In the process of fixing the noalias parameter -> metadata conversion process
that will take place during inlining (which will be committed soon, but not
turned on by default), I have come to realize that the semantics provided by
yesterday's commit are not really what we want. Here's why:
void foo(noalias a, noalias b, noalias c, bool x) {
*q = x ? a : b;
*c = *q;
}
Generically, we know that *c does not alias with *a and with *b (so there is an
'and' in what we know we're not), and we know that *q might be derived from *a
or from *b (so there is an 'or' in what we know that we are). So we do not want
the semantics currently, where any noalias scope matching any alias.scope
causes a NoAlias return. What we want to know is that the noalias scopes form a
superset of the alias.scope list (meaning that all the things we know we're not
is a superset of all of things the other instruction might be).
Making that change, however, introduces a composibility problem. If we inline
once, adding the noalias metadata, and then inline again adding more, and we
append new scopes onto the noalias and alias.scope lists each time. But, this
means that we could change what was a NoAlias result previously into a MayAlias
result because we appended an additional scope onto one of the alias.scope
lists. So, instead of giving scopes the ability to have parents (which I had
borrowed from the TBAA implementation, but seems increasingly unlikely to be
useful in practice), I've given them domains. The subset/superset condition now
applies within each domain independently, and we only need it to hold in one
domain. Each time we inline, we add the new scopes in a new scope domain, and
everything now composes nicely. In addition, this simplifies the
implementation.
llvm-svn: 213948
This commit adds scoped noalias metadata. The primary motivations for this
feature are:
1. To preserve noalias function attribute information when inlining
2. To provide the ability to model block-scope C99 restrict pointers
Neither of these two abilities are added here, only the necessary
infrastructure. In fact, there should be no change to existing functionality,
only the addition of new features. The logic that converts noalias function
parameters into this metadata during inlining will come in a follow-up commit.
What is added here is the ability to generally specify noalias memory-access
sets. Regarding the metadata, alias-analysis scopes are defined similar to TBAA
nodes:
!scope0 = metadata !{ metadata !"scope of foo()" }
!scope1 = metadata !{ metadata !"scope 1", metadata !scope0 }
!scope2 = metadata !{ metadata !"scope 2", metadata !scope0 }
!scope3 = metadata !{ metadata !"scope 2.1", metadata !scope2 }
!scope4 = metadata !{ metadata !"scope 2.2", metadata !scope2 }
Loads and stores can be tagged with an alias-analysis scope, and also, with a
noalias tag for a specific scope:
... = load %ptr1, !alias.scope !{ !scope1 }
... = load %ptr2, !alias.scope !{ !scope1, !scope2 }, !noalias !{ !scope1 }
When evaluating an aliasing query, if one of the instructions is associated
with an alias.scope id that is identical to the noalias scope associated with
the other instruction, or is a descendant (in the scope hierarchy) of the
noalias scope associated with the other instruction, then the two memory
accesses are assumed not to alias.
Note that is the first element of the scope metadata is a string, then it can
be combined accross functions and translation units. The string can be replaced
by a self-reference to create globally unqiue scope identifiers.
[Note: This overview is slightly stylized, since the metadata nodes really need
to just be numbers (!0 instead of !scope0), and the scope lists are also global
unnamed metadata.]
Existing noalias metadata in a callee is "cloned" for use by the inlined code.
This is necessary because the aliasing scopes are unique to each call site
(because of possible control dependencies on the aliasing properties). For
example, consider a function: foo(noalias a, noalias b) { *a = *b; } that gets
inlined into bar() { ... if (...) foo(a1, b1); ... if (...) foo(a2, b2); } --
now just because we know that a1 does not alias with b1 at the first call site,
and a2 does not alias with b2 at the second call site, we cannot let inlining
these functons have the metadata imply that a1 does not alias with b2.
llvm-svn: 213864
Hal Finkel