I want to analyse the memory dependencies which exist in a loop at an intra iteration as well as inter iteration (loop carried dependencies). I looked at the DependenceAnalysis implementation which returns a lot of the information I require (based on a prior AliasAnalysis pass), however I need to pass the Src and Dst instructions in program order.
Is there any existing implementation I can take a look at?
It seems that the only the DependenceAnalysis::depends is only called in the dumpExampleDependence() function (checked using cscope). Is there no other module which uses this class?
There’s no implementation yet of the dependence graph builder.
You can use DependenceAnalysis to get the info you want by expensively testing all pairs of memory references.
What you call “intra iteration” are “loop-independent” dependences, and are tested at the same time as the loop-carried dependences.
(In the old days, people tried to say “inter” and “intra”, but it was too confusing during talks. It was much clearer to say loop independent and loop carried.)
I know of no other check-in code that uses DependenceAnalysis. Which is appropriate; it’s not ready for use (that is, it’s incorrect). I misunderstood how GEPs work, so it will sometimes miss existing dependences.
Testing for all pairs would indicate that there exists a WAR between S2 and S3 but it is only correct if C1 evaluates to true.
Similarly, there may or may not be a WAW between S1 and S2. Thus to clearly indicate the possible paths I would like to generate something like:
So then it seems to me that building the dependence graph is essential.
Are there no other Analysis/Transforms which require this type of information?
I looked at AESOP (http://aesop.ece.umd.edu/doc/aesop-white-paper.pdf) which implements an autoparallelization framework and it seems they would need to do similar checks, the page hosting the code is currently offline.
All-pairs testing is correct, in that it is conservative; it never fails to report an existing dependence.
Your complaint is, essentially, that all-pair dependence testing reports too many dependences, 'cause it doesn’t take control flow into account. True! Hence the motivation for guiding analysis using SSA. It’s also faster to avoid testing all O(n^2) pairs.
There are certainly other analysis and xform passes that would benefit from good dependence analysis, but I don’t think anyone is using it yet.
you may want to look at polly.llvm.org. It has a very detailed dependence analysis that also takes into accounts control flow conditions. (Such kind of analysis are important e.g. when generating GPU code, but also for other more complex loop transformations).
I just realized you tried to do so and there are some open questions that most likely have blocked you. Sorry for not replying to those previously. I will look into the WAR problems later tonight. Please ping me directly if you are blocked by any problems.
can you elaborate what exactly is the problem with DependenceAnalysis
or point me to a thread/bug report discussing it? Do you think that
this will require a large effort? I would like to put some time on
this and also on the graph dep. builder.