llvm-project/mlir/docs/DefiningDialects.md

Defining Dialects

This document describes how to define Dialects.

[TOC]

LangRef Refresher

Before diving into how to define these constructs, below is a quick refresher from the MLIR LangRef.

Dialects are the mechanism by which to engage with and extend the MLIR ecosystem. They allow for defining new attributes, operations, and types. Dialects are used to model a variety of different abstractions; from traditional arithmetic to pattern rewrites; and is one of the most fundamental aspects of MLIR.

Defining a Dialect

At the most fundamental level, defining a dialect in MLIR is as simple as specializing the C++ Dialect class. That being said, MLIR provides a powerful declaratively specification mechanism via TableGen; a generic language with tooling to maintain records of domain-specific information; that simplifies the definition process by automatically generating all of the necessary boilerplate C++ code, significantly reduces maintainence burden when changing aspects of dialect definitions, and also provides additional tools on top (such as documentation generation). Given the above, the declarative specification is the expected mechanism for defining new dialects, and is the method detailed within this document. Before continuing, it is highly recommended that users review the TableGen Programmer's Reference for an introduction to its syntax and constructs.

Below showcases an example simple Dialect definition. We generally recommend defining the Dialect class in a different .td file from the attributes, operations, types, and other sub-components of the dialect to establish a proper layering between the various different dialect components. It also prevents situations where you may inadvertantly generate multiple definitions for some constructs. This recommendation extends to all of the MLIR constructs, including Interfaces for example.

// Include the definition of the necessary tablegen constructs for defining
// our dialect. 
include "mlir/IR/DialectBase.td"

// Here is a simple definition of a dialect.
def MyDialect : Dialect {
  let summary = "A short one line description of my dialect.";
  let description = [{
    My dialect is a very important dialect. This section contains a much more
    detailed description that documents all of the important pieces of information
    to know about the document.
  }];

  /// This is the namespace of the dialect. It is used to encapsulate the sub-components
  /// of the dialect, such as operations ("my_dialect.foo").
  let name = "my_dialect";

  /// The C++ namespace that the dialect, and its sub-components, get placed in.
  let cppNamespace = "::my_dialect";
}

The above showcases a very simple description of a dialect, but dialects have lots of other capabilities that you may or may not need to utilize.

Initialization

Every dialect must implement an initialization hook to add attributes, operations, types, attach any desired interfaces, or perform any other necessary initialization for the dialect that should happen on construction. This hook is declared for every dialect to define, and has the form:

void MyDialect::initialize() {
  // Dialect initialization logic should be defined in here.
}

Documentation

The summary and description fields allow for providing user documentation for the dialect. The summary field expects a simple single-line string, with the description field used for long and extensive documentation. This documentation can be used to generate markdown documentation for the dialect and is used by upstream MLIR dialects.

Class Name

The name of the C++ class which gets generated is the same as the name of our TableGen dialect definition, but with any _ characters stripped out. This means that if you name your dialect Foo_Dialect, the generated C++ class would be FooDialect. In the example above, we would get a C++ dialect named MyDialect.

C++ Namespace

The namespace that the C++ class for our dialect, and all of its sub-components, is placed under is specified by the cppNamespace field. By default, uses the name of the dialect as the only namespace. To avoid placing in any namespace, use "". To specify nested namespaces, use "::" as the delimiter between namespace, e.g., given "A::B", C++ classes will be placed within: namespace A { namespace B { <classes> } }.

Note that this works in conjunction with the dialect's C++ code. Depending on how the generated files are included, you may want to specify a full namespace path or a partial one. In general, it's best to use full namespaces whenever you can. This makes it easier for dialects within different namespaces, and projects, to interact with each other.

Dependent Dialects

MLIR has a very large ecosystem, and contains dialects that server many different purposes. It is quite common, given the above, that dialects may want to reuse certain components from other dialects. This may mean generating operations from those dialects during canonicalization, reusing attributes or types, etc. When a dialect has a dependency on another, i.e. when it constructs and/or generally relies on the components of another dialect, a dialect dependency should be explicitly recorded. An explicitly dependency ensures that dependent dialects are loaded alongside the dialect. Dialect dependencies can be recorded using the dependentDialects dialects field:

def MyDialect : Dialect {
  // Here we register the Arithmetic and Func dialect as dependencies of our `MyDialect`.
  let dependentDialects = [
    "arith::ArithmeticDialect",
    "func::FuncDialect"
  ];
}

Extra declarations

The declarative Dialect definitions try to auto-generate as much logic and methods as possible. With that said, there will always be long-tail cases that won't be covered. For such cases, extraClassDeclaration can be used. Code within the extraClassDeclaration field will be copied literally to the generated C++ Dialect class.

Note that extraClassDeclaration is a mechanism intended for long-tail cases by power users; for not-yet-implemented widely-applicable cases, improving the infrastructure is preferable.

hasConstantMaterializer: Materializing Constants from Attributes

This field is utilized to materialize a constant operation from an Attribute value and a Type. This is generally used when an operation within this dialect has been folded, and a constant operation should be generated. hasConstantMaterializer is used to enable materialization, and the materializeConstant hook is declared on the dialect. This hook takes in an Attribute value, generally returned by fold, and produces a "constant-like" operation that materializes that value. See the documentation for canonicalization for a more in-depth introduction to folding in MLIR.

Constant materialization logic can then be defined in the source file:

/// Hook to materialize a single constant operation from a given attribute value
/// with the desired resultant type. This method should use the provided builder
/// to create the operation without changing the insertion position. The
/// generated operation is expected to be constant-like. On success, this hook
/// should return the operation generated to represent the constant value.
/// Otherwise, it should return nullptr on failure.
Operation *MyDialect::materializeConstant(OpBuilder &builder, Attribute value,
                                          Type type, Location loc) {
  ...
}

hasNonDefaultDestructor: Providing a custom destructor

This field should be used when the Dialect class has a custom destructor, i.e. when the dialect has some special logic to be run in the ~MyDialect. In this case, only the declaration of the destructor is generated for the Dialect class.

Discardable Attribute Verification

As described by the MLIR Language Reference, discardable attribute are a type of attribute that has its semantics defined by the dialect whose name prefixes that of the attribute. For example, if an operation has an attribute named gpu.contained_module, the gpu dialect defines the semantics and invariants, such as when and where it is valid to use, of that attribute. To hook into this verification for attributes that are prefixed by our dialect, several hooks on the Dialect may be used:

hasOperationAttrVerify

This field generates the hook for verifying when a discardable attribute of this dialect has been used within the attribute dictionary of an operation. This hook has the form:

/// Verify the use of the given attribute, whose name is prefixed by the namespace of this
/// dialect, that was used in `op`s dictionary.
LogicalResult MyDialect::verifyOperationAttribute(Operation *op, NamedAttribute attribute);

hasRegionArgAttrVerify

This field generates the hook for verifying when a discardable attribute of this dialect has been used within the attribute dictionary of a region entry block argument. Note that the block arguments of a region entry block do not themselves have attribute dictionaries, but some operations may provide special dictionary attributes that correspond to the arguments of a region. For example, operations that implement FunctionOpInterface may have attribute dictionaries on the operation that correspond to the arguments of entry block of the function. In these cases, those operations will invoke this hook on the dialect to ensure the attribute is verified. The hook necessary for the dialect to implement has the form:

/// Verify the use of the given attribute, whose name is prefixed by the namespace of this
/// dialect, that was used on the attribute dictionary of a region entry block argument.
/// Note: As described above, when a region entry block has a dictionary is up to the individual
/// operation to define. 
LogicalResult MyDialect::verifyRegionArgAttribute(Operation *op, unsigned regionIndex,
                                                  unsigned argIndex, NamedAttribute attribute);

hasRegionResultAttrVerify

This field generates the hook for verifying when a discardable attribute of this dialect has been used within the attribute dictionary of a region result. Note that the results of a region do not themselves have attribute dictionaries, but some operations may provide special dictionary attributes that correspond to the results of a region. For example, operations that implement FunctionOpInterface may have attribute dictionaries on the operation that correspond to the results of the function. In these cases, those operations will invoke this hook on the dialect to ensure the attribute is verified. The hook necessary for the dialect to implement has the form:

/// Generate verification for the given attribute, whose name is prefixed by the namespace
/// of this dialect, that was used on the attribute dictionary of a region result.
/// Note: As described above, when a region entry block has a dictionary is up to the individual
/// operation to define. 
LogicalResult MyDialect::verifyRegionResultAttribute(Operation *op, unsigned regionIndex,
                                                     unsigned argIndex, NamedAttribute attribute);

Operation Interface Fallback

Some dialects have an open ecosystem and don't register all of the possible operations. In such cases it is still possible to provide support for implementing an OpInterface for these operations. When an operation isn't registered or does not provide an implementation for an interface, the query will fallback to the dialect itself. The hasOperationInterfaceFallback field may be used to declare this fallback for operations:

/// Return an interface model for the interface with the given `typeId` for the operation
/// with the given name.
void *MyDialect::getRegisteredInterfaceForOp(TypeID typeID, StringAttr opName);

For a more detail description of the expected usages of this hook, view the detailed interface documentation.

Default Attribute/Type Parsers and Printers

When a dialect registers an Attribute or Type, it must also override the respective Dialect::parseAttribute/Dialect::printAttribute or Dialect::parseType/Dialect::printType methods. In these cases, the dialect must explicitly handle the parsing and printing of each individual attribute or type within the dialect. If all of the attributes and types of the dialect provide a mnemonic, however, these methods may be autogenerated by using the useDefaultAttributePrinterParser and useDefaultTypePrinterParser fields. By default, these fields are set to 1(enabled), meaning that if a dialect needs to explicitly handle the parser and printer of its Attributes and Types it should set these to 0 as necessary.

Dialect-wide Canonicalization Patterns

Generally, canonicalization patterns are specific to individual operations within a dialect. There are some cases, however, that prompt canonicalization patterns to be added to the dialect-level. For example, if a dialect defines a canonicalization pattern that operates on an interface or trait, it can be beneficial to only add this pattern once, instead of duplicating per-operation that implements that interface. To enable the generation of this hook, the hasCanonicalizer field may be used. This will declare the getCanonicalizationPatterns method on the dialect, which has the form:

/// Return the canonicalization patterns for this dialect:
void MyDialect::getCanonicalizationPatterns(RewritePatternSet &results) const;

See the documentation for Canonicalization in MLIR for a much more detailed description about canonicalization patterns.

C++ Accessor Prefix

Historically, MLIR has generated accessors for operation components (such as attribute, operands, results) using the tablegen definition name verbatim. This means that if an operation was defined as:

def MyOp : MyDialect<"op"> {
  let arguments = (ins StrAttr:$value, StrAttr:$other_value);
}

It would have accessors generated for the value and other_value attributes as follows:

StringAttr MyOp::value();
void MyOp::value(StringAttr newValue);

StringAttr MyOp::other_value();
void MyOp::other_value(StringAttr newValue);

Since then, we have decided to move accessors over to a style that matches the rest of the code base. More specifically, this means that we prefix accessors with get and set respectively, and transform snake_style names to camel case (UpperCamel when prefixed, and lowerCamel for individual variable names). If we look at the same example as above, this would produce:

StringAttr MyOp::getValue();
void MyOp::setValue(StringAttr newValue);

StringAttr MyOp::getOtherValue();
void MyOp::setOtherValue(StringAttr newValue);

The form in which accessors are generated is controlled by the emitAccessorPrefix field. This field may any of the following values:

• kEmitAccessorPrefix_Raw

  • Don't emit any get/set prefix.

• kEmitAccessorPrefix_Prefixed

  • Only emit with get/set prefix.

• kEmitAccessorPrefix_Both

  • Emit with and without prefix.

All new dialects are strongly encouraged to use the kEmitAccessorPrefix_Prefixed value, as the Raw form is deprecated and in the process of being removed.

Note: Remove this section when all dialects have been switched to the new accessor form.