On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 12:05 AM Kelvin Nilsen <kdnil...@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> A somewhat old "issue report" pointed me to the code generated for a 4-fold
> manually unrolled version of the following loop:
>
> > while (++len != len_limit) /* this is loop */
> > if (pb[len] != cur[len])
> > break;
>
> As unrolled, the loop appears as:
>
> > while (++len != len_limit) /* this is loop */ {
> > if (pb[len] != cur[len])
> > break;
> > if (++len == len_limit) /* unrolled 2nd iteration */
> > break;
> > if (pb[len] != cur[len])
> > break;
> > if (++len == len_limit) /* unrolled 3rd iteration */
> > break;
> > if (pb[len] != cur[len])
> > break;
> > if (++len == len_limit) /* unrolled 4th iteration */
> > break;
> > if (pb[len] != cur[len])
> > break;
> > }
>
> In examining the behavior of tree-ssa-loop-ivopts.c, I've discovered the only
> induction variable candidates that are being considered are all forms of the
> len variable. We are not considering any induction variables to represent
> the address expressions &pb[len] and &cur[len].
I am surprised - did you dig down why? Because generally IVOPTs does
consider pointer IVs.
Richard.
> I rewrote the source code for this loop to make the addressing expressions
> more explicit, as in the following:
>
> > cur++;
> > while (++pb != last_pb) /* this is loop */ {
> > if (*pb != *cur)
> > break;
> > ++cur;
> > if (++pb == last_pb) /* unrolled 2nd iteration */
> > break;
> > if (*pb != *cur)
> > break;
> > ++cur;
> > if (++pb == last_pb) /* unrolled 3rd iteration */
> > break;
> > if (*pb != *cur)
> > break;
> > ++cur;
> > if (++pb == last_pb) /* unrolled 4th iteration */
> > break;
> > if (*pb != *cur)
> > break;
> > ++cur;
> > }
>
> Now, gcc does a better job of identifying the "address expression induction
> variables". This version of the loop runs about 10% faster than the original
> on my target architecture.
>
> This would seem to be a textbook pattern for the induction variable analysis.
> Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to add these candidates to the
> set of induction variables that are considered by tree-ssa-loop-ivopts.c?
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>
