2020-11-04 Erick Ochoa <erick.oc...@theobroma-systems.com>
* gcc/Makefile.in: Add file to documentation sources
* gcc/doc/dfe.texi: New section
* gcc/doc/gccint.texi: Include new section
---
gcc/Makefile.in | 3 +-
gcc/doc/dfe.texi | 187 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
gcc/doc/gccint.texi | 2 +
3 files changed, 191 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
create mode 100644 gcc/doc/dfe.texi
diff --git a/gcc/Makefile.in b/gcc/Makefile.in
index 2184bd0fc3d..7e4c442416d 100644
--- a/gcc/Makefile.in
+++ b/gcc/Makefile.in
@@ -3275,7 +3275,8 @@ TEXI_GCCINT_FILES = gccint.texi gcc-common.texi
gcc-vers.texi \
gnu.texi gpl_v3.texi fdl.texi contrib.texi languages.texi \
sourcebuild.texi gty.texi libgcc.texi cfg.texi tree-ssa.texi \
loop.texi generic.texi gimple.texi plugins.texi optinfo.texi \
- match-and-simplify.texi analyzer.texi ux.texi poly-int.texi
+ match-and-simplify.texi analyzer.texi ux.texi poly-int.texi \
+ dfe.texi
TEXI_GCCINSTALL_FILES = install.texi install-old.texi fdl.texi
\
gcc-common.texi gcc-vers.texi
diff --git a/gcc/doc/dfe.texi b/gcc/doc/dfe.texi
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..e8d01d817d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gcc/doc/dfe.texi
@@ -0,0 +1,187 @@
+@c Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+@c This is part of the GCC manual.
+@c For copying conditions, see the file gcc.texi.
+
+@node Dead Field Elimination
+@chapter Dead Field Elimination
+
+@node Dead Field Elimination Internals
+@section Dead Field Elimination Internals
+
+@subsection Introduction
+
+Dead field elimination is a compiler transformation that removes fields
from structs. There are several challenges to removing fields from
structs at link time but, depending on the workload of the compiled
program and the architecture where the program runs, dead field
elimination might be a worthwhile transformation to apply. Generally
speaking, when the bottle-neck of an application is given by the memory
bandwidth of the host system and the memory requested is of a struct
which can be reduced in size, then that combination of workload, program
and architecture can benefit from applying dead field elimination. The
benefits come from removing unnecessary fields from structures and thus
reducing the memory/cache requirements to represent a structure. +
+ +
+While challenges exist to fully automate a dead field elimination
transformation, similar and more powerful optimizations have been
implemented in the past. Chakrabarti et al [0] implement struct peeling,
splitting into hot and cold parts of a structure, and field reordering.
Golovanevsky et al [1] also shows efforts to implement data layout
optimizations at link time. Unlike the work of Chakrabarti and
Golovanesky, this text only talks about dead field elimination. This
doesn't mean that the implementation can't be expanded to perform other
link-time layout optimizations, it just means that dead field
elimination is the only transformation that is implemented at the time
of this writing. +
+[0] Chakrabarti, Gautam, Fred Chow, and L. PathScale. "Structure layout
optimizations in the open64 compiler: Design, implementation and
measurements." Open64 Workshop at the International Symposium on Code
Generation and Optimization. 2008. +
+[1] Golovanevsky, Olga, and Ayal Zaks. "Struct-reorg: current status
and future perspectives." Proceedings of the GCC Developers’ Summit.
2007. +
+@subsection Overview
+
+The dead field implementation is structured in the following way: +
+ +@itemize @bullet
+@item
+Collect all types which can refer to a @code{RECORD_TYPE}. This means
that if we have a pointer to a record, we also collect this pointer. Or
an array, or a union. +@item
+Mark types as escaping. More of this in the following section. +@item
+Find fields which can be deleted. (Iterate over all gimple code and
find which fields are read.) +@item
+Create new types with removed fields (and reference these types in
pointers, arrays, etc.) +@item
+Modify gimple to include these types. +@end itemize
+
+
+Most of this code relies on the visitor pattern. Types, Expr, and
Gimple statements are visited using this pattern. You can find the base
classes in @file{type-walker.c} @file{expr-walker.c} and
@file{gimple-walker.c}. There are assertions in place where a type,
expr, or gimple code is encountered which has not been encountered
before during the testing of this transformation. This facilitates
fuzzying of the transformation.
+
+@subsubsection Implementation Details: Is a global variable escaping?
+
+How does the analysis determine whether a global variable is visible to
code outside the current linking unit? In the file
@file{gimple-escaper.c} we have a simple function called
@code{is_variable_escaping} which checks whether a variable is visible
to code outside the current linking unit by looking at the
@code{varpool_node}’s @code{externally_visible} field. +
+@subsubsection Implementation Details: is a function escaping? +
+Like above, the analysis currently uses @code{cgraph_node}’s
@code{externally_visible} field to determine whether a function is
externally visible. +
+Furthermore, we also must have access to the gimple body of the
function. We call functions whose body is not available "undefined". The
body must be available through the
@code{FOR_EACH_FUNCTION_WITH_GIMPLE_BODY} macro in order to not be in
the undefined set. If a function is undefined, we also say that its
arguments and return type are escaping. +
+Indirect functions whose targets cannot be discovered have their
arguments and return types marked as escaping as well. +
+The analysis also encountered an interesting edge case, where callsites
had function declaration’s but no cgraph_node associated to them. The
analysis addresses this issue by duplicating some of the code used to
determine whether a @code{cgraph_node} is escaping. +
+Arguments from/to builtin functions which the analysis understands
(@code{malloc}, @code{memset}, @code{realloc}, etc) are treated in a
special way and marked their arguments’ and return values’ types will
not be marked as escaping. +
+@subsubsection Implementation Details: Constructors and static
initialization + +Static initializers are not available at LTRANS.
Furthermore, the code necessary to transform correctly brace
initializers is unimplemented. Currently, the analysis marks types which
have constructors or are statically initialized as escaping. +
+@subsubsection Implementation Details: is a type casted? +
+Due to how types are represented in GCC, it is difficult to say whether
a type is casted or not. Not only is comparing type pointers
insufficient; @code{TYPE_MAIN_VARIANT} and @code{TYPE_CANONICAL} are
also not enough. A full structural type equality seems necessary.
However, for this transformation to succeed, it also needs to compare
incomplete types to complete types. Therefore, the analysis has its own
type equality implementation. It is available on
@file{type-*-equality.c} . There are different implementations that
exist for historical reasons. + +The typecasting pass itself is found in
@code{gimple-caster.c}.
+
+It was found that there are instances where a type might be casted to
@code{void*}. For example, in the @code{qsort} function. So, the
analysis allows the user to disable casting checks. This is unsafe and
it is up to the user to understand that there might be errors. Casts can
be disabled with the @option{-fipa-type-escape-analysis-keep-casts} flag. +
+@subsubsection Implementation Details : what about @code{volatile}?
+
+If a single @code{volatile} variable of type @code{t} is found, type
@code{t} is marked as escaping. +
+@subsubsection Implementation Details : is a type escaping? +Types in
gimple may be represented as directed graph of the datatype called
@code{tree}. Escaping is a transitive property that flows from a node of
the graph to the direction of the edges. For example, if we find a
@code{struct a**} type which is escaping, then all pointer types (i.e.
@code{struct a**}, @code{struct a*} and array types @code{struct a[]})
and @code{struct a}” itself are marked as escaping. However, a struct
which has a field of type @code{struct a*} will not be marked as
escaping. This is implemented in the @file{type-walker.c} file. +
+Furthermore, because there might be two or more @code{tree} pointers
representing the same type, we need to update all trees which are not
marked as "escaping" if there is another representation of the same type
which is escaping. This is an expensive operation as we need to compute
a fixed point. This is performed on the
@file{ipa-type-escape-analysis.c} file function
@code{fix_escaping_types_in_set.}
+
+@subsection Dead Field Elimination Legality Analysis +
+Finally, for all types which are not escaping, it would be possible to
change the layout of the type. However, not all layout changes are
possible. Let's focus on dead field elimination which transforms that
definition of a type for the whole linking unit. Here, let’s distinguish
the cases where if a type is changed, all the variables of that type
must be changed from the case where a type definition is changed for a
specific context. Specializing a type to its specific calling context
might uncover more optimization opportunities but it is not currently
supported by this implementation. +
+In order to guarantee that no fields are read, the gimple code needs to
be inspected for the following cases +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+The simple case where a @code{COMPONENT_REF} is read. In this case the
@code{COMPONENT_REF} is marked as read and will not be deleted. +@item
+The slightly more complicated case where @code{MEM_REF} is accessed via
a an @code{ADDR_EXPR}. In this case all fields previously accessed and
including the field accessed through @code{MEM_REF} are marked as read
and will not be deleted.
+@item
+If we take the address of a field. In this case, due to pointer
arithmetic all fields contained in the record will be marked as read and
will not be deleted. +@end itemize
+
+The code for the access analysis lives in the @file{*-accessor.c}
files. To keep track of which fields are read we use the following data
structure map of maps. +
+@code{std::map<const_tree /* record */, std::map<const_tree /* field
*/, unsigned /* read, written, never accessed */ > }
+
+The key to the map is always a @code{RECORD_TYPE}.
+
+The map which is the value for the given @code{RECORD_TYPE} holds
@code{FIELD_DECL} and maps to an enum which corresponds to whether the
field has been READ, WRITTEN or Neither (EMPTY). +
+After gathering this information, we the result of all
@code{RECORD_TYPE}s are unified across the different tree pointers
representing the same type. Here a fixed point is unneeded. An
equivalence between different @code{RECORD_TYPE} is computed and
propagates the field status to all values in the map. Now, for all
@code{RECORD_TYPES} which do not escape, there’s a map that holds the
status of each @code{FIELD_DECL}. (I.e. whether a field is read, written
or neither). Let’s call the @code{RECORD_TYPE}s with fields that can be
removed, candidates for reorganization. +
+@subsection Rewriting Types and Gimple
+
+All types which refer to reorganization candidates must be collected
and transformed. The collection is performed in
@file{specific-type-collector.c}. The transformation is performed in
@code{type-reconstructor.c }
+
+For the reconstruction the analysis uses build_distinct_variant_copy to
build copies of reorganization candidates and modify the
@code{DECL_CHAIN} to remove the deleted fields. The analysis then
relayouts the type. A map of old fields -> new fields and old records ->
new records is made to simplify modifying gimple expressions. +
+For rewriting gimple, pointer arithmetic also needs to be handled. This
happens in @file{expr-rewriter.c}. To fix offsets in pointer arithmetic,
pointer arithmetic is first detected by looking for
@code{POINTER_PLUS_EXPR} and @code{POINTER_DIFF_EXPR}.
+
+The analysis navigates the SSA definitions or uses of the operands used
in these instructions to find the integer constant which correspond to
the offset. Then the integer constant is replaced with the new integer
constant. +
+@subsection How to run
+
+To run, you must have the following flags enabled: +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+@option{-flto}
+@item
+@option{-flto-partition=none}
+@item
+@option{-fipa-type-escape-analysis}
+@item
+(optional unsafe) @option{-fipa-type-escape-analysis-keep-casts}
+@end itemize
+
+The transformation is not a “full” ipa pass and must run in a single
partition. +
+In order to find out if the analysis has performed a transformation on
a struct, you can dump the results of the file by passing the following
flag: +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+@option{-fdump-ipa-type-escape-analysis}
+@end itemize
+
+You can inspect the file or just grep for the following string: “may be
deleted” which will print out a list of fields which the analysis
considers safe for removal. +
+The transformation is known to compile code using the following flags: +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+@option{-ggdb}
+@item
+@option{-Ofast}
+@item
+@option{-fprofile-generate}
+@item
+@option{-fprofile-use}
+@end itemize
+
+Keep in mind that since @option{–fprofile-generate} adds a lot of
indirection to the code, it is very unlikely that dead field elimination
will provide any results when used with @option{–fprofile-generate}.
However, things should go back to normal when using
@option{–fprofile-use}. Another interesting note is that it in order to
provide this transformation the best static information available, it
might be worthy to consider using the following flags when using PGO: +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+@option{--param=hot-bb-count-ws-permille=0}
+@item
+@option{--param=ipa-cp-eval-threshold=0}
+@item
+@option{-fno-ipa-inline}
+@end itemize
+
+The first two flags used together will increase the amount of code
specialization and allow for indirect functions to be resolved. During
our exploration, we found that @option{–fipa-inline} removed some
functions from the symbol table, and therefore we marked these functions
as undefined. Marking these functions as undefined is still safe, but
potentially adds false positives to types that escape. In order to fix
this in the correct way, it might be necessary to implement this as a
full ipa-pass. As an alternative, if you are seeing some gimple calls
with a fndecl but which are not in the
@code{FOR_EACH_FUNCTION_WITH_GIMPLE_BODY} macro, then consider disabling
inlining. (Note, it seems that @option{–fkeep-inline-functions} might
work but it is untested.) +
+@subsection Future work +
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+Making this pass a full “ipa pass” +@item
+Support brace constructor initializations. +@item
+Support static initialization. +@item
+Implementation of sizeof() and offsetof() handling. +@item
+Handling unions. +@item
+Supporting other languages that translate to gimple. At the moment we
only handle C languages. +@end itemize
+
+@subsection Known limitations +
+When this implementation was being developed, we included tests to make
sure that our progress wasn’t lost. However, for the tests to run it
seems we need to place the pass during WPA (which might fail for more
complex code) and the code that deals with taking the address of a field
needs to be disabled. The reason why we need to move to WPA to run the
tests fully is because we are using scan-wpa-ipa to scan the dump file.
The reason why taking the address of a field needs to be disabled is
because otherwise there is no way to test the transformation with
assertions. The tests work by computing the pointer difference between
fields in a struct and calling an assertion to see if the arithmetic
coincides with a field being deleted. diff --git a/gcc/doc/gccint.texi
b/gcc/doc/gccint.texi
index 57a8956dac7..7e131ad7a27 100644
--- a/gcc/doc/gccint.texi
+++ b/gcc/doc/gccint.texi
@@ -126,6 +126,7 @@ Additional tutorial information is linked to from
* Match and Simplify:: How to write expression simplification
patterns for GIMPLE and GENERIC
* Static Analyzer:: Working with the static analyzer.
+* Dead Field Elimination:: Dead Field Elimination
* User Experience Guidelines:: Guidelines for implementing diagnostics
and options.
* Funding:: How to help assure funding for free software.
* GNU Project:: The GNU Project and GNU/Linux.
@@ -165,6 +166,7 @@ Additional tutorial information is linked to from
@include lto.texi
@include match-and-simplify.texi
@include analyzer.texi
+@include dfe.texi
@include ux.texi
@include funding.texi
--
2.18.1
