[RFC][OpenMP] Usability improvement, allow dropping offload targets

Clang Frontend
1

Motivation

The existing OpenMP offloading implementation in clang does not allow dropping
offload targets at link time. That is, if an object file is created with one set
of offload targets you must use exactly the same set of offload targets at the
link stage. Otherwise, linking will fail

$ clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu,nvptx64-nvidia-cuda foo.c -c
$ clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu foo.o
/tmp/foo-dd79f7.o:(.rodata..omp_offloading.device_images[.omp_offloading.descriptor_reg]+0x20): undefined reference to `.omp_offloading.img_start.nvptx64-nvidia-cuda'
/tmp/foo-dd79f7.o:(.rodata..omp_offloading.device_images[.omp_offloading.descriptor_reg]+0x28): undefined reference to `.omp_offloading.img_end.nvptx64-nvidia-cuda'
clang-7: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
$

This limits OpenMP offload usability. So far, this has not been a high priority
issue but the importance of this problem will grow once clang offload starts
supporting static libraries with offload functionality. For instance, this
limitation won't allow creating general purpose static libraries targeting
multiple types of offload devices and later linking them into a program that
uses only one offload target.

Problem description

Offload targets cannot be dropped at the link phase because object files
produced by the compiler for the host have dependencies on the offload targets
specified during compilation. These dependencies arise from the offload
initialization code.

The clang front-end adds offload initialization code to each host object in
addition to all necessary processing of OpenMP constructs. This initialization
code is intended to register target binaries for all offload targets in the
runtime library at program startup. This code consists of two compiler-generated
routines. One of these routines is added to the list of global constructors and
the other to the global destructors. The constructor routine calls a
libomptarget API which registers the target binaries and the destructor
correspondingly calls a similar API for unregistering target binaries.

Both these APIs accept a pointer to the target binary descriptor object which
specifies the number of offload target binaries to register and the start/end
addresses of target binary images. Since the start/end addresses of target
binaries are not available at compile time, the target binary descriptors are
initialized using link-time constants which reference (undefined) symbols
containing the start/end addresses of all target images. These symbols are
created by the dynamically-generated linker script which the clang driver
creates for the host link action.

References to the target specific symbols from host objects make them dependent
on particular offload targets and prevents dropping offload targets at the link
step. Therefore, the OpenMP offload initialization needs to be redesigned to
make offload targets discardable.

Proposed change

Host objects should be independent of offload targets in order to allow dropping
code for offload targets. That can be achieved by removing offload
initialization code from host objects. The compiler should not inject this code
into host objects.

However, offload initialization should still be done, so it is proposed to move
the initialization code into a special dynamically generated object file
(referred to as 'wrapper object' here onwards), which, besides the
initialization code, will also contain embedded images for offload targets.

The wrapper object file will be generated by the clang driver with the help of
a new tool: clang-offload-wrapper. This tool will take offload target binaries
as input and produce bitcode files containing offload initialization code and
embedded target images. The output bitcode is then passed to the backend and
assembler tools from the host toolchain to produce the wrapper object which is
then added as an input to the linker for host linking.

The offload action builder in the clang driver needs to be changed to use this
tool while building the actions graph for OpenMP offload compilations.

Current status

A patch with initial implementation of the proposed changes has been uploaded to
phabricator for review - ⚙ D49510 [OpenMP][Clang] Usability improvements for OpenMP offloading.

Looking for a feedback for this proposal.

Thanks,
Sergey

2

Hi Serguei,

Actually your problem can be fixed easily with a simple patch that changes the linkage of the

3

Hi, Serguei,

I agree that this is a problem worth solving. Two questions:

1. Is there any interaction between your proposal and
⚙ D47394 [OpenMP][Clang][NVPTX] Replace bundling with partial linking for the OpenMP NVPTX device offloading toolchain, and if so, how might that work?

2. Might it be possible to solve this problem by providing weak
versions of the required symbols, and then having the linker find the
strong versions when linking for each target requested when linking the
executable?

Thanks,

Hal

4

Hi Alexey,

Such change would fix the link issue, but I believe it would be a short term solution that will still be revised in future.

Let me explain my concerns. Current implementation has one more limitation which I assume would also be addressed in future – target binaries are expected to have entries for all OpenMP target regions in the program, though it seems to be too restrictive. I assume there would be use cases when you would want to tune target regions in your program for particular targets and offloading to other targets would not make much sense for those regions (or probably won’t even be possible due to limitations of a particular target). It seems reasonable to compile those region only for the targets they were tuned for, thus I assume compiler will support the following usage model in future

clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=nvptx64-nvidia-cuda -c a.c

clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu -c b.c

clang -fopenmp -fopenmp-targets=nvptx64-nvidia-cuda,x86_64-pc-linux-gnu a.o b.o

And such usage model would anyway require redesigning the way how offload initialization code is generated. It has to be delayed till link time because the final set of offload targets that need to be registered in runtime would be known only at link step and thus compiler cannot create correct target binary descriptor object (which is a part of the offload initialization code) at compile time as it is done now.

Does that sound reasonable?

5

Hi Hal,

1. I think there is no interaction with that patch. As I understand it mainly solves the problem of supporting OpenMP offloads in static libraries for NVPTX target, but that is a different problem. Doru will correct me if my understanding in wrong.

2. Yes, it is possible to solve link problem that way. Alexey has already suggested such change (and I guess has committed such fix), but I believe it would be a short term solution and offload initialization will still require changes in future. I have explained my concerns in the response to Alexey's email.

Thanks,
Serguei

6

Hi Serguei,

I don’t see a lot of problems with this example. As I can see there is only one problem: clang-offload-bundler generates an empty object file that cannot be recognized by the linker. If we teach clang-offload-bundler to generate correct empty object files (what we need to do anyway, because currently it may produce wrong utout), your example will work without any changes.

7

Hi Alexey,

Empty object file produced by the bundler is one of the problems with that example, but I was talking about the different issue which is related to the offload initialization code.

Front end, as part of the generating offload initialization code, creates the target binary descriptor object which is passed to the libomptarget registration API. The binary descriptor object besides the start/end addresses of all target images contains the number of target images which need to be registered and compiler initializes this field to the number of offload targets that were specified in command line. So, in that example below, both a.o and b.o will have initialization code for registering only one target image because only one offload target was specified in command line. The initialization code is generated as a comdat group, so linker will choose either a.o’s or b.o’s instance of this code at link stage, but in any case it will register only one target image instead of two. So that example will not work as expected even if offload bundler problem is fixed. Delaying generation of the offload initialization code till link time would resolve this issue.

I suspect there would also be problems with the offload entry table besides these two issues. The number of offload entries on the host side and target images won’t match, and I guess libomptarget cannot handle this correctly, so I assume runtime would require some changes as well.

Thanks,

8

That certainly seems like a problem. We don’t want varying lists of offloading targets between objects to create implicit ODR problems. Is the initialization code/tables large? Is it important that they’re in comdat? Alternatively, we could hash/encode the list of targets in the comdat key, so we’ll only get one copy of the init code per unique combination. That might be better than actually having each object contain an initializer? -Hal

9

Hi Hal,

The offload initialization code is pretty simple, in pseudo code it would look like this

// The device image information.

struct __tgt_device_image {

void *ImageStart; // Pointer to the target code start

void *ImageEnd; // Pointer to the target code end

…

};

// Target binary descriptor.

struct __tgt_bin_desc {

int32_t NumDeviceImages; // Number of device images

__tgt_device_image *DeviceImages; // Array of device images

…

};

// External symbols for start/end addresses for all N target images.

// These symbols are defined by the linker script which is dynamically

// generated by the clang driver for host link action.

extern char ImageStart1;

extern char ImageEnd1;

…

extern char ImageStartN;

extern char ImageEndN;

static __tgt_device_image TargetImages = {

{ ImageStart1, ImageEnd1, …},

…

{ ImageStartN, ImageEndN, …},

};

static __tgt_device_image BinaryDesc = {

sizeof(TargetImages)/sizeof(__tgt_device_image), // NumDeviceImages

TargetImages, // DeviceImages

…

};

// Constructor && destructor which registers/unregisters device binaries

static void registerBinaryDesc() attribute((constructor(0))) {

__tgt_register_lib(&BinaryDesc);

}

static void unregisterBinaryDesc() attribute((destructor(0))) {

__tgt_unregister_lib(&BinaryDesc);

}

Front end adds such code to every host object containing omp offload constructs. It is sufficient to execute it once at program startup, so it is created in comdat for efficiency. And for the current implementation it is Ok to have it in comdat because changing the list of offload targets between objects is now allowed now. Therefore all host objects are expected to have the same init code and thus it does not matter what instance is eventually linked in.

Technically, making offload init code non-comdat together with Alexey’s fix which adds weak linkage to external references from init code would resolve this problem. That would force offload init code from all objects to be executed on startup (not just a single instance) and thus all target images will eventually be registered, but it would be less efficient than executing only one instance of init code.

What I suggested below is completely removing offload init code from host objects and moving it to a separate object (I called it wrapper object) which is dynamically created by the clang driver for host link action with a help of the new clang-offload-wrapper tool. This object will have all target images as data and offload init code which registers the images. Such change would make host objects completely independent from offloading targets that were specified at compile time. And offload initialization will still be efficient since it will be done only once.

Thanks,

10

Thanks for the details. Would my suggestion of hashing/encoding the list of offloading targets into the comdat name/key also work? This seems like it would be a simple solution and would limit the number of initialization calls to one per unique target combination (which should be no more than a few). -Hal

11

Hi Hal,

Yes, I think it will also work. There should not be lot of unique combinations of offloading targets, thus the number of offload initialization calls will be pretty small. That will be less efficient than having one initialization call, but still acceptable.

Thanks,

12

Hi Hal,

I forgot to mention one more thing about the wrapper object proposal – it would simplify enabling of OpenMP offloading on Windows (where it is not supported now). I do not know if there is much interest in OpenMP on Windows, but, anyway, enabling Windows would require solving a number of issues. One of these issues is the use of a linker script for (a) embedding device binaries into the host binary and (b) defining begin/end symbols for the offload entries table. Linker scripts are not available on Windows, thus a new solution would be needed for that. It can probably be something Windows specific or we can come up with something platform independent.

The wrapper object proposal provides platform independent solution for (a). Moreover, I think that it can be enhanced to also implement (b) on Windows – the wrapper object can also define begin/end symbols for the offload entries table (can employ section grouping mechanism on Windows to ensure that sections defining begin/end symbol are placed before/after the offload entries sections from regular object files).

So with the wrapper object proposal in place, the linker script solution will be used only for (b) on Linux like targets, but, it has limitations even on Linux – f.e. it cannot be used with gold linker because it does not seem to support “insert before …” command (is used by the OpenMP linker script). So, perhaps, the linker script solution for (b) would need a replacement even on Linux.

Thanks,