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Bill Wendling7daef912012-08-08 06:42:30 +00001==========================================
2The LLVM Target-Independent Code Generator
3==========================================
4
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Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +000022.. contents::
23 :local:
24
25.. warning::
26 This is a work in progress.
27
28Introduction
29============
30
31The LLVM target-independent code generator is a framework that provides a suite
32of reusable components for translating the LLVM internal representation to the
33machine code for a specified target---either in assembly form (suitable for a
34static compiler) or in binary machine code format (usable for a JIT
35compiler). The LLVM target-independent code generator consists of six main
36components:
37
381. `Abstract target description`_ interfaces which capture important properties
39 about various aspects of the machine, independently of how they will be used.
40 These interfaces are defined in ``include/llvm/Target/``.
41
422. Classes used to represent the `code being generated`_ for a target. These
43 classes are intended to be abstract enough to represent the machine code for
44 *any* target machine. These classes are defined in
45 ``include/llvm/CodeGen/``. At this level, concepts like "constant pool
46 entries" and "jump tables" are explicitly exposed.
47
483. Classes and algorithms used to represent code as the object file level, the
49 `MC Layer`_. These classes represent assembly level constructs like labels,
50 sections, and instructions. At this level, concepts like "constant pool
51 entries" and "jump tables" don't exist.
52
534. `Target-independent algorithms`_ used to implement various phases of native
54 code generation (register allocation, scheduling, stack frame representation,
55 etc). This code lives in ``lib/CodeGen/``.
56
575. `Implementations of the abstract target description interfaces`_ for
58 particular targets. These machine descriptions make use of the components
59 provided by LLVM, and can optionally provide custom target-specific passes,
60 to build complete code generators for a specific target. Target descriptions
61 live in ``lib/Target/``.
62
636. The target-independent JIT components. The LLVM JIT is completely target
64 independent (it uses the ``TargetJITInfo`` structure to interface for
65 target-specific issues. The code for the target-independent JIT lives in
66 ``lib/ExecutionEngine/JIT``.
67
68Depending on which part of the code generator you are interested in working on,
69different pieces of this will be useful to you. In any case, you should be
70familiar with the `target description`_ and `machine code representation`_
71classes. If you want to add a backend for a new target, you will need to
72`implement the target description`_ classes for your new target and understand
Sean Silva1703e702014-04-08 21:06:22 +000073the :doc:`LLVM code representation <LangRef>`. If you are interested in
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +000074implementing a new `code generation algorithm`_, it should only depend on the
75target-description and machine code representation classes, ensuring that it is
76portable.
77
78Required components in the code generator
79-----------------------------------------
80
81The two pieces of the LLVM code generator are the high-level interface to the
82code generator and the set of reusable components that can be used to build
83target-specific backends. The two most important interfaces (:raw-html:`<tt>`
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +000084`TargetMachine`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` and :raw-html:`<tt>` `DataLayout`_
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +000085:raw-html:`</tt>`) are the only ones that are required to be defined for a
86backend to fit into the LLVM system, but the others must be defined if the
87reusable code generator components are going to be used.
88
89This design has two important implications. The first is that LLVM can support
90completely non-traditional code generation targets. For example, the C backend
91does not require register allocation, instruction selection, or any of the other
92standard components provided by the system. As such, it only implements these
93two interfaces, and does its own thing. Note that C backend was removed from the
94trunk since LLVM 3.1 release. Another example of a code generator like this is a
95(purely hypothetical) backend that converts LLVM to the GCC RTL form and uses
96GCC to emit machine code for a target.
97
98This design also implies that it is possible to design and implement radically
99different code generators in the LLVM system that do not make use of any of the
100built-in components. Doing so is not recommended at all, but could be required
101for radically different targets that do not fit into the LLVM machine
102description model: FPGAs for example.
103
104.. _high-level design of the code generator:
105
106The high-level design of the code generator
107-------------------------------------------
108
109The LLVM target-independent code generator is designed to support efficient and
110quality code generation for standard register-based microprocessors. Code
111generation in this model is divided into the following stages:
112
1131. `Instruction Selection`_ --- This phase determines an efficient way to
114 express the input LLVM code in the target instruction set. This stage
115 produces the initial code for the program in the target instruction set, then
116 makes use of virtual registers in SSA form and physical registers that
117 represent any required register assignments due to target constraints or
118 calling conventions. This step turns the LLVM code into a DAG of target
119 instructions.
120
1212. `Scheduling and Formation`_ --- This phase takes the DAG of target
122 instructions produced by the instruction selection phase, determines an
123 ordering of the instructions, then emits the instructions as :raw-html:`<tt>`
124 `MachineInstr`_\s :raw-html:`</tt>` with that ordering. Note that we
125 describe this in the `instruction selection section`_ because it operates on
126 a `SelectionDAG`_.
127
1283. `SSA-based Machine Code Optimizations`_ --- This optional stage consists of a
129 series of machine-code optimizations that operate on the SSA-form produced by
130 the instruction selector. Optimizations like modulo-scheduling or peephole
131 optimization work here.
132
1334. `Register Allocation`_ --- The target code is transformed from an infinite
134 virtual register file in SSA form to the concrete register file used by the
135 target. This phase introduces spill code and eliminates all virtual register
136 references from the program.
137
1385. `Prolog/Epilog Code Insertion`_ --- Once the machine code has been generated
139 for the function and the amount of stack space required is known (used for
140 LLVM alloca's and spill slots), the prolog and epilog code for the function
141 can be inserted and "abstract stack location references" can be eliminated.
142 This stage is responsible for implementing optimizations like frame-pointer
143 elimination and stack packing.
144
1456. `Late Machine Code Optimizations`_ --- Optimizations that operate on "final"
146 machine code can go here, such as spill code scheduling and peephole
147 optimizations.
148
1497. `Code Emission`_ --- The final stage actually puts out the code for the
150 current function, either in the target assembler format or in machine
151 code.
152
153The code generator is based on the assumption that the instruction selector will
154use an optimal pattern matching selector to create high-quality sequences of
155native instructions. Alternative code generator designs based on pattern
156expansion and aggressive iterative peephole optimization are much slower. This
157design permits efficient compilation (important for JIT environments) and
158aggressive optimization (used when generating code offline) by allowing
159components of varying levels of sophistication to be used for any step of
160compilation.
161
162In addition to these stages, target implementations can insert arbitrary
163target-specific passes into the flow. For example, the X86 target uses a
164special pass to handle the 80x87 floating point stack architecture. Other
165targets with unusual requirements can be supported with custom passes as needed.
166
167Using TableGen for target description
168-------------------------------------
169
170The target description classes require a detailed description of the target
171architecture. These target descriptions often have a large amount of common
172information (e.g., an ``add`` instruction is almost identical to a ``sub``
173instruction). In order to allow the maximum amount of commonality to be
174factored out, the LLVM code generator uses the
Sean Silva397ee6e2014-04-07 22:46:40 +0000175:doc:`TableGen/index` tool to describe big chunks of the
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000176target machine, which allows the use of domain-specific and target-specific
177abstractions to reduce the amount of repetition.
178
179As LLVM continues to be developed and refined, we plan to move more and more of
180the target description to the ``.td`` form. Doing so gives us a number of
181advantages. The most important is that it makes it easier to port LLVM because
182it reduces the amount of C++ code that has to be written, and the surface area
183of the code generator that needs to be understood before someone can get
184something working. Second, it makes it easier to change things. In particular,
185if tables and other things are all emitted by ``tblgen``, we only need a change
186in one place (``tblgen``) to update all of the targets to a new interface.
187
188.. _Abstract target description:
189.. _target description:
190
191Target description classes
192==========================
193
194The LLVM target description classes (located in the ``include/llvm/Target``
195directory) provide an abstract description of the target machine independent of
196any particular client. These classes are designed to capture the *abstract*
197properties of the target (such as the instructions and registers it has), and do
198not incorporate any particular pieces of code generation algorithms.
199
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000200All of the target description classes (except the :raw-html:`<tt>` `DataLayout`_
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000201:raw-html:`</tt>` class) are designed to be subclassed by the concrete target
202implementation, and have virtual methods implemented. To get to these
203implementations, the :raw-html:`<tt>` `TargetMachine`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` class
204provides accessors that should be implemented by the target.
205
206.. _TargetMachine:
207
208The ``TargetMachine`` class
209---------------------------
210
211The ``TargetMachine`` class provides virtual methods that are used to access the
212target-specific implementations of the various target description classes via
213the ``get*Info`` methods (``getInstrInfo``, ``getRegisterInfo``,
214``getFrameInfo``, etc.). This class is designed to be specialized by a concrete
215target implementation (e.g., ``X86TargetMachine``) which implements the various
216virtual methods. The only required target description class is the
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000217:raw-html:`<tt>` `DataLayout`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` class, but if the code
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000218generator components are to be used, the other interfaces should be implemented
219as well.
220
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000221.. _DataLayout:
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000222
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000223The ``DataLayout`` class
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000224------------------------
225
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000226The ``DataLayout`` class is the only required target description class, and it
Dmitri Gribenko13539d12012-11-02 18:06:51 +0000227is the only class that is not extensible (you cannot derive a new class from
Micah Villmow9cfc13d2012-10-08 16:39:34 +0000228it). ``DataLayout`` specifies information about how the target lays out memory
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000229for structures, the alignment requirements for various data types, the size of
230pointers in the target, and whether the target is little-endian or
231big-endian.
232
Dmitri Gribenko8bd389d2012-11-29 16:12:13 +0000233.. _TargetLowering:
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000234
235The ``TargetLowering`` class
236----------------------------
237
238The ``TargetLowering`` class is used by SelectionDAG based instruction selectors
239primarily to describe how LLVM code should be lowered to SelectionDAG
240operations. Among other things, this class indicates:
241
242* an initial register class to use for various ``ValueType``\s,
243
244* which operations are natively supported by the target machine,
245
246* the return type of ``setcc`` operations,
247
248* the type to use for shift amounts, and
249
250* various high-level characteristics, like whether it is profitable to turn
Dmitri Gribenko13539d12012-11-02 18:06:51 +0000251 division by a constant into a multiplication sequence.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000252
Dmitri Gribenko7174c5a2012-12-01 12:13:48 +0000253.. _TargetRegisterInfo:
254
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000255The ``TargetRegisterInfo`` class
256--------------------------------
257
258The ``TargetRegisterInfo`` class is used to describe the register file of the
259target and any interactions between the registers.
260
Eli Bendersky70f4e792012-10-31 16:41:07 +0000261Registers are represented in the code generator by unsigned integers. Physical
262registers (those that actually exist in the target description) are unique
263small numbers, and virtual registers are generally large. Note that
264register ``#0`` is reserved as a flag value.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000265
266Each register in the processor description has an associated
267``TargetRegisterDesc`` entry, which provides a textual name for the register
268(used for assembly output and debugging dumps) and a set of aliases (used to
269indicate whether one register overlaps with another).
270
271In addition to the per-register description, the ``TargetRegisterInfo`` class
272exposes a set of processor specific register classes (instances of the
273``TargetRegisterClass`` class). Each register class contains sets of registers
274that have the same properties (for example, they are all 32-bit integer
275registers). Each SSA virtual register created by the instruction selector has
276an associated register class. When the register allocator runs, it replaces
277virtual registers with a physical register in the set.
278
279The target-specific implementations of these classes is auto-generated from a
Sean Silva397ee6e2014-04-07 22:46:40 +0000280:doc:`TableGen/index` description of the register file.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000281
282.. _TargetInstrInfo:
283
284The ``TargetInstrInfo`` class
285-----------------------------
286
287The ``TargetInstrInfo`` class is used to describe the machine instructions
Eli Bendersky0b85ba72013-01-30 20:54:21 +0000288supported by the target. Descriptions define things like the mnemonic for
289the opcode, the number of operands, the list of implicit register uses and defs,
290whether the instruction has certain target-independent properties (accesses
291memory, is commutable, etc), and holds any target-specific flags.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000292
Nico Weber4b916b22014-09-10 19:50:55 +0000293The ``TargetFrameLowering`` class
Dan Liew4773d0b2014-09-10 20:43:03 +0000294---------------------------------
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000295
Nico Weber4b916b22014-09-10 19:50:55 +0000296The ``TargetFrameLowering`` class is used to provide information about the stack
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000297frame layout of the target. It holds the direction of stack growth, the known
298stack alignment on entry to each function, and the offset to the local area.
299The offset to the local area is the offset from the stack pointer on function
300entry to the first location where function data (local variables, spill
301locations) can be stored.
302
303The ``TargetSubtarget`` class
304-----------------------------
305
306The ``TargetSubtarget`` class is used to provide information about the specific
307chip set being targeted. A sub-target informs code generation of which
308instructions are supported, instruction latencies and instruction execution
309itinerary; i.e., which processing units are used, in what order, and for how
310long.
311
312The ``TargetJITInfo`` class
313---------------------------
314
315The ``TargetJITInfo`` class exposes an abstract interface used by the
316Just-In-Time code generator to perform target-specific activities, such as
317emitting stubs. If a ``TargetMachine`` supports JIT code generation, it should
318provide one of these objects through the ``getJITInfo`` method.
319
320.. _code being generated:
321.. _machine code representation:
322
323Machine code description classes
324================================
325
326At the high-level, LLVM code is translated to a machine specific representation
327formed out of :raw-html:`<tt>` `MachineFunction`_ :raw-html:`</tt>`,
328:raw-html:`<tt>` `MachineBasicBlock`_ :raw-html:`</tt>`, and :raw-html:`<tt>`
329`MachineInstr`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` instances (defined in
330``include/llvm/CodeGen``). This representation is completely target agnostic,
331representing instructions in their most abstract form: an opcode and a series of
332operands. This representation is designed to support both an SSA representation
333for machine code, as well as a register allocated, non-SSA form.
334
335.. _MachineInstr:
336
337The ``MachineInstr`` class
338--------------------------
339
340Target machine instructions are represented as instances of the ``MachineInstr``
341class. This class is an extremely abstract way of representing machine
342instructions. In particular, it only keeps track of an opcode number and a set
343of operands.
344
345The opcode number is a simple unsigned integer that only has meaning to a
346specific backend. All of the instructions for a target should be defined in the
347``*InstrInfo.td`` file for the target. The opcode enum values are auto-generated
348from this description. The ``MachineInstr`` class does not have any information
349about how to interpret the instruction (i.e., what the semantics of the
350instruction are); for that you must refer to the :raw-html:`<tt>`
351`TargetInstrInfo`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` class.
352
353The operands of a machine instruction can be of several different types: a
354register reference, a constant integer, a basic block reference, etc. In
355addition, a machine operand should be marked as a def or a use of the value
356(though only registers are allowed to be defs).
357
358By convention, the LLVM code generator orders instruction operands so that all
359register definitions come before the register uses, even on architectures that
360are normally printed in other orders. For example, the SPARC add instruction:
361"``add %i1, %i2, %i3``" adds the "%i1", and "%i2" registers and stores the
362result into the "%i3" register. In the LLVM code generator, the operands should
363be stored as "``%i3, %i1, %i2``": with the destination first.
364
365Keeping destination (definition) operands at the beginning of the operand list
366has several advantages. In particular, the debugging printer will print the
367instruction like this:
368
369.. code-block:: llvm
370
371 %r3 = add %i1, %i2
372
373Also if the first operand is a def, it is easier to `create instructions`_ whose
374only def is the first operand.
375
376.. _create instructions:
377
378Using the ``MachineInstrBuilder.h`` functions
379^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
380
381Machine instructions are created by using the ``BuildMI`` functions, located in
382the ``include/llvm/CodeGen/MachineInstrBuilder.h`` file. The ``BuildMI``
383functions make it easy to build arbitrary machine instructions. Usage of the
384``BuildMI`` functions look like this:
385
386.. code-block:: c++
387
388 // Create a 'DestReg = mov 42' (rendered in X86 assembly as 'mov DestReg, 42')
389 // instruction. The '1' specifies how many operands will be added.
390 MachineInstr *MI = BuildMI(X86::MOV32ri, 1, DestReg).addImm(42);
391
392 // Create the same instr, but insert it at the end of a basic block.
Dmitri Gribenko37f92c72012-09-30 20:51:02 +0000393 MachineBasicBlock &MBB = ...
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000394 BuildMI(MBB, X86::MOV32ri, 1, DestReg).addImm(42);
395
396 // Create the same instr, but insert it before a specified iterator point.
397 MachineBasicBlock::iterator MBBI = ...
398 BuildMI(MBB, MBBI, X86::MOV32ri, 1, DestReg).addImm(42);
399
400 // Create a 'cmp Reg, 0' instruction, no destination reg.
401 MI = BuildMI(X86::CMP32ri, 2).addReg(Reg).addImm(0);
402
403 // Create an 'sahf' instruction which takes no operands and stores nothing.
404 MI = BuildMI(X86::SAHF, 0);
405
406 // Create a self looping branch instruction.
Dmitri Gribenko37f92c72012-09-30 20:51:02 +0000407 BuildMI(MBB, X86::JNE, 1).addMBB(&MBB);
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000408
409The key thing to remember with the ``BuildMI`` functions is that you have to
410specify the number of operands that the machine instruction will take. This
411allows for efficient memory allocation. You also need to specify if operands
412default to be uses of values, not definitions. If you need to add a definition
413operand (other than the optional destination register), you must explicitly mark
414it as such:
415
416.. code-block:: c++
417
418 MI.addReg(Reg, RegState::Define);
419
420Fixed (preassigned) registers
421^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
422
423One important issue that the code generator needs to be aware of is the presence
424of fixed registers. In particular, there are often places in the instruction
425stream where the register allocator *must* arrange for a particular value to be
426in a particular register. This can occur due to limitations of the instruction
427set (e.g., the X86 can only do a 32-bit divide with the ``EAX``/``EDX``
428registers), or external factors like calling conventions. In any case, the
429instruction selector should emit code that copies a virtual register into or out
430of a physical register when needed.
431
432For example, consider this simple LLVM example:
433
434.. code-block:: llvm
435
436 define i32 @test(i32 %X, i32 %Y) {
Tim Northovercdc53952014-01-13 10:47:04 +0000437 %Z = sdiv i32 %X, %Y
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000438 ret i32 %Z
439 }
440
Tim Northovercdc53952014-01-13 10:47:04 +0000441The X86 instruction selector might produce this machine code for the ``div`` and
442``ret``:
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000443
444.. code-block:: llvm
445
446 ;; Start of div
447 %EAX = mov %reg1024 ;; Copy X (in reg1024) into EAX
448 %reg1027 = sar %reg1024, 31
449 %EDX = mov %reg1027 ;; Sign extend X into EDX
450 idiv %reg1025 ;; Divide by Y (in reg1025)
451 %reg1026 = mov %EAX ;; Read the result (Z) out of EAX
452
453 ;; Start of ret
454 %EAX = mov %reg1026 ;; 32-bit return value goes in EAX
455 ret
456
Tim Northovercdc53952014-01-13 10:47:04 +0000457By the end of code generation, the register allocator would coalesce the
458registers and delete the resultant identity moves producing the following
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000459code:
460
461.. code-block:: llvm
462
463 ;; X is in EAX, Y is in ECX
464 mov %EAX, %EDX
465 sar %EDX, 31
466 idiv %ECX
467 ret
468
469This approach is extremely general (if it can handle the X86 architecture, it
470can handle anything!) and allows all of the target specific knowledge about the
471instruction stream to be isolated in the instruction selector. Note that
472physical registers should have a short lifetime for good code generation, and
473all physical registers are assumed dead on entry to and exit from basic blocks
474(before register allocation). Thus, if you need a value to be live across basic
475block boundaries, it *must* live in a virtual register.
476
477Call-clobbered registers
478^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
479
480Some machine instructions, like calls, clobber a large number of physical
481registers. Rather than adding ``<def,dead>`` operands for all of them, it is
482possible to use an ``MO_RegisterMask`` operand instead. The register mask
483operand holds a bit mask of preserved registers, and everything else is
484considered to be clobbered by the instruction.
485
486Machine code in SSA form
487^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
488
489``MachineInstr``'s are initially selected in SSA-form, and are maintained in
490SSA-form until register allocation happens. For the most part, this is
491trivially simple since LLVM is already in SSA form; LLVM PHI nodes become
492machine code PHI nodes, and virtual registers are only allowed to have a single
493definition.
494
495After register allocation, machine code is no longer in SSA-form because there
496are no virtual registers left in the code.
497
498.. _MachineBasicBlock:
499
500The ``MachineBasicBlock`` class
501-------------------------------
502
503The ``MachineBasicBlock`` class contains a list of machine instructions
504(:raw-html:`<tt>` `MachineInstr`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` instances). It roughly
505corresponds to the LLVM code input to the instruction selector, but there can be
506a one-to-many mapping (i.e. one LLVM basic block can map to multiple machine
507basic blocks). The ``MachineBasicBlock`` class has a "``getBasicBlock``" method,
508which returns the LLVM basic block that it comes from.
509
510.. _MachineFunction:
511
512The ``MachineFunction`` class
513-----------------------------
514
515The ``MachineFunction`` class contains a list of machine basic blocks
516(:raw-html:`<tt>` `MachineBasicBlock`_ :raw-html:`</tt>` instances). It
517corresponds one-to-one with the LLVM function input to the instruction selector.
518In addition to a list of basic blocks, the ``MachineFunction`` contains a a
519``MachineConstantPool``, a ``MachineFrameInfo``, a ``MachineFunctionInfo``, and
520a ``MachineRegisterInfo``. See ``include/llvm/CodeGen/MachineFunction.h`` for
521more information.
522
523``MachineInstr Bundles``
524------------------------
525
526LLVM code generator can model sequences of instructions as MachineInstr
527bundles. A MI bundle can model a VLIW group / pack which contains an arbitrary
528number of parallel instructions. It can also be used to model a sequential list
529of instructions (potentially with data dependencies) that cannot be legally
530separated (e.g. ARM Thumb2 IT blocks).
531
532Conceptually a MI bundle is a MI with a number of other MIs nested within:
533
534::
535
536 --------------
537 | Bundle | ---------
538 -------------- \
539 | ----------------
540 | | MI |
541 | ----------------
542 | |
543 | ----------------
544 | | MI |
545 | ----------------
546 | |
547 | ----------------
548 | | MI |
549 | ----------------
550 |
551 --------------
552 | Bundle | --------
553 -------------- \
554 | ----------------
555 | | MI |
556 | ----------------
557 | |
558 | ----------------
559 | | MI |
560 | ----------------
561 | |
562 | ...
563 |
564 --------------
565 | Bundle | --------
566 -------------- \
567 |
568 ...
569
570MI bundle support does not change the physical representations of
571MachineBasicBlock and MachineInstr. All the MIs (including top level and nested
572ones) are stored as sequential list of MIs. The "bundled" MIs are marked with
573the 'InsideBundle' flag. A top level MI with the special BUNDLE opcode is used
574to represent the start of a bundle. It's legal to mix BUNDLE MIs with indiviual
575MIs that are not inside bundles nor represent bundles.
576
577MachineInstr passes should operate on a MI bundle as a single unit. Member
578methods have been taught to correctly handle bundles and MIs inside bundles.
579The MachineBasicBlock iterator has been modified to skip over bundled MIs to
580enforce the bundle-as-a-single-unit concept. An alternative iterator
581instr_iterator has been added to MachineBasicBlock to allow passes to iterate
582over all of the MIs in a MachineBasicBlock, including those which are nested
583inside bundles. The top level BUNDLE instruction must have the correct set of
584register MachineOperand's that represent the cumulative inputs and outputs of
585the bundled MIs.
586
587Packing / bundling of MachineInstr's should be done as part of the register
588allocation super-pass. More specifically, the pass which determines what MIs
589should be bundled together must be done after code generator exits SSA form
590(i.e. after two-address pass, PHI elimination, and copy coalescing). Bundles
591should only be finalized (i.e. adding BUNDLE MIs and input and output register
592MachineOperands) after virtual registers have been rewritten into physical
593registers. This requirement eliminates the need to add virtual register operands
594to BUNDLE instructions which would effectively double the virtual register def
595and use lists.
596
597.. _MC Layer:
598
599The "MC" Layer
600==============
601
602The MC Layer is used to represent and process code at the raw machine code
603level, devoid of "high level" information like "constant pools", "jump tables",
604"global variables" or anything like that. At this level, LLVM handles things
605like label names, machine instructions, and sections in the object file. The
606code in this layer is used for a number of important purposes: the tail end of
607the code generator uses it to write a .s or .o file, and it is also used by the
608llvm-mc tool to implement standalone machine code assemblers and disassemblers.
609
610This section describes some of the important classes. There are also a number
611of important subsystems that interact at this layer, they are described later in
612this manual.
613
614.. _MCStreamer:
615
616The ``MCStreamer`` API
617----------------------
618
619MCStreamer is best thought of as an assembler API. It is an abstract API which
620is *implemented* in different ways (e.g. to output a .s file, output an ELF .o
621file, etc) but whose API correspond directly to what you see in a .s file.
622MCStreamer has one method per directive, such as EmitLabel, EmitSymbolAttribute,
623SwitchSection, EmitValue (for .byte, .word), etc, which directly correspond to
624assembly level directives. It also has an EmitInstruction method, which is used
625to output an MCInst to the streamer.
626
627This API is most important for two clients: the llvm-mc stand-alone assembler is
628effectively a parser that parses a line, then invokes a method on MCStreamer. In
629the code generator, the `Code Emission`_ phase of the code generator lowers
630higher level LLVM IR and Machine* constructs down to the MC layer, emitting
631directives through MCStreamer.
632
633On the implementation side of MCStreamer, there are two major implementations:
634one for writing out a .s file (MCAsmStreamer), and one for writing out a .o
635file (MCObjectStreamer). MCAsmStreamer is a straight-forward implementation
636that prints out a directive for each method (e.g. ``EmitValue -> .byte``), but
637MCObjectStreamer implements a full assembler.
638
Rafael Espindola974efd32013-10-09 02:05:08 +0000639For target specific directives, the MCStreamer has a MCTargetStreamer instance.
640Each target that needs it defines a class that inherits from it and is a lot
641like MCStreamer itself: It has one method per directive and two classes that
642inherit from it, a target object streamer and a target asm streamer. The target
643asm streamer just prints it (``emitFnStart -> .fnstrart``), and the object
644streamer implement the assembler logic for it.
645
Rafael Espindolab665d792013-10-16 14:54:39 +0000646To make llvm use these classes, the target initialization must call
647TargetRegistry::RegisterAsmStreamer and TargetRegistry::RegisterMCObjectStreamer
648passing callbacks that allocate the corresponding target streamer and pass it
649to createAsmStreamer or to the appropriate object streamer constructor.
650
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000651The ``MCContext`` class
652-----------------------
653
654The MCContext class is the owner of a variety of uniqued data structures at the
655MC layer, including symbols, sections, etc. As such, this is the class that you
656interact with to create symbols and sections. This class can not be subclassed.
657
658The ``MCSymbol`` class
659----------------------
660
661The MCSymbol class represents a symbol (aka label) in the assembly file. There
662are two interesting kinds of symbols: assembler temporary symbols, and normal
663symbols. Assembler temporary symbols are used and processed by the assembler
664but are discarded when the object file is produced. The distinction is usually
665represented by adding a prefix to the label, for example "L" labels are
666assembler temporary labels in MachO.
667
668MCSymbols are created by MCContext and uniqued there. This means that MCSymbols
669can be compared for pointer equivalence to find out if they are the same symbol.
670Note that pointer inequality does not guarantee the labels will end up at
671different addresses though. It's perfectly legal to output something like this
672to the .s file:
673
674::
675
676 foo:
677 bar:
678 .byte 4
679
680In this case, both the foo and bar symbols will have the same address.
681
682The ``MCSection`` class
683-----------------------
684
685The ``MCSection`` class represents an object-file specific section. It is
686subclassed by object file specific implementations (e.g. ``MCSectionMachO``,
687``MCSectionCOFF``, ``MCSectionELF``) and these are created and uniqued by
688MCContext. The MCStreamer has a notion of the current section, which can be
689changed with the SwitchToSection method (which corresponds to a ".section"
690directive in a .s file).
691
692.. _MCInst:
693
694The ``MCInst`` class
695--------------------
696
697The ``MCInst`` class is a target-independent representation of an instruction.
698It is a simple class (much more so than `MachineInstr`_) that holds a
699target-specific opcode and a vector of MCOperands. MCOperand, in turn, is a
700simple discriminated union of three cases: 1) a simple immediate, 2) a target
701register ID, 3) a symbolic expression (e.g. "``Lfoo-Lbar+42``") as an MCExpr.
702
703MCInst is the common currency used to represent machine instructions at the MC
704layer. It is the type used by the instruction encoder, the instruction printer,
705and the type generated by the assembly parser and disassembler.
706
707.. _Target-independent algorithms:
708.. _code generation algorithm:
709
710Target-independent code generation algorithms
711=============================================
712
713This section documents the phases described in the `high-level design of the
714code generator`_. It explains how they work and some of the rationale behind
715their design.
716
717.. _Instruction Selection:
718.. _instruction selection section:
719
720Instruction Selection
721---------------------
722
723Instruction Selection is the process of translating LLVM code presented to the
724code generator into target-specific machine instructions. There are several
725well-known ways to do this in the literature. LLVM uses a SelectionDAG based
726instruction selector.
727
728Portions of the DAG instruction selector are generated from the target
729description (``*.td``) files. Our goal is for the entire instruction selector
730to be generated from these ``.td`` files, though currently there are still
731things that require custom C++ code.
732
733.. _SelectionDAG:
734
735Introduction to SelectionDAGs
736^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
737
738The SelectionDAG provides an abstraction for code representation in a way that
739is amenable to instruction selection using automatic techniques
740(e.g. dynamic-programming based optimal pattern matching selectors). It is also
741well-suited to other phases of code generation; in particular, instruction
742scheduling (SelectionDAG's are very close to scheduling DAGs post-selection).
743Additionally, the SelectionDAG provides a host representation where a large
744variety of very-low-level (but target-independent) `optimizations`_ may be
745performed; ones which require extensive information about the instructions
746efficiently supported by the target.
747
748The SelectionDAG is a Directed-Acyclic-Graph whose nodes are instances of the
749``SDNode`` class. The primary payload of the ``SDNode`` is its operation code
750(Opcode) that indicates what operation the node performs and the operands to the
751operation. The various operation node types are described at the top of the
752``include/llvm/CodeGen/SelectionDAGNodes.h`` file.
753
754Although most operations define a single value, each node in the graph may
755define multiple values. For example, a combined div/rem operation will define
756both the dividend and the remainder. Many other situations require multiple
757values as well. Each node also has some number of operands, which are edges to
758the node defining the used value. Because nodes may define multiple values,
759edges are represented by instances of the ``SDValue`` class, which is a
760``<SDNode, unsigned>`` pair, indicating the node and result value being used,
761respectively. Each value produced by an ``SDNode`` has an associated ``MVT``
762(Machine Value Type) indicating what the type of the value is.
763
764SelectionDAGs contain two different kinds of values: those that represent data
765flow and those that represent control flow dependencies. Data values are simple
766edges with an integer or floating point value type. Control edges are
767represented as "chain" edges which are of type ``MVT::Other``. These edges
768provide an ordering between nodes that have side effects (such as loads, stores,
769calls, returns, etc). All nodes that have side effects should take a token
770chain as input and produce a new one as output. By convention, token chain
771inputs are always operand #0, and chain results are always the last value
Matt Arsenault907e64b2014-09-02 19:18:52 +0000772produced by an operation. However, after instruction selection, the
773machine nodes have their chain after the instruction's operands, and
774may be followed by glue nodes.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000775
776A SelectionDAG has designated "Entry" and "Root" nodes. The Entry node is
777always a marker node with an Opcode of ``ISD::EntryToken``. The Root node is
778the final side-effecting node in the token chain. For example, in a single basic
779block function it would be the return node.
780
781One important concept for SelectionDAGs is the notion of a "legal" vs.
782"illegal" DAG. A legal DAG for a target is one that only uses supported
783operations and supported types. On a 32-bit PowerPC, for example, a DAG with a
784value of type i1, i8, i16, or i64 would be illegal, as would a DAG that uses a
785SREM or UREM operation. The `legalize types`_ and `legalize operations`_ phases
786are responsible for turning an illegal DAG into a legal DAG.
787
Dmitri Gribenko7174c5a2012-12-01 12:13:48 +0000788.. _SelectionDAG-Process:
789
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000790SelectionDAG Instruction Selection Process
791^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
792
793SelectionDAG-based instruction selection consists of the following steps:
794
795#. `Build initial DAG`_ --- This stage performs a simple translation from the
796 input LLVM code to an illegal SelectionDAG.
797
798#. `Optimize SelectionDAG`_ --- This stage performs simple optimizations on the
799 SelectionDAG to simplify it, and recognize meta instructions (like rotates
800 and ``div``/``rem`` pairs) for targets that support these meta operations.
801 This makes the resultant code more efficient and the `select instructions
802 from DAG`_ phase (below) simpler.
803
804#. `Legalize SelectionDAG Types`_ --- This stage transforms SelectionDAG nodes
805 to eliminate any types that are unsupported on the target.
806
807#. `Optimize SelectionDAG`_ --- The SelectionDAG optimizer is run to clean up
808 redundancies exposed by type legalization.
809
810#. `Legalize SelectionDAG Ops`_ --- This stage transforms SelectionDAG nodes to
811 eliminate any operations that are unsupported on the target.
812
813#. `Optimize SelectionDAG`_ --- The SelectionDAG optimizer is run to eliminate
814 inefficiencies introduced by operation legalization.
815
816#. `Select instructions from DAG`_ --- Finally, the target instruction selector
817 matches the DAG operations to target instructions. This process translates
818 the target-independent input DAG into another DAG of target instructions.
819
820#. `SelectionDAG Scheduling and Formation`_ --- The last phase assigns a linear
821 order to the instructions in the target-instruction DAG and emits them into
822 the MachineFunction being compiled. This step uses traditional prepass
823 scheduling techniques.
824
825After all of these steps are complete, the SelectionDAG is destroyed and the
826rest of the code generation passes are run.
827
828One great way to visualize what is going on here is to take advantage of a few
829LLC command line options. The following options pop up a window displaying the
830SelectionDAG at specific times (if you only get errors printed to the console
831while using this, you probably `need to configure your
832system <ProgrammersManual.html#ViewGraph>`_ to add support for it).
833
834* ``-view-dag-combine1-dags`` displays the DAG after being built, before the
835 first optimization pass.
836
837* ``-view-legalize-dags`` displays the DAG before Legalization.
838
839* ``-view-dag-combine2-dags`` displays the DAG before the second optimization
840 pass.
841
842* ``-view-isel-dags`` displays the DAG before the Select phase.
843
844* ``-view-sched-dags`` displays the DAG before Scheduling.
845
846The ``-view-sunit-dags`` displays the Scheduler's dependency graph. This graph
847is based on the final SelectionDAG, with nodes that must be scheduled together
848bundled into a single scheduling-unit node, and with immediate operands and
849other nodes that aren't relevant for scheduling omitted.
850
851.. _Build initial DAG:
852
853Initial SelectionDAG Construction
854^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
855
856The initial SelectionDAG is na\ :raw-html:`&iuml;`\ vely peephole expanded from
Eli Bendersky6f6f55e2012-11-05 02:59:23 +0000857the LLVM input by the ``SelectionDAGBuilder`` class. The intent of this pass
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000858is to expose as much low-level, target-specific details to the SelectionDAG as
859possible. This pass is mostly hard-coded (e.g. an LLVM ``add`` turns into an
860``SDNode add`` while a ``getelementptr`` is expanded into the obvious
861arithmetic). This pass requires target-specific hooks to lower calls, returns,
862varargs, etc. For these features, the :raw-html:`<tt>` `TargetLowering`_
863:raw-html:`</tt>` interface is used.
864
865.. _legalize types:
866.. _Legalize SelectionDAG Types:
867.. _Legalize SelectionDAG Ops:
868
869SelectionDAG LegalizeTypes Phase
870^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
871
872The Legalize phase is in charge of converting a DAG to only use the types that
873are natively supported by the target.
874
875There are two main ways of converting values of unsupported scalar types to
876values of supported types: converting small types to larger types ("promoting"),
877and breaking up large integer types into smaller ones ("expanding"). For
878example, a target might require that all f32 values are promoted to f64 and that
879all i1/i8/i16 values are promoted to i32. The same target might require that
880all i64 values be expanded into pairs of i32 values. These changes can insert
881sign and zero extensions as needed to make sure that the final code has the same
882behavior as the input.
883
884There are two main ways of converting values of unsupported vector types to
885value of supported types: splitting vector types, multiple times if necessary,
886until a legal type is found, and extending vector types by adding elements to
887the end to round them out to legal types ("widening"). If a vector gets split
888all the way down to single-element parts with no supported vector type being
889found, the elements are converted to scalars ("scalarizing").
890
891A target implementation tells the legalizer which types are supported (and which
892register class to use for them) by calling the ``addRegisterClass`` method in
Dmitri Gribenko8bd389d2012-11-29 16:12:13 +0000893its ``TargetLowering`` constructor.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000894
895.. _legalize operations:
896.. _Legalizer:
897
898SelectionDAG Legalize Phase
899^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
900
901The Legalize phase is in charge of converting a DAG to only use the operations
902that are natively supported by the target.
903
904Targets often have weird constraints, such as not supporting every operation on
905every supported datatype (e.g. X86 does not support byte conditional moves and
906PowerPC does not support sign-extending loads from a 16-bit memory location).
907Legalize takes care of this by open-coding another sequence of operations to
908emulate the operation ("expansion"), by promoting one type to a larger type that
909supports the operation ("promotion"), or by using a target-specific hook to
910implement the legalization ("custom").
911
912A target implementation tells the legalizer which operations are not supported
913(and which of the above three actions to take) by calling the
914``setOperationAction`` method in its ``TargetLowering`` constructor.
915
916Prior to the existence of the Legalize passes, we required that every target
917`selector`_ supported and handled every operator and type even if they are not
918natively supported. The introduction of the Legalize phases allows all of the
919canonicalization patterns to be shared across targets, and makes it very easy to
920optimize the canonicalized code because it is still in the form of a DAG.
921
922.. _optimizations:
923.. _Optimize SelectionDAG:
924.. _selector:
925
926SelectionDAG Optimization Phase: the DAG Combiner
927^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
928
929The SelectionDAG optimization phase is run multiple times for code generation,
930immediately after the DAG is built and once after each legalization. The first
931run of the pass allows the initial code to be cleaned up (e.g. performing
932optimizations that depend on knowing that the operators have restricted type
933inputs). Subsequent runs of the pass clean up the messy code generated by the
934Legalize passes, which allows Legalize to be very simple (it can focus on making
935code legal instead of focusing on generating *good* and legal code).
936
937One important class of optimizations performed is optimizing inserted sign and
938zero extension instructions. We currently use ad-hoc techniques, but could move
939to more rigorous techniques in the future. Here are some good papers on the
940subject:
941
942"`Widening integer arithmetic <http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nr/pubs/widen-abstract.html>`_" :raw-html:`<br>`
943Kevin Redwine and Norman Ramsey :raw-html:`<br>`
944International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC) 2004
945
946"`Effective sign extension elimination <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=512529.512552>`_" :raw-html:`<br>`
947Motohiro Kawahito, Hideaki Komatsu, and Toshio Nakatani :raw-html:`<br>`
948Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2002 Conference on Programming Language Design
949and Implementation.
950
951.. _Select instructions from DAG:
952
953SelectionDAG Select Phase
954^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
955
956The Select phase is the bulk of the target-specific code for instruction
957selection. This phase takes a legal SelectionDAG as input, pattern matches the
958instructions supported by the target to this DAG, and produces a new DAG of
959target code. For example, consider the following LLVM fragment:
960
961.. code-block:: llvm
962
963 %t1 = fadd float %W, %X
964 %t2 = fmul float %t1, %Y
965 %t3 = fadd float %t2, %Z
966
967This LLVM code corresponds to a SelectionDAG that looks basically like this:
968
969.. code-block:: llvm
970
971 (fadd:f32 (fmul:f32 (fadd:f32 W, X), Y), Z)
972
973If a target supports floating point multiply-and-add (FMA) operations, one of
974the adds can be merged with the multiply. On the PowerPC, for example, the
975output of the instruction selector might look like this DAG:
976
977::
978
979 (FMADDS (FADDS W, X), Y, Z)
980
981The ``FMADDS`` instruction is a ternary instruction that multiplies its first
982two operands and adds the third (as single-precision floating-point numbers).
983The ``FADDS`` instruction is a simple binary single-precision add instruction.
984To perform this pattern match, the PowerPC backend includes the following
985instruction definitions:
986
Sean Silva33f2c072012-11-19 21:18:50 +0000987.. code-block:: text
988 :emphasize-lines: 4-5,9
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +0000989
990 def FMADDS : AForm_1<59, 29,
991 (ops F4RC:$FRT, F4RC:$FRA, F4RC:$FRC, F4RC:$FRB),
992 "fmadds $FRT, $FRA, $FRC, $FRB",
993 [(set F4RC:$FRT, (fadd (fmul F4RC:$FRA, F4RC:$FRC),
994 F4RC:$FRB))]>;
995 def FADDS : AForm_2<59, 21,
996 (ops F4RC:$FRT, F4RC:$FRA, F4RC:$FRB),
997 "fadds $FRT, $FRA, $FRB",
998 [(set F4RC:$FRT, (fadd F4RC:$FRA, F4RC:$FRB))]>;
999
Sean Silva33f2c072012-11-19 21:18:50 +00001000The highlighted portion of the instruction definitions indicates the pattern
1001used to match the instructions. The DAG operators (like ``fmul``/``fadd``)
1002are defined in the ``include/llvm/Target/TargetSelectionDAG.td`` file.
1003"``F4RC``" is the register class of the input and result values.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001004
1005The TableGen DAG instruction selector generator reads the instruction patterns
1006in the ``.td`` file and automatically builds parts of the pattern matching code
1007for your target. It has the following strengths:
1008
1009* At compiler-compiler time, it analyzes your instruction patterns and tells you
1010 if your patterns make sense or not.
1011
1012* It can handle arbitrary constraints on operands for the pattern match. In
1013 particular, it is straight-forward to say things like "match any immediate
1014 that is a 13-bit sign-extended value". For examples, see the ``immSExt16``
1015 and related ``tblgen`` classes in the PowerPC backend.
1016
1017* It knows several important identities for the patterns defined. For example,
1018 it knows that addition is commutative, so it allows the ``FMADDS`` pattern
1019 above to match "``(fadd X, (fmul Y, Z))``" as well as "``(fadd (fmul X, Y),
1020 Z)``", without the target author having to specially handle this case.
1021
1022* It has a full-featured type-inferencing system. In particular, you should
1023 rarely have to explicitly tell the system what type parts of your patterns
1024 are. In the ``FMADDS`` case above, we didn't have to tell ``tblgen`` that all
1025 of the nodes in the pattern are of type 'f32'. It was able to infer and
1026 propagate this knowledge from the fact that ``F4RC`` has type 'f32'.
1027
1028* Targets can define their own (and rely on built-in) "pattern fragments".
1029 Pattern fragments are chunks of reusable patterns that get inlined into your
1030 patterns during compiler-compiler time. For example, the integer "``(not
1031 x)``" operation is actually defined as a pattern fragment that expands as
1032 "``(xor x, -1)``", since the SelectionDAG does not have a native '``not``'
1033 operation. Targets can define their own short-hand fragments as they see fit.
1034 See the definition of '``not``' and '``ineg``' for examples.
1035
1036* In addition to instructions, targets can specify arbitrary patterns that map
1037 to one or more instructions using the 'Pat' class. For example, the PowerPC
1038 has no way to load an arbitrary integer immediate into a register in one
1039 instruction. To tell tblgen how to do this, it defines:
1040
1041 ::
1042
1043 // Arbitrary immediate support. Implement in terms of LIS/ORI.
1044 def : Pat<(i32 imm:$imm),
1045 (ORI (LIS (HI16 imm:$imm)), (LO16 imm:$imm))>;
1046
1047 If none of the single-instruction patterns for loading an immediate into a
1048 register match, this will be used. This rule says "match an arbitrary i32
1049 immediate, turning it into an ``ORI`` ('or a 16-bit immediate') and an ``LIS``
1050 ('load 16-bit immediate, where the immediate is shifted to the left 16 bits')
1051 instruction". To make this work, the ``LO16``/``HI16`` node transformations
1052 are used to manipulate the input immediate (in this case, take the high or low
1053 16-bits of the immediate).
1054
Ulrich Weigande618abd2013-03-19 19:51:09 +00001055* When using the 'Pat' class to map a pattern to an instruction that has one
1056 or more complex operands (like e.g. `X86 addressing mode`_), the pattern may
1057 either specify the operand as a whole using a ``ComplexPattern``, or else it
1058 may specify the components of the complex operand separately. The latter is
1059 done e.g. for pre-increment instructions by the PowerPC back end:
1060
1061 ::
1062
1063 def STWU : DForm_1<37, (outs ptr_rc:$ea_res), (ins GPRC:$rS, memri:$dst),
1064 "stwu $rS, $dst", LdStStoreUpd, []>,
1065 RegConstraint<"$dst.reg = $ea_res">, NoEncode<"$ea_res">;
1066
1067 def : Pat<(pre_store GPRC:$rS, ptr_rc:$ptrreg, iaddroff:$ptroff),
1068 (STWU GPRC:$rS, iaddroff:$ptroff, ptr_rc:$ptrreg)>;
1069
1070 Here, the pair of ``ptroff`` and ``ptrreg`` operands is matched onto the
1071 complex operand ``dst`` of class ``memri`` in the ``STWU`` instruction.
1072
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001073* While the system does automate a lot, it still allows you to write custom C++
1074 code to match special cases if there is something that is hard to
1075 express.
1076
1077While it has many strengths, the system currently has some limitations,
1078primarily because it is a work in progress and is not yet finished:
1079
1080* Overall, there is no way to define or match SelectionDAG nodes that define
1081 multiple values (e.g. ``SMUL_LOHI``, ``LOAD``, ``CALL``, etc). This is the
1082 biggest reason that you currently still *have to* write custom C++ code
1083 for your instruction selector.
1084
1085* There is no great way to support matching complex addressing modes yet. In
1086 the future, we will extend pattern fragments to allow them to define multiple
1087 values (e.g. the four operands of the `X86 addressing mode`_, which are
1088 currently matched with custom C++ code). In addition, we'll extend fragments
1089 so that a fragment can match multiple different patterns.
1090
1091* We don't automatically infer flags like ``isStore``/``isLoad`` yet.
1092
1093* We don't automatically generate the set of supported registers and operations
1094 for the `Legalizer`_ yet.
1095
1096* We don't have a way of tying in custom legalized nodes yet.
1097
1098Despite these limitations, the instruction selector generator is still quite
1099useful for most of the binary and logical operations in typical instruction
1100sets. If you run into any problems or can't figure out how to do something,
1101please let Chris know!
1102
1103.. _Scheduling and Formation:
1104.. _SelectionDAG Scheduling and Formation:
1105
1106SelectionDAG Scheduling and Formation Phase
1107^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1108
1109The scheduling phase takes the DAG of target instructions from the selection
1110phase and assigns an order. The scheduler can pick an order depending on
1111various constraints of the machines (i.e. order for minimal register pressure or
1112try to cover instruction latencies). Once an order is established, the DAG is
1113converted to a list of :raw-html:`<tt>` `MachineInstr`_\s :raw-html:`</tt>` and
1114the SelectionDAG is destroyed.
1115
1116Note that this phase is logically separate from the instruction selection phase,
1117but is tied to it closely in the code because it operates on SelectionDAGs.
1118
1119Future directions for the SelectionDAG
1120^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1121
1122#. Optional function-at-a-time selection.
1123
1124#. Auto-generate entire selector from ``.td`` file.
1125
1126.. _SSA-based Machine Code Optimizations:
1127
1128SSA-based Machine Code Optimizations
1129------------------------------------
1130
1131To Be Written
1132
1133Live Intervals
1134--------------
1135
1136Live Intervals are the ranges (intervals) where a variable is *live*. They are
1137used by some `register allocator`_ passes to determine if two or more virtual
1138registers which require the same physical register are live at the same point in
1139the program (i.e., they conflict). When this situation occurs, one virtual
1140register must be *spilled*.
1141
1142Live Variable Analysis
1143^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1144
1145The first step in determining the live intervals of variables is to calculate
1146the set of registers that are immediately dead after the instruction (i.e., the
1147instruction calculates the value, but it is never used) and the set of registers
1148that are used by the instruction, but are never used after the instruction
1149(i.e., they are killed). Live variable information is computed for
1150each *virtual* register and *register allocatable* physical register
1151in the function. This is done in a very efficient manner because it uses SSA to
1152sparsely compute lifetime information for virtual registers (which are in SSA
1153form) and only has to track physical registers within a block. Before register
1154allocation, LLVM can assume that physical registers are only live within a
1155single basic block. This allows it to do a single, local analysis to resolve
1156physical register lifetimes within each basic block. If a physical register is
1157not register allocatable (e.g., a stack pointer or condition codes), it is not
1158tracked.
1159
1160Physical registers may be live in to or out of a function. Live in values are
1161typically arguments in registers. Live out values are typically return values in
1162registers. Live in values are marked as such, and are given a dummy "defining"
1163instruction during live intervals analysis. If the last basic block of a
1164function is a ``return``, then it's marked as using all live out values in the
1165function.
1166
1167``PHI`` nodes need to be handled specially, because the calculation of the live
1168variable information from a depth first traversal of the CFG of the function
1169won't guarantee that a virtual register used by the ``PHI`` node is defined
1170before it's used. When a ``PHI`` node is encountered, only the definition is
1171handled, because the uses will be handled in other basic blocks.
1172
1173For each ``PHI`` node of the current basic block, we simulate an assignment at
1174the end of the current basic block and traverse the successor basic blocks. If a
1175successor basic block has a ``PHI`` node and one of the ``PHI`` node's operands
1176is coming from the current basic block, then the variable is marked as *alive*
1177within the current basic block and all of its predecessor basic blocks, until
1178the basic block with the defining instruction is encountered.
1179
1180Live Intervals Analysis
1181^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1182
1183We now have the information available to perform the live intervals analysis and
1184build the live intervals themselves. We start off by numbering the basic blocks
1185and machine instructions. We then handle the "live-in" values. These are in
1186physical registers, so the physical register is assumed to be killed by the end
1187of the basic block. Live intervals for virtual registers are computed for some
1188ordering of the machine instructions ``[1, N]``. A live interval is an interval
1189``[i, j)``, where ``1 >= i >= j > N``, for which a variable is live.
1190
1191.. note::
1192 More to come...
1193
1194.. _Register Allocation:
1195.. _register allocator:
1196
1197Register Allocation
1198-------------------
1199
1200The *Register Allocation problem* consists in mapping a program
1201:raw-html:`<b><tt>` P\ :sub:`v`\ :raw-html:`</tt></b>`, that can use an unbounded
1202number of virtual registers, to a program :raw-html:`<b><tt>` P\ :sub:`p`\
1203:raw-html:`</tt></b>` that contains a finite (possibly small) number of physical
1204registers. Each target architecture has a different number of physical
1205registers. If the number of physical registers is not enough to accommodate all
1206the virtual registers, some of them will have to be mapped into memory. These
1207virtuals are called *spilled virtuals*.
1208
1209How registers are represented in LLVM
1210^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1211
1212In LLVM, physical registers are denoted by integer numbers that normally range
1213from 1 to 1023. To see how this numbering is defined for a particular
1214architecture, you can read the ``GenRegisterNames.inc`` file for that
1215architecture. For instance, by inspecting
1216``lib/Target/X86/X86GenRegisterInfo.inc`` we see that the 32-bit register
1217``EAX`` is denoted by 43, and the MMX register ``MM0`` is mapped to 65.
1218
1219Some architectures contain registers that share the same physical location. A
1220notable example is the X86 platform. For instance, in the X86 architecture, the
1221registers ``EAX``, ``AX`` and ``AL`` share the first eight bits. These physical
1222registers are marked as *aliased* in LLVM. Given a particular architecture, you
1223can check which registers are aliased by inspecting its ``RegisterInfo.td``
1224file. Moreover, the class ``MCRegAliasIterator`` enumerates all the physical
1225registers aliased to a register.
1226
1227Physical registers, in LLVM, are grouped in *Register Classes*. Elements in the
1228same register class are functionally equivalent, and can be interchangeably
1229used. Each virtual register can only be mapped to physical registers of a
1230particular class. For instance, in the X86 architecture, some virtuals can only
1231be allocated to 8 bit registers. A register class is described by
1232``TargetRegisterClass`` objects. To discover if a virtual register is
Sean Silvaff6a7d62014-07-01 18:15:00 +00001233compatible with a given physical, this code can be used:
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001234
1235.. code-block:: c++
1236
1237 bool RegMapping_Fer::compatible_class(MachineFunction &mf,
1238 unsigned v_reg,
1239 unsigned p_reg) {
1240 assert(TargetRegisterInfo::isPhysicalRegister(p_reg) &&
1241 "Target register must be physical");
1242 const TargetRegisterClass *trc = mf.getRegInfo().getRegClass(v_reg);
1243 return trc->contains(p_reg);
1244 }
1245
1246Sometimes, mostly for debugging purposes, it is useful to change the number of
1247physical registers available in the target architecture. This must be done
1248statically, inside the ``TargetRegsterInfo.td`` file. Just ``grep`` for
1249``RegisterClass``, the last parameter of which is a list of registers. Just
1250commenting some out is one simple way to avoid them being used. A more polite
1251way is to explicitly exclude some registers from the *allocation order*. See the
1252definition of the ``GR8`` register class in
1253``lib/Target/X86/X86RegisterInfo.td`` for an example of this.
1254
1255Virtual registers are also denoted by integer numbers. Contrary to physical
1256registers, different virtual registers never share the same number. Whereas
1257physical registers are statically defined in a ``TargetRegisterInfo.td`` file
1258and cannot be created by the application developer, that is not the case with
1259virtual registers. In order to create new virtual registers, use the method
1260``MachineRegisterInfo::createVirtualRegister()``. This method will return a new
1261virtual register. Use an ``IndexedMap<Foo, VirtReg2IndexFunctor>`` to hold
1262information per virtual register. If you need to enumerate all virtual
1263registers, use the function ``TargetRegisterInfo::index2VirtReg()`` to find the
1264virtual register numbers:
1265
1266.. code-block:: c++
1267
1268 for (unsigned i = 0, e = MRI->getNumVirtRegs(); i != e; ++i) {
1269 unsigned VirtReg = TargetRegisterInfo::index2VirtReg(i);
1270 stuff(VirtReg);
1271 }
1272
1273Before register allocation, the operands of an instruction are mostly virtual
1274registers, although physical registers may also be used. In order to check if a
1275given machine operand is a register, use the boolean function
1276``MachineOperand::isRegister()``. To obtain the integer code of a register, use
1277``MachineOperand::getReg()``. An instruction may define or use a register. For
1278instance, ``ADD reg:1026 := reg:1025 reg:1024`` defines the registers 1024, and
1279uses registers 1025 and 1026. Given a register operand, the method
1280``MachineOperand::isUse()`` informs if that register is being used by the
1281instruction. The method ``MachineOperand::isDef()`` informs if that registers is
1282being defined.
1283
1284We will call physical registers present in the LLVM bitcode before register
1285allocation *pre-colored registers*. Pre-colored registers are used in many
1286different situations, for instance, to pass parameters of functions calls, and
1287to store results of particular instructions. There are two types of pre-colored
1288registers: the ones *implicitly* defined, and those *explicitly*
1289defined. Explicitly defined registers are normal operands, and can be accessed
1290with ``MachineInstr::getOperand(int)::getReg()``. In order to check which
1291registers are implicitly defined by an instruction, use the
1292``TargetInstrInfo::get(opcode)::ImplicitDefs``, where ``opcode`` is the opcode
1293of the target instruction. One important difference between explicit and
1294implicit physical registers is that the latter are defined statically for each
1295instruction, whereas the former may vary depending on the program being
1296compiled. For example, an instruction that represents a function call will
1297always implicitly define or use the same set of physical registers. To read the
1298registers implicitly used by an instruction, use
1299``TargetInstrInfo::get(opcode)::ImplicitUses``. Pre-colored registers impose
1300constraints on any register allocation algorithm. The register allocator must
1301make sure that none of them are overwritten by the values of virtual registers
1302while still alive.
1303
1304Mapping virtual registers to physical registers
1305^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1306
1307There are two ways to map virtual registers to physical registers (or to memory
1308slots). The first way, that we will call *direct mapping*, is based on the use
1309of methods of the classes ``TargetRegisterInfo``, and ``MachineOperand``. The
1310second way, that we will call *indirect mapping*, relies on the ``VirtRegMap``
1311class in order to insert loads and stores sending and getting values to and from
1312memory.
1313
1314The direct mapping provides more flexibility to the developer of the register
1315allocator; however, it is more error prone, and demands more implementation
1316work. Basically, the programmer will have to specify where load and store
1317instructions should be inserted in the target function being compiled in order
1318to get and store values in memory. To assign a physical register to a virtual
1319register present in a given operand, use ``MachineOperand::setReg(p_reg)``. To
1320insert a store instruction, use ``TargetInstrInfo::storeRegToStackSlot(...)``,
1321and to insert a load instruction, use ``TargetInstrInfo::loadRegFromStackSlot``.
1322
1323The indirect mapping shields the application developer from the complexities of
1324inserting load and store instructions. In order to map a virtual register to a
1325physical one, use ``VirtRegMap::assignVirt2Phys(vreg, preg)``. In order to map
1326a certain virtual register to memory, use
1327``VirtRegMap::assignVirt2StackSlot(vreg)``. This method will return the stack
1328slot where ``vreg``'s value will be located. If it is necessary to map another
1329virtual register to the same stack slot, use
1330``VirtRegMap::assignVirt2StackSlot(vreg, stack_location)``. One important point
1331to consider when using the indirect mapping, is that even if a virtual register
1332is mapped to memory, it still needs to be mapped to a physical register. This
1333physical register is the location where the virtual register is supposed to be
1334found before being stored or after being reloaded.
1335
1336If the indirect strategy is used, after all the virtual registers have been
1337mapped to physical registers or stack slots, it is necessary to use a spiller
1338object to place load and store instructions in the code. Every virtual that has
1339been mapped to a stack slot will be stored to memory after been defined and will
1340be loaded before being used. The implementation of the spiller tries to recycle
1341load/store instructions, avoiding unnecessary instructions. For an example of
1342how to invoke the spiller, see ``RegAllocLinearScan::runOnMachineFunction`` in
1343``lib/CodeGen/RegAllocLinearScan.cpp``.
1344
1345Handling two address instructions
1346^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1347
1348With very rare exceptions (e.g., function calls), the LLVM machine code
1349instructions are three address instructions. That is, each instruction is
1350expected to define at most one register, and to use at most two registers.
1351However, some architectures use two address instructions. In this case, the
1352defined register is also one of the used register. For instance, an instruction
1353such as ``ADD %EAX, %EBX``, in X86 is actually equivalent to ``%EAX = %EAX +
1354%EBX``.
1355
1356In order to produce correct code, LLVM must convert three address instructions
1357that represent two address instructions into true two address instructions. LLVM
1358provides the pass ``TwoAddressInstructionPass`` for this specific purpose. It
1359must be run before register allocation takes place. After its execution, the
1360resulting code may no longer be in SSA form. This happens, for instance, in
1361situations where an instruction such as ``%a = ADD %b %c`` is converted to two
1362instructions such as:
1363
1364::
1365
1366 %a = MOVE %b
1367 %a = ADD %a %c
1368
1369Notice that, internally, the second instruction is represented as ``ADD
1370%a[def/use] %c``. I.e., the register operand ``%a`` is both used and defined by
1371the instruction.
1372
1373The SSA deconstruction phase
1374^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1375
1376An important transformation that happens during register allocation is called
1377the *SSA Deconstruction Phase*. The SSA form simplifies many analyses that are
1378performed on the control flow graph of programs. However, traditional
1379instruction sets do not implement PHI instructions. Thus, in order to generate
1380executable code, compilers must replace PHI instructions with other instructions
1381that preserve their semantics.
1382
1383There are many ways in which PHI instructions can safely be removed from the
1384target code. The most traditional PHI deconstruction algorithm replaces PHI
1385instructions with copy instructions. That is the strategy adopted by LLVM. The
1386SSA deconstruction algorithm is implemented in
1387``lib/CodeGen/PHIElimination.cpp``. In order to invoke this pass, the identifier
1388``PHIEliminationID`` must be marked as required in the code of the register
1389allocator.
1390
1391Instruction folding
1392^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1393
1394*Instruction folding* is an optimization performed during register allocation
1395that removes unnecessary copy instructions. For instance, a sequence of
1396instructions such as:
1397
1398::
1399
1400 %EBX = LOAD %mem_address
1401 %EAX = COPY %EBX
1402
1403can be safely substituted by the single instruction:
1404
1405::
1406
1407 %EAX = LOAD %mem_address
1408
1409Instructions can be folded with the
1410``TargetRegisterInfo::foldMemoryOperand(...)`` method. Care must be taken when
1411folding instructions; a folded instruction can be quite different from the
1412original instruction. See ``LiveIntervals::addIntervalsForSpills`` in
1413``lib/CodeGen/LiveIntervalAnalysis.cpp`` for an example of its use.
1414
1415Built in register allocators
1416^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1417
1418The LLVM infrastructure provides the application developer with three different
1419register allocators:
1420
1421* *Fast* --- This register allocator is the default for debug builds. It
1422 allocates registers on a basic block level, attempting to keep values in
1423 registers and reusing registers as appropriate.
1424
1425* *Basic* --- This is an incremental approach to register allocation. Live
1426 ranges are assigned to registers one at a time in an order that is driven by
1427 heuristics. Since code can be rewritten on-the-fly during allocation, this
1428 framework allows interesting allocators to be developed as extensions. It is
1429 not itself a production register allocator but is a potentially useful
1430 stand-alone mode for triaging bugs and as a performance baseline.
1431
1432* *Greedy* --- *The default allocator*. This is a highly tuned implementation of
1433 the *Basic* allocator that incorporates global live range splitting. This
1434 allocator works hard to minimize the cost of spill code.
1435
1436* *PBQP* --- A Partitioned Boolean Quadratic Programming (PBQP) based register
1437 allocator. This allocator works by constructing a PBQP problem representing
1438 the register allocation problem under consideration, solving this using a PBQP
1439 solver, and mapping the solution back to a register assignment.
1440
1441The type of register allocator used in ``llc`` can be chosen with the command
1442line option ``-regalloc=...``:
1443
1444.. code-block:: bash
1445
1446 $ llc -regalloc=linearscan file.bc -o ln.s
1447 $ llc -regalloc=fast file.bc -o fa.s
1448 $ llc -regalloc=pbqp file.bc -o pbqp.s
1449
1450.. _Prolog/Epilog Code Insertion:
1451
1452Prolog/Epilog Code Insertion
1453----------------------------
1454
1455Compact Unwind
1456
1457Throwing an exception requires *unwinding* out of a function. The information on
1458how to unwind a given function is traditionally expressed in DWARF unwind
1459(a.k.a. frame) info. But that format was originally developed for debuggers to
1460backtrace, and each Frame Description Entry (FDE) requires ~20-30 bytes per
1461function. There is also the cost of mapping from an address in a function to the
1462corresponding FDE at runtime. An alternative unwind encoding is called *compact
1463unwind* and requires just 4-bytes per function.
1464
1465The compact unwind encoding is a 32-bit value, which is encoded in an
1466architecture-specific way. It specifies which registers to restore and from
1467where, and how to unwind out of the function. When the linker creates a final
1468linked image, it will create a ``__TEXT,__unwind_info`` section. This section is
1469a small and fast way for the runtime to access unwind info for any given
1470function. If we emit compact unwind info for the function, that compact unwind
1471info will be encoded in the ``__TEXT,__unwind_info`` section. If we emit DWARF
1472unwind info, the ``__TEXT,__unwind_info`` section will contain the offset of the
1473FDE in the ``__TEXT,__eh_frame`` section in the final linked image.
1474
1475For X86, there are three modes for the compact unwind encoding:
1476
1477*Function with a Frame Pointer (``EBP`` or ``RBP``)*
1478 ``EBP/RBP``-based frame, where ``EBP/RBP`` is pushed onto the stack
1479 immediately after the return address, then ``ESP/RSP`` is moved to
1480 ``EBP/RBP``. Thus to unwind, ``ESP/RSP`` is restored with the current
1481 ``EBP/RBP`` value, then ``EBP/RBP`` is restored by popping the stack, and the
1482 return is done by popping the stack once more into the PC. All non-volatile
1483 registers that need to be restored must have been saved in a small range on
1484 the stack that starts ``EBP-4`` to ``EBP-1020`` (``RBP-8`` to
1485 ``RBP-1020``). The offset (divided by 4 in 32-bit mode and 8 in 64-bit mode)
1486 is encoded in bits 16-23 (mask: ``0x00FF0000``). The registers saved are
1487 encoded in bits 0-14 (mask: ``0x00007FFF``) as five 3-bit entries from the
1488 following table:
1489
1490 ============== ============= ===============
1491 Compact Number i386 Register x86-64 Register
1492 ============== ============= ===============
1493 1 ``EBX`` ``RBX``
1494 2 ``ECX`` ``R12``
1495 3 ``EDX`` ``R13``
1496 4 ``EDI`` ``R14``
1497 5 ``ESI`` ``R15``
1498 6 ``EBP`` ``RBP``
1499 ============== ============= ===============
1500
1501*Frameless with a Small Constant Stack Size (``EBP`` or ``RBP`` is not used as a frame pointer)*
1502 To return, a constant (encoded in the compact unwind encoding) is added to the
1503 ``ESP/RSP``. Then the return is done by popping the stack into the PC. All
1504 non-volatile registers that need to be restored must have been saved on the
1505 stack immediately after the return address. The stack size (divided by 4 in
1506 32-bit mode and 8 in 64-bit mode) is encoded in bits 16-23 (mask:
1507 ``0x00FF0000``). There is a maximum stack size of 1024 bytes in 32-bit mode
1508 and 2048 in 64-bit mode. The number of registers saved is encoded in bits 9-12
1509 (mask: ``0x00001C00``). Bits 0-9 (mask: ``0x000003FF``) contain which
1510 registers were saved and their order. (See the
1511 ``encodeCompactUnwindRegistersWithoutFrame()`` function in
1512 ``lib/Target/X86FrameLowering.cpp`` for the encoding algorithm.)
1513
1514*Frameless with a Large Constant Stack Size (``EBP`` or ``RBP`` is not used as a frame pointer)*
1515 This case is like the "Frameless with a Small Constant Stack Size" case, but
1516 the stack size is too large to encode in the compact unwind encoding. Instead
1517 it requires that the function contains "``subl $nnnnnn, %esp``" in its
1518 prolog. The compact encoding contains the offset to the ``$nnnnnn`` value in
1519 the function in bits 9-12 (mask: ``0x00001C00``).
1520
1521.. _Late Machine Code Optimizations:
1522
1523Late Machine Code Optimizations
1524-------------------------------
1525
1526.. note::
1527
1528 To Be Written
1529
1530.. _Code Emission:
1531
1532Code Emission
1533-------------
1534
1535The code emission step of code generation is responsible for lowering from the
1536code generator abstractions (like `MachineFunction`_, `MachineInstr`_, etc) down
1537to the abstractions used by the MC layer (`MCInst`_, `MCStreamer`_, etc). This
1538is done with a combination of several different classes: the (misnamed)
1539target-independent AsmPrinter class, target-specific subclasses of AsmPrinter
1540(such as SparcAsmPrinter), and the TargetLoweringObjectFile class.
1541
1542Since the MC layer works at the level of abstraction of object files, it doesn't
1543have a notion of functions, global variables etc. Instead, it thinks about
1544labels, directives, and instructions. A key class used at this time is the
1545MCStreamer class. This is an abstract API that is implemented in different ways
1546(e.g. to output a .s file, output an ELF .o file, etc) that is effectively an
1547"assembler API". MCStreamer has one method per directive, such as EmitLabel,
1548EmitSymbolAttribute, SwitchSection, etc, which directly correspond to assembly
1549level directives.
1550
1551If you are interested in implementing a code generator for a target, there are
1552three important things that you have to implement for your target:
1553
1554#. First, you need a subclass of AsmPrinter for your target. This class
1555 implements the general lowering process converting MachineFunction's into MC
1556 label constructs. The AsmPrinter base class provides a number of useful
1557 methods and routines, and also allows you to override the lowering process in
1558 some important ways. You should get much of the lowering for free if you are
1559 implementing an ELF, COFF, or MachO target, because the
1560 TargetLoweringObjectFile class implements much of the common logic.
1561
1562#. Second, you need to implement an instruction printer for your target. The
1563 instruction printer takes an `MCInst`_ and renders it to a raw_ostream as
1564 text. Most of this is automatically generated from the .td file (when you
1565 specify something like "``add $dst, $src1, $src2``" in the instructions), but
1566 you need to implement routines to print operands.
1567
1568#. Third, you need to implement code that lowers a `MachineInstr`_ to an MCInst,
1569 usually implemented in "<target>MCInstLower.cpp". This lowering process is
1570 often target specific, and is responsible for turning jump table entries,
1571 constant pool indices, global variable addresses, etc into MCLabels as
1572 appropriate. This translation layer is also responsible for expanding pseudo
1573 ops used by the code generator into the actual machine instructions they
1574 correspond to. The MCInsts that are generated by this are fed into the
1575 instruction printer or the encoder.
1576
1577Finally, at your choosing, you can also implement an subclass of MCCodeEmitter
1578which lowers MCInst's into machine code bytes and relocations. This is
1579important if you want to support direct .o file emission, or would like to
1580implement an assembler for your target.
1581
1582VLIW Packetizer
1583---------------
1584
1585In a Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architecture, the compiler is responsible
1586for mapping instructions to functional-units available on the architecture. To
1587that end, the compiler creates groups of instructions called *packets* or
1588*bundles*. The VLIW packetizer in LLVM is a target-independent mechanism to
1589enable the packetization of machine instructions.
1590
1591Mapping from instructions to functional units
1592^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1593
1594Instructions in a VLIW target can typically be mapped to multiple functional
1595units. During the process of packetizing, the compiler must be able to reason
1596about whether an instruction can be added to a packet. This decision can be
1597complex since the compiler has to examine all possible mappings of instructions
1598to functional units. Therefore to alleviate compilation-time complexity, the
1599VLIW packetizer parses the instruction classes of a target and generates tables
1600at compiler build time. These tables can then be queried by the provided
1601machine-independent API to determine if an instruction can be accommodated in a
1602packet.
1603
1604How the packetization tables are generated and used
1605^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1606
1607The packetizer reads instruction classes from a target's itineraries and creates
1608a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) to represent the state of a packet. A DFA
1609consists of three major elements: inputs, states, and transitions. The set of
1610inputs for the generated DFA represents the instruction being added to a
1611packet. The states represent the possible consumption of functional units by
1612instructions in a packet. In the DFA, transitions from one state to another
1613occur on the addition of an instruction to an existing packet. If there is a
1614legal mapping of functional units to instructions, then the DFA contains a
1615corresponding transition. The absence of a transition indicates that a legal
1616mapping does not exist and that the instruction cannot be added to the packet.
1617
1618To generate tables for a VLIW target, add *Target*\ GenDFAPacketizer.inc as a
1619target to the Makefile in the target directory. The exported API provides three
1620functions: ``DFAPacketizer::clearResources()``,
1621``DFAPacketizer::reserveResources(MachineInstr *MI)``, and
1622``DFAPacketizer::canReserveResources(MachineInstr *MI)``. These functions allow
1623a target packetizer to add an instruction to an existing packet and to check
1624whether an instruction can be added to a packet. See
1625``llvm/CodeGen/DFAPacketizer.h`` for more information.
1626
1627Implementing a Native Assembler
1628===============================
1629
1630Though you're probably reading this because you want to write or maintain a
Sylvestre Ledrua9853ef2013-10-01 13:17:09 +00001631compiler backend, LLVM also fully supports building a native assembler.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001632We've tried hard to automate the generation of the assembler from the .td files
1633(in particular the instruction syntax and encodings), which means that a large
1634part of the manual and repetitive data entry can be factored and shared with the
1635compiler.
1636
1637Instruction Parsing
1638-------------------
1639
1640.. note::
1641
1642 To Be Written
1643
1644
1645Instruction Alias Processing
1646----------------------------
1647
1648Once the instruction is parsed, it enters the MatchInstructionImpl function.
1649The MatchInstructionImpl function performs alias processing and then does actual
1650matching.
1651
1652Alias processing is the phase that canonicalizes different lexical forms of the
1653same instructions down to one representation. There are several different kinds
1654of alias that are possible to implement and they are listed below in the order
1655that they are processed (which is in order from simplest/weakest to most
1656complex/powerful). Generally you want to use the first alias mechanism that
1657meets the needs of your instruction, because it will allow a more concise
1658description.
1659
1660Mnemonic Aliases
1661^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1662
1663The first phase of alias processing is simple instruction mnemonic remapping for
1664classes of instructions which are allowed with two different mnemonics. This
1665phase is a simple and unconditionally remapping from one input mnemonic to one
1666output mnemonic. It isn't possible for this form of alias to look at the
1667operands at all, so the remapping must apply for all forms of a given mnemonic.
1668Mnemonic aliases are defined simply, for example X86 has:
1669
1670::
1671
1672 def : MnemonicAlias<"cbw", "cbtw">;
1673 def : MnemonicAlias<"smovq", "movsq">;
1674 def : MnemonicAlias<"fldcww", "fldcw">;
1675 def : MnemonicAlias<"fucompi", "fucomip">;
1676 def : MnemonicAlias<"ud2a", "ud2">;
1677
1678... and many others. With a MnemonicAlias definition, the mnemonic is remapped
1679simply and directly. Though MnemonicAlias's can't look at any aspect of the
1680instruction (such as the operands) they can depend on global modes (the same
1681ones supported by the matcher), through a Requires clause:
1682
1683::
1684
1685 def : MnemonicAlias<"pushf", "pushfq">, Requires<[In64BitMode]>;
1686 def : MnemonicAlias<"pushf", "pushfl">, Requires<[In32BitMode]>;
1687
Sean Silva9ab88992014-07-01 18:22:32 +00001688In this example, the mnemonic gets mapped into a different one depending on
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001689the current instruction set.
1690
1691Instruction Aliases
1692^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1693
1694The most general phase of alias processing occurs while matching is happening:
1695it provides new forms for the matcher to match along with a specific instruction
1696to generate. An instruction alias has two parts: the string to match and the
1697instruction to generate. For example:
1698
1699::
1700
1701 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX16rr8W GR16:$dst, GR8 :$src)>;
1702 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX16rm8W GR16:$dst, i8mem:$src)>;
1703 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX32rr8 GR32:$dst, GR8 :$src)>;
1704 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX32rr16 GR32:$dst, GR16 :$src)>;
1705 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX64rr8 GR64:$dst, GR8 :$src)>;
1706 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX64rr16 GR64:$dst, GR16 :$src)>;
1707 def : InstAlias<"movsx $src, $dst", (MOVSX64rr32 GR64:$dst, GR32 :$src)>;
1708
1709This shows a powerful example of the instruction aliases, matching the same
1710mnemonic in multiple different ways depending on what operands are present in
1711the assembly. The result of instruction aliases can include operands in a
1712different order than the destination instruction, and can use an input multiple
1713times, for example:
1714
1715::
1716
1717 def : InstAlias<"clrb $reg", (XOR8rr GR8 :$reg, GR8 :$reg)>;
1718 def : InstAlias<"clrw $reg", (XOR16rr GR16:$reg, GR16:$reg)>;
1719 def : InstAlias<"clrl $reg", (XOR32rr GR32:$reg, GR32:$reg)>;
1720 def : InstAlias<"clrq $reg", (XOR64rr GR64:$reg, GR64:$reg)>;
1721
1722This example also shows that tied operands are only listed once. In the X86
1723backend, XOR8rr has two input GR8's and one output GR8 (where an input is tied
1724to the output). InstAliases take a flattened operand list without duplicates
1725for tied operands. The result of an instruction alias can also use immediates
1726and fixed physical registers which are added as simple immediate operands in the
1727result, for example:
1728
1729::
1730
1731 // Fixed Immediate operand.
1732 def : InstAlias<"aad", (AAD8i8 10)>;
1733
1734 // Fixed register operand.
1735 def : InstAlias<"fcomi", (COM_FIr ST1)>;
1736
1737 // Simple alias.
1738 def : InstAlias<"fcomi $reg", (COM_FIr RST:$reg)>;
1739
1740Instruction aliases can also have a Requires clause to make them subtarget
1741specific.
1742
1743If the back-end supports it, the instruction printer can automatically emit the
1744alias rather than what's being aliased. It typically leads to better, more
1745readable code. If it's better to print out what's being aliased, then pass a '0'
1746as the third parameter to the InstAlias definition.
1747
1748Instruction Matching
1749--------------------
1750
1751.. note::
1752
1753 To Be Written
1754
1755.. _Implementations of the abstract target description interfaces:
1756.. _implement the target description:
1757
1758Target-specific Implementation Notes
1759====================================
1760
1761This section of the document explains features or design decisions that are
1762specific to the code generator for a particular target. First we start with a
1763table that summarizes what features are supported by each target.
1764
Dmitri Gribenko38782b82012-12-09 23:14:26 +00001765.. _target-feature-matrix:
1766
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001767Target Feature Matrix
1768---------------------
1769
1770Note that this table does not include the C backend or Cpp backends, since they
1771do not use the target independent code generator infrastructure. It also
1772doesn't list features that are not supported fully by any target yet. It
1773considers a feature to be supported if at least one subtarget supports it. A
1774feature being supported means that it is useful and works for most cases, it
1775does not indicate that there are zero known bugs in the implementation. Here is
1776the key:
1777
1778:raw-html:`<table border="1" cellspacing="0">`
1779:raw-html:`<tr>`
1780:raw-html:`<th>Unknown</th>`
Justin Holewinskiceab0de2013-01-11 18:37:54 +00001781:raw-html:`<th>Not Applicable</th>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001782:raw-html:`<th>No support</th>`
1783:raw-html:`<th>Partial Support</th>`
1784:raw-html:`<th>Complete Support</th>`
1785:raw-html:`</tr>`
1786:raw-html:`<tr>`
1787:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td>`
Justin Holewinskiceab0de2013-01-11 18:37:54 +00001788:raw-html:`<td class="na"></td>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001789:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td>`
1790:raw-html:`<td class="partial"></td>`
1791:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td>`
1792:raw-html:`</tr>`
1793:raw-html:`</table>`
1794
1795Here is the table:
1796
1797:raw-html:`<table width="689" border="1" cellspacing="0">`
1798:raw-html:`<tr><td></td>`
1799:raw-html:`<td colspan="13" align="center" style="background-color:#ffc">Target</td>`
1800:raw-html:`</tr>`
1801:raw-html:`<tr>`
1802:raw-html:`<th>Feature</th>`
1803:raw-html:`<th>ARM</th>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001804:raw-html:`<th>Hexagon</th>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001805:raw-html:`<th>MSP430</th>`
1806:raw-html:`<th>Mips</th>`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001807:raw-html:`<th>NVPTX</th>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001808:raw-html:`<th>PowerPC</th>`
1809:raw-html:`<th>Sparc</th>`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001810:raw-html:`<th>SystemZ</th>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001811:raw-html:`<th>X86</th>`
1812:raw-html:`<th>XCore</th>`
1813:raw-html:`</tr>`
1814
1815:raw-html:`<tr>`
1816:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_reliable">is generally reliable</a></td>`
1817:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001818:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001819:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1820:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001821:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001822:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1823:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001824:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001825:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
Richard Osborneba03fba2013-05-05 14:09:55 +00001826:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001827:raw-html:`</tr>`
1828
1829:raw-html:`<tr>`
1830:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_asmparser">assembly parser</a></td>`
1831:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001832:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001833:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1834:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001835:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001836:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1837:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001838:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001839:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
1840:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
1841:raw-html:`</tr>`
1842
1843:raw-html:`<tr>`
1844:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_disassembler">disassembler</a></td>`
1845:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001846:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001847:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1848:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001849:raw-html:`<td class="na"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001850:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
Richard Sandifordeb9af292013-05-14 10:17:52 +00001851:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001852:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
1853:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
Richard Osborneba03fba2013-05-05 14:09:55 +00001854:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001855:raw-html:`</tr>`
1856
1857:raw-html:`<tr>`
1858:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_inlineasm">inline asm</a></td>`
1859:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001860:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001861:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1862:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001863:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001864:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1865:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001866:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001867:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
Richard Osborneba03fba2013-05-05 14:09:55 +00001868:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001869:raw-html:`</tr>`
1870
1871:raw-html:`<tr>`
1872:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_jit">jit</a></td>`
1873:raw-html:`<td class="partial"><a href="#feat_jit_arm">*</a></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001874:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001875:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1876:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001877:raw-html:`<td class="na"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001878:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1879:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001880:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001881:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
Richard Osborneba03fba2013-05-05 14:09:55 +00001882:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001883:raw-html:`</tr>`
1884
1885:raw-html:`<tr>`
1886:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_objectwrite">.o&nbsp;file writing</a></td>`
1887:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001888:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001889:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1890:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001891:raw-html:`<td class="na"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001892:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1893:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001894:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001895:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
1896:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
1897:raw-html:`</tr>`
1898
1899:raw-html:`<tr>`
1900:raw-html:`<td><a hr:raw-html:`ef="#feat_tailcall">tail calls</a></td>`
1901:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001902:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001903:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1904:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001905:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001906:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1907:raw-html:`<td class="unknown"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001908:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001909:raw-html:`<td class="yes"></td> <!-- X86 -->`
Richard Osborneba03fba2013-05-05 14:09:55 +00001910:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001911:raw-html:`</tr>`
1912
1913:raw-html:`<tr>`
1914:raw-html:`<td><a href="#feat_segstacks">segmented stacks</a></td>`
1915:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- ARM -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001916:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Hexagon -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001917:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- MSP430 -->`
1918:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Mips -->`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00001919:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- NVPTX -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001920:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- PowerPC -->`
1921:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- Sparc -->`
Richard Sandifordef494aa2013-05-08 14:23:43 +00001922:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- SystemZ -->`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001923:raw-html:`<td class="partial"><a href="#feat_segstacks_x86">*</a></td> <!-- X86 -->`
1924:raw-html:`<td class="no"></td> <!-- XCore -->`
1925:raw-html:`</tr>`
1926
1927:raw-html:`</table>`
1928
1929.. _feat_reliable:
1930
1931Is Generally Reliable
1932^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1933
1934This box indicates whether the target is considered to be production quality.
1935This indicates that the target has been used as a static compiler to compile
1936large amounts of code by a variety of different people and is in continuous use.
1937
1938.. _feat_asmparser:
1939
1940Assembly Parser
1941^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1942
1943This box indicates whether the target supports parsing target specific .s files
1944by implementing the MCAsmParser interface. This is required for llvm-mc to be
1945able to act as a native assembler and is required for inline assembly support in
1946the native .o file writer.
1947
1948.. _feat_disassembler:
1949
1950Disassembler
1951^^^^^^^^^^^^
1952
1953This box indicates whether the target supports the MCDisassembler API for
1954disassembling machine opcode bytes into MCInst's.
1955
1956.. _feat_inlineasm:
1957
1958Inline Asm
1959^^^^^^^^^^
1960
1961This box indicates whether the target supports most popular inline assembly
1962constraints and modifiers.
1963
1964.. _feat_jit:
1965
1966JIT Support
1967^^^^^^^^^^^
1968
1969This box indicates whether the target supports the JIT compiler through the
1970ExecutionEngine interface.
1971
1972.. _feat_jit_arm:
1973
1974The ARM backend has basic support for integer code in ARM codegen mode, but
1975lacks NEON and full Thumb support.
1976
1977.. _feat_objectwrite:
1978
1979.o File Writing
1980^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1981
1982This box indicates whether the target supports writing .o files (e.g. MachO,
1983ELF, and/or COFF) files directly from the target. Note that the target also
1984must include an assembly parser and general inline assembly support for full
1985inline assembly support in the .o writer.
1986
1987Targets that don't support this feature can obviously still write out .o files,
1988they just rely on having an external assembler to translate from a .s file to a
1989.o file (as is the case for many C compilers).
1990
1991.. _feat_tailcall:
1992
1993Tail Calls
1994^^^^^^^^^^
1995
1996This box indicates whether the target supports guaranteed tail calls. These are
1997calls marked "`tail <LangRef.html#i_call>`_" and use the fastcc calling
Jay Foad5ace2cd2014-05-14 08:10:16 +00001998convention. Please see the `tail call section`_ for more details.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00001999
2000.. _feat_segstacks:
2001
2002Segmented Stacks
2003^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2004
2005This box indicates whether the target supports segmented stacks. This replaces
2006the traditional large C stack with many linked segments. It is compatible with
2007the `gcc implementation <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SplitStacks>`_ used by the Go
2008front end.
2009
2010.. _feat_segstacks_x86:
2011
2012Basic support exists on the X86 backend. Currently vararg doesn't work and the
2013object files are not marked the way the gold linker expects, but simple Go
2014programs can be built by dragonegg.
2015
Jay Foad5ace2cd2014-05-14 08:10:16 +00002016.. _tail call section:
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002017
2018Tail call optimization
2019----------------------
2020
2021Tail call optimization, callee reusing the stack of the caller, is currently
2022supported on x86/x86-64 and PowerPC. It is performed if:
2023
Duncan Sandsd71b4e42012-11-16 12:36:39 +00002024* Caller and callee have the calling convention ``fastcc``, ``cc 10`` (GHC
2025 calling convention) or ``cc 11`` (HiPE calling convention).
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002026
2027* The call is a tail call - in tail position (ret immediately follows call and
2028 ret uses value of call or is void).
2029
2030* Option ``-tailcallopt`` is enabled.
2031
Alp Tokercf218752014-06-30 18:57:16 +00002032* Platform-specific constraints are met.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002033
2034x86/x86-64 constraints:
2035
2036* No variable argument lists are used.
2037
2038* On x86-64 when generating GOT/PIC code only module-local calls (visibility =
2039 hidden or protected) are supported.
2040
2041PowerPC constraints:
2042
2043* No variable argument lists are used.
2044
2045* No byval parameters are used.
2046
2047* On ppc32/64 GOT/PIC only module-local calls (visibility = hidden or protected)
2048 are supported.
2049
2050Example:
2051
2052Call as ``llc -tailcallopt test.ll``.
2053
2054.. code-block:: llvm
2055
2056 declare fastcc i32 @tailcallee(i32 inreg %a1, i32 inreg %a2, i32 %a3, i32 %a4)
2057
2058 define fastcc i32 @tailcaller(i32 %in1, i32 %in2) {
2059 %l1 = add i32 %in1, %in2
2060 %tmp = tail call fastcc i32 @tailcallee(i32 %in1 inreg, i32 %in2 inreg, i32 %in1, i32 %l1)
2061 ret i32 %tmp
2062 }
2063
2064Implications of ``-tailcallopt``:
2065
2066To support tail call optimization in situations where the callee has more
2067arguments than the caller a 'callee pops arguments' convention is used. This
2068currently causes each ``fastcc`` call that is not tail call optimized (because
2069one or more of above constraints are not met) to be followed by a readjustment
2070of the stack. So performance might be worse in such cases.
2071
2072Sibling call optimization
2073-------------------------
2074
2075Sibling call optimization is a restricted form of tail call optimization.
2076Unlike tail call optimization described in the previous section, it can be
2077performed automatically on any tail calls when ``-tailcallopt`` option is not
2078specified.
2079
2080Sibling call optimization is currently performed on x86/x86-64 when the
2081following constraints are met:
2082
2083* Caller and callee have the same calling convention. It can be either ``c`` or
2084 ``fastcc``.
2085
2086* The call is a tail call - in tail position (ret immediately follows call and
2087 ret uses value of call or is void).
2088
2089* Caller and callee have matching return type or the callee result is not used.
2090
2091* If any of the callee arguments are being passed in stack, they must be
2092 available in caller's own incoming argument stack and the frame offsets must
2093 be the same.
2094
2095Example:
2096
2097.. code-block:: llvm
2098
2099 declare i32 @bar(i32, i32)
2100
2101 define i32 @foo(i32 %a, i32 %b, i32 %c) {
2102 entry:
2103 %0 = tail call i32 @bar(i32 %a, i32 %b)
2104 ret i32 %0
2105 }
2106
2107The X86 backend
2108---------------
2109
2110The X86 code generator lives in the ``lib/Target/X86`` directory. This code
2111generator is capable of targeting a variety of x86-32 and x86-64 processors, and
2112includes support for ISA extensions such as MMX and SSE.
2113
2114X86 Target Triples supported
2115^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2116
2117The following are the known target triples that are supported by the X86
2118backend. This is not an exhaustive list, and it would be useful to add those
2119that people test.
2120
2121* **i686-pc-linux-gnu** --- Linux
2122
2123* **i386-unknown-freebsd5.3** --- FreeBSD 5.3
2124
2125* **i686-pc-cygwin** --- Cygwin on Win32
2126
2127* **i686-pc-mingw32** --- MingW on Win32
2128
2129* **i386-pc-mingw32msvc** --- MingW crosscompiler on Linux
2130
2131* **i686-apple-darwin*** --- Apple Darwin on X86
2132
2133* **x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu** --- Linux
2134
2135X86 Calling Conventions supported
2136^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2137
2138The following target-specific calling conventions are known to backend:
2139
2140* **x86_StdCall** --- stdcall calling convention seen on Microsoft Windows
2141 platform (CC ID = 64).
2142
2143* **x86_FastCall** --- fastcall calling convention seen on Microsoft Windows
2144 platform (CC ID = 65).
2145
2146* **x86_ThisCall** --- Similar to X86_StdCall. Passes first argument in ECX,
2147 others via stack. Callee is responsible for stack cleaning. This convention is
2148 used by MSVC by default for methods in its ABI (CC ID = 70).
2149
2150.. _X86 addressing mode:
2151
2152Representing X86 addressing modes in MachineInstrs
2153^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2154
2155The x86 has a very flexible way of accessing memory. It is capable of forming
2156memory addresses of the following expression directly in integer instructions
2157(which use ModR/M addressing):
2158
2159::
2160
2161 SegmentReg: Base + [1,2,4,8] * IndexReg + Disp32
2162
2163In order to represent this, LLVM tracks no less than 5 operands for each memory
2164operand of this form. This means that the "load" form of '``mov``' has the
2165following ``MachineOperand``\s in this order:
2166
2167::
2168
2169 Index: 0 | 1 2 3 4 5
2170 Meaning: DestReg, | BaseReg, Scale, IndexReg, Displacement Segment
2171 OperandTy: VirtReg, | VirtReg, UnsImm, VirtReg, SignExtImm PhysReg
2172
2173Stores, and all other instructions, treat the four memory operands in the same
2174way and in the same order. If the segment register is unspecified (regno = 0),
2175then no segment override is generated. "Lea" operations do not have a segment
2176register specified, so they only have 4 operands for their memory reference.
2177
2178X86 address spaces supported
2179^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2180
2181x86 has a feature which provides the ability to perform loads and stores to
2182different address spaces via the x86 segment registers. A segment override
2183prefix byte on an instruction causes the instruction's memory access to go to
2184the specified segment. LLVM address space 0 is the default address space, which
2185includes the stack, and any unqualified memory accesses in a program. Address
2186spaces 1-255 are currently reserved for user-defined code. The GS-segment is
2187represented by address space 256, while the FS-segment is represented by address
2188space 257. Other x86 segments have yet to be allocated address space
2189numbers.
2190
2191While these address spaces may seem similar to TLS via the ``thread_local``
2192keyword, and often use the same underlying hardware, there are some fundamental
2193differences.
2194
2195The ``thread_local`` keyword applies to global variables and specifies that they
2196are to be allocated in thread-local memory. There are no type qualifiers
2197involved, and these variables can be pointed to with normal pointers and
2198accessed with normal loads and stores. The ``thread_local`` keyword is
2199target-independent at the LLVM IR level (though LLVM doesn't yet have
2200implementations of it for some configurations)
2201
2202Special address spaces, in contrast, apply to static types. Every load and store
2203has a particular address space in its address operand type, and this is what
2204determines which address space is accessed. LLVM ignores these special address
2205space qualifiers on global variables, and does not provide a way to directly
2206allocate storage in them. At the LLVM IR level, the behavior of these special
2207address spaces depends in part on the underlying OS or runtime environment, and
2208they are specific to x86 (and LLVM doesn't yet handle them correctly in some
2209cases).
2210
2211Some operating systems and runtime environments use (or may in the future use)
2212the FS/GS-segment registers for various low-level purposes, so care should be
2213taken when considering them.
2214
2215Instruction naming
2216^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2217
2218An instruction name consists of the base name, a default operand size, and a a
2219character per operand with an optional special size. For example:
2220
2221::
2222
2223 ADD8rr -> add, 8-bit register, 8-bit register
2224 IMUL16rmi -> imul, 16-bit register, 16-bit memory, 16-bit immediate
2225 IMUL16rmi8 -> imul, 16-bit register, 16-bit memory, 8-bit immediate
2226 MOVSX32rm16 -> movsx, 32-bit register, 16-bit memory
2227
2228The PowerPC backend
2229-------------------
2230
2231The PowerPC code generator lives in the lib/Target/PowerPC directory. The code
2232generation is retargetable to several variations or *subtargets* of the PowerPC
2233ISA; including ppc32, ppc64 and altivec.
2234
2235LLVM PowerPC ABI
2236^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2237
2238LLVM follows the AIX PowerPC ABI, with two deviations. LLVM uses a PC relative
2239(PIC) or static addressing for accessing global values, so no TOC (r2) is
2240used. Second, r31 is used as a frame pointer to allow dynamic growth of a stack
2241frame. LLVM takes advantage of having no TOC to provide space to save the frame
2242pointer in the PowerPC linkage area of the caller frame. Other details of
2243PowerPC ABI can be found at `PowerPC ABI
2244<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/LowLevelABI/Articles/32bitPowerPC.html>`_\
2245. Note: This link describes the 32 bit ABI. The 64 bit ABI is similar except
2246space for GPRs are 8 bytes wide (not 4) and r13 is reserved for system use.
2247
2248Frame Layout
2249^^^^^^^^^^^^
2250
2251The size of a PowerPC frame is usually fixed for the duration of a function's
2252invocation. Since the frame is fixed size, all references into the frame can be
2253accessed via fixed offsets from the stack pointer. The exception to this is
2254when dynamic alloca or variable sized arrays are present, then a base pointer
2255(r31) is used as a proxy for the stack pointer and stack pointer is free to grow
2256or shrink. A base pointer is also used if llvm-gcc is not passed the
2257-fomit-frame-pointer flag. The stack pointer is always aligned to 16 bytes, so
2258that space allocated for altivec vectors will be properly aligned.
2259
2260An invocation frame is laid out as follows (low memory at top):
2261
2262:raw-html:`<table border="1" cellspacing="0">`
2263:raw-html:`<tr>`
2264:raw-html:`<td>Linkage<br><br></td>`
2265:raw-html:`</tr>`
2266:raw-html:`<tr>`
2267:raw-html:`<td>Parameter area<br><br></td>`
2268:raw-html:`</tr>`
2269:raw-html:`<tr>`
2270:raw-html:`<td>Dynamic area<br><br></td>`
2271:raw-html:`</tr>`
2272:raw-html:`<tr>`
2273:raw-html:`<td>Locals area<br><br></td>`
2274:raw-html:`</tr>`
2275:raw-html:`<tr>`
2276:raw-html:`<td>Saved registers area<br><br></td>`
2277:raw-html:`</tr>`
2278:raw-html:`<tr style="border-style: none hidden none hidden;">`
2279:raw-html:`<td><br></td>`
2280:raw-html:`</tr>`
2281:raw-html:`<tr>`
2282:raw-html:`<td>Previous Frame<br><br></td>`
2283:raw-html:`</tr>`
2284:raw-html:`</table>`
2285
2286The *linkage* area is used by a callee to save special registers prior to
2287allocating its own frame. Only three entries are relevant to LLVM. The first
2288entry is the previous stack pointer (sp), aka link. This allows probing tools
2289like gdb or exception handlers to quickly scan the frames in the stack. A
2290function epilog can also use the link to pop the frame from the stack. The
2291third entry in the linkage area is used to save the return address from the lr
2292register. Finally, as mentioned above, the last entry is used to save the
2293previous frame pointer (r31.) The entries in the linkage area are the size of a
2294GPR, thus the linkage area is 24 bytes long in 32 bit mode and 48 bytes in 64
2295bit mode.
2296
229732 bit linkage area:
2298
2299:raw-html:`<table border="1" cellspacing="0">`
2300:raw-html:`<tr>`
2301:raw-html:`<td>0</td>`
2302:raw-html:`<td>Saved SP (r1)</td>`
2303:raw-html:`</tr>`
2304:raw-html:`<tr>`
2305:raw-html:`<td>4</td>`
2306:raw-html:`<td>Saved CR</td>`
2307:raw-html:`</tr>`
2308:raw-html:`<tr>`
2309:raw-html:`<td>8</td>`
2310:raw-html:`<td>Saved LR</td>`
2311:raw-html:`</tr>`
2312:raw-html:`<tr>`
2313:raw-html:`<td>12</td>`
2314:raw-html:`<td>Reserved</td>`
2315:raw-html:`</tr>`
2316:raw-html:`<tr>`
2317:raw-html:`<td>16</td>`
2318:raw-html:`<td>Reserved</td>`
2319:raw-html:`</tr>`
2320:raw-html:`<tr>`
2321:raw-html:`<td>20</td>`
2322:raw-html:`<td>Saved FP (r31)</td>`
2323:raw-html:`</tr>`
2324:raw-html:`</table>`
2325
232664 bit linkage area:
2327
2328:raw-html:`<table border="1" cellspacing="0">`
2329:raw-html:`<tr>`
2330:raw-html:`<td>0</td>`
2331:raw-html:`<td>Saved SP (r1)</td>`
2332:raw-html:`</tr>`
2333:raw-html:`<tr>`
2334:raw-html:`<td>8</td>`
2335:raw-html:`<td>Saved CR</td>`
2336:raw-html:`</tr>`
2337:raw-html:`<tr>`
2338:raw-html:`<td>16</td>`
2339:raw-html:`<td>Saved LR</td>`
2340:raw-html:`</tr>`
2341:raw-html:`<tr>`
2342:raw-html:`<td>24</td>`
2343:raw-html:`<td>Reserved</td>`
2344:raw-html:`</tr>`
2345:raw-html:`<tr>`
2346:raw-html:`<td>32</td>`
2347:raw-html:`<td>Reserved</td>`
2348:raw-html:`</tr>`
2349:raw-html:`<tr>`
2350:raw-html:`<td>40</td>`
2351:raw-html:`<td>Saved FP (r31)</td>`
2352:raw-html:`</tr>`
2353:raw-html:`</table>`
2354
2355The *parameter area* is used to store arguments being passed to a callee
2356function. Following the PowerPC ABI, the first few arguments are actually
2357passed in registers, with the space in the parameter area unused. However, if
2358there are not enough registers or the callee is a thunk or vararg function,
2359these register arguments can be spilled into the parameter area. Thus, the
2360parameter area must be large enough to store all the parameters for the largest
2361call sequence made by the caller. The size must also be minimally large enough
2362to spill registers r3-r10. This allows callees blind to the call signature,
2363such as thunks and vararg functions, enough space to cache the argument
2364registers. Therefore, the parameter area is minimally 32 bytes (64 bytes in 64
2365bit mode.) Also note that since the parameter area is a fixed offset from the
2366top of the frame, that a callee can access its spilt arguments using fixed
2367offsets from the stack pointer (or base pointer.)
2368
2369Combining the information about the linkage, parameter areas and alignment. A
2370stack frame is minimally 64 bytes in 32 bit mode and 128 bytes in 64 bit mode.
2371
2372The *dynamic area* starts out as size zero. If a function uses dynamic alloca
2373then space is added to the stack, the linkage and parameter areas are shifted to
2374top of stack, and the new space is available immediately below the linkage and
2375parameter areas. The cost of shifting the linkage and parameter areas is minor
2376since only the link value needs to be copied. The link value can be easily
2377fetched by adding the original frame size to the base pointer. Note that
2378allocations in the dynamic space need to observe 16 byte alignment.
2379
2380The *locals area* is where the llvm compiler reserves space for local variables.
2381
2382The *saved registers area* is where the llvm compiler spills callee saved
2383registers on entry to the callee.
2384
2385Prolog/Epilog
2386^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2387
2388The llvm prolog and epilog are the same as described in the PowerPC ABI, with
2389the following exceptions. Callee saved registers are spilled after the frame is
2390created. This allows the llvm epilog/prolog support to be common with other
2391targets. The base pointer callee saved register r31 is saved in the TOC slot of
2392linkage area. This simplifies allocation of space for the base pointer and
2393makes it convenient to locate programatically and during debugging.
2394
2395Dynamic Allocation
2396^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2397
2398.. note::
2399
2400 TODO - More to come.
2401
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002402The NVPTX backend
2403-----------------
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002404
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002405The NVPTX code generator under lib/Target/NVPTX is an open-source version of
2406the NVIDIA NVPTX code generator for LLVM. It is contributed by NVIDIA and is
2407a port of the code generator used in the CUDA compiler (nvcc). It targets the
2408PTX 3.0/3.1 ISA and can target any compute capability greater than or equal to
24092.0 (Fermi).
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002410
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002411This target is of production quality and should be completely compatible with
2412the official NVIDIA toolchain.
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002413
2414Code Generator Options:
2415
2416:raw-html:`<table border="1" cellspacing="0">`
2417:raw-html:`<tr>`
2418:raw-html:`<th>Option</th>`
2419:raw-html:`<th>Description</th>`
2420:raw-html:`</tr>`
2421:raw-html:`<tr>`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002422:raw-html:`<td>sm_20</td>`
2423:raw-html:`<td align="left">Set shader model/compute capability to 2.0</td>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002424:raw-html:`</tr>`
2425:raw-html:`<tr>`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002426:raw-html:`<td>sm_21</td>`
2427:raw-html:`<td align="left">Set shader model/compute capability to 2.1</td>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002428:raw-html:`</tr>`
2429:raw-html:`<tr>`
Justin Holewinskif73d7a52013-01-11 18:47:10 +00002430:raw-html:`<td>sm_30</td>`
2431:raw-html:`<td align="left">Set shader model/compute capability to 3.0</td>`
2432:raw-html:`</tr>`
2433:raw-html:`<tr>`
2434:raw-html:`<td>sm_35</td>`
2435:raw-html:`<td align="left">Set shader model/compute capability to 3.5</td>`
2436:raw-html:`</tr>`
2437:raw-html:`<tr>`
2438:raw-html:`<td>ptx30</td>`
2439:raw-html:`<td align="left">Target PTX 3.0</td>`
2440:raw-html:`</tr>`
2441:raw-html:`<tr>`
2442:raw-html:`<td>ptx31</td>`
2443:raw-html:`<td align="left">Target PTX 3.1</td>`
Bill Wendlingff9feeb2012-08-02 08:49:53 +00002444:raw-html:`</tr>`
2445:raw-html:`</table>`
2446