[llvm-dev] Optimisation passes introducing address space casts

James Price via llvm-dev
Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:12:15 -0000

Hi Mehdi,

Thanks for the reply - I’ve finally got round to trying to fix this based on
your suggestion. I’ve got something that mostly works, but I just wanted to
double-check something about the regression tests before I post a patch.

> The memcpy is supposed to be equivalent to a sequence of load and store.
Here we are just failing to keep the property that the load is performed through
addrspace(2).


Based on this comment, I am suspicious of the validity of a couple of existing
instcombine regression tests in `memcpy-from-global.ll`. Specifically, there are
two tests that look like this:

  define void @test3_addrspacecast() {
    %A = alloca %T
    %a = bitcast %T* %A to i8*
    call void @llvm.memcpy.p0i8.p1i8.i64(i8* %a, i8 addrspace(1)* addrspacecast
(%T* @G to i8 addrspace(1)*), i64 124, i32 4, i1 false)
    call void @bar(i8* %a) readonly
  ; CHECK-LABEL: @test3_addrspacecast(
  ; CHECK-NEXT: call void @bar(i8* getelementptr inbounds (%T, %T* @G, i64 0,
i32 0))
    ret void
  }

Here, there is a global variable in `addrspace(0)`, which is passed as a source
operand to `llvm.memcpy` via an `addrspacecast` to `addrspace(1)`. The memcpy
destination operand (an `alloca` in `addrspace(0)`) is then passed to a
function. The test asserts that this memcpy should be removed and the global
should just be passed directly to the function, but doesn’t this lose the
property that the load should be performed through `addrspace(1)`, as per your
comment above?

I can (and have) fixed this as part of the patch I’m working on, but since this
implies that a couple of existing regression tests would be incorrect I just
wanted to double-check that I’m not misinterpreting something.

CCing Matt Arsenault who added those specific tests originally in r207054.

James

> On 9 Nov 2016, at 21:11, Mehdi Amini <mehdi.amini at apple.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>> On Nov 9, 2016, at 10:13 AM, James Price via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I’ve recently encountered an issue where the `instcombine` pass
replaces an `llvm.memcpy` between two distinct address spaces with an
`addrspacecast` instruction.
>>
>> As an example, see the trivial OpenCL kernel attached. I’m compiling
like this:
>>
>>   clang -cc1 -triple spir64-unknown-unknown -x cl -O0 -emit-llvm
array_init.cl -o before.ll
>>
>> This yields an `llvm.memcpy` to copy the array initialiser data from
the global variable (in `addrspace(2)`) to the `alloca` result (in
`addrspace(0)`).
>>
>> I then apply the `instcombine` pass via:
>>
>>   opt -S -instcombine before.ll -o after.ll
>>
>> This results in the memcpy being nuked, and the `addrspace(2)` data is
now accessed directly via an `addrspacecast` to `addrspace(0)`.
>>
>>
>> It seems to me that this sort of optimisation is only valid if it is
guaranteed that the two address spaces alias for the given target triple (which
for SPIR, they do not).
>
> I’m not sure “alias” is the right consideration here.
>
>>
>>
>> This particular optimisation is coming from lines ~290-300 of
InstCombineLoadStoreAlloca.cpp, although I suspect this isn’t the only case
where this might happen.
>>
>> Adding a check to only perform this replacement if the two address
spaces are equal fixes the issue for me, but this is probably too conservative
since many targets with flat address spaces will probably benefit from this
optimisation.
>> It feels like passes should query the target about whether two address
spaces alias before introducing an `addrspacecast`, but I’m not familiar enough
with LLVM internals to know if this is information that is easy to make
available (if it isn’t already).
>>
>> Is there something we can do here to avoid this sort of optimisation
causing problems for targets with segmented address spaces?
>
> This is a bug, we can’t assume any memory layout I believe.
>
> The memcpy is supposed to be equivalent to a sequence of load and store.
Here we are just failing to keep the property that the load is performed through
addrspace(2). The fix is not “trivial” though, the transformation can only be
performed if the address of the alloca does not escape, and some rewriting of
the uses is needed to propagate the address space through GEPs for instance.
>
> —
> Mehdi

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