Talin
2008-Apr-13 23:42 UTC
[LLVMdev] Any optimization advantage to making a type-accurate vtable?
Here's another odd question I've been wondering about: Typically a class vtable is an represented as an array of function pointers. Now, since the functions all have different calling signatures, I imagine that you would generate an array of opaque pointers, and then bitcast the pointer to the actual function signature at the call site. However, that's not what I am doing. Instead, I decided to make the vtable a struct rather than an array, and make each struct member be a function pointer of the correct type. Since the syntax of getElementPtr is the same whether the target is an array or struct, the generated IR code looks much the same. The only difference is that you might have to bitcast the vtable pointer itself if the true class is a subclass of the reference type. What I am wondering is if there is any optimization advantage to doing this. In general I make it a policy to give the backend as much type information as possible. However, in this case I wonder whether or not there is any benefit - it seems to me that from the point of view of an optimizer trying to determine what assumptions it can make about the type of the callable, that bitcasting the vtable pointer and bitcasting the vtable entry are pretty much equivalent. -- Talin