM, MIPS, and many other RISC architectures, Acquire, Release, and |
| 466 | SequentiallyConsistent semantics require barrier instructions |
| 467 | for every such operation. Loads and stores generate normal instructions. |
Eli Friedman | 1bf4ad4 | 2011-08-11 23:44:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 468 | <code>cmpxchg</code> and <code>atomicrmw</code> can be represented using |
| 469 | a loop with LL/SC-style instructions which take some sort of exclusive |
| 470 | lock on a cache line (<code>LDREX</code> and <code>STREX</code> on |
| 471 | ARM, etc.). At the moment, the IR does not provide any way to represent a |
| 472 | weak <code>cmpxchg</code> which would not require a loop.</p> |
Eli Friedman | 138515d | 2011-08-09 21:07:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 473 | </div> |
| 474 | |
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