LLVM Language Reference Manual¶
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Identifiers
- High Level Structure
- Module Structure
- Linkage Types
- Calling Conventions
- Visibility Styles
- Named Types
- Global Variables
- Functions
- Aliases
- Named Metadata
- Parameter Attributes
- Garbage Collector Names
- Prefix Data
- Attribute Groups
- Function Attributes
- Module-Level Inline Assembly
- Data Layout
- Target Triple
- Pointer Aliasing Rules
- Volatile Memory Accesses
- Memory Model for Concurrent Operations
- Atomic Memory Ordering Constraints
- Fast-Math Flags
- Type System
- Constants
- Other Values
- Module Flags Metadata
- Intrinsic Global Variables
- Instruction Reference
- Terminator Instructions
- Binary Operations
- Bitwise Binary Operations
- Vector Operations
- Aggregate Operations
- Memory Access and Addressing Operations
- Conversion Operations
- ‘
trunc .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
zext .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
sext .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
fptrunc .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
fpext .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
fptoui .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
fptosi .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
uitofp .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
sitofp .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
ptrtoint .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
inttoptr .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
bitcast .. to
‘ Instruction - ‘
addrspacecast .. to
‘ Instruction
- ‘
- Other Operations
- Intrinsic Functions
- Variable Argument Handling Intrinsics
- Accurate Garbage Collection Intrinsics
- Code Generator Intrinsics
- Standard C Library Intrinsics
- ‘
llvm.memcpy
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.memmove
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.memset.*
‘ Intrinsics - ‘
llvm.sqrt.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.powi.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.sin.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.cos.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.pow.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.exp.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.exp2.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.log.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.log10.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.log2.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.fma.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.fabs.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.copysign.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.floor.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.ceil.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.trunc.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.rint.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.nearbyint.*
‘ Intrinsic - ‘
llvm.round.*
‘ Intrinsic
- ‘
- Bit Manipulation Intrinsics
- Arithmetic with Overflow Intrinsics
- Specialised Arithmetic Intrinsics
- Half Precision Floating Point Intrinsics
- Debugger Intrinsics
- Exception Handling Intrinsics
- Trampoline Intrinsics
- Memory Use Markers
- General Intrinsics
Abstract¶
This document is a reference manual for the LLVM assembly language. LLVM is a Static Single Assignment (SSA) based representation that provides type safety, low-level operations, flexibility, and the capability of representing ‘all’ high-level languages cleanly. It is the common code representation used throughout all phases of the LLVM compilation strategy.
Introduction¶
The LLVM code representation is designed to be used in three different forms: as an in-memory compiler IR, as an on-disk bitcode representation (suitable for fast loading by a Just-In-Time compiler), and as a human readable assembly language representation. This allows LLVM to provide a powerful intermediate representation for efficient compiler transformations and analysis, while providing a natural means to debug and visualize the transformations. The three different forms of LLVM are all equivalent. This document describes the human readable representation and notation.
The LLVM representation aims to be light-weight and low-level while being expressive, typed, and extensible at the same time. It aims to be a “universal IR” of sorts, by being at a low enough level that high-level ideas may be cleanly mapped to it (similar to how microprocessors are “universal IR’s”, allowing many source languages to be mapped to them). By providing type information, LLVM can be used as the target of optimizations: for example, through pointer analysis, it can be proven that a C automatic variable is never accessed outside of the current function, allowing it to be promoted to a simple SSA value instead of a memory location.
Well-Formedness¶
It is important to note that this document describes ‘well formed’ LLVM assembly language. There is a difference between what the parser accepts and what is considered ‘well formed’. For example, the following instruction is syntactically okay, but not well formed:
%x = add i32 1, %x
because the definition of %x
does not dominate all of its uses. The
LLVM infrastructure provides a verification pass that may be used to
verify that an LLVM module is well formed. This pass is automatically
run by the parser after parsing input assembly and by the optimizer
before it outputs bitcode. The violations pointed out by the verifier
pass indicate bugs in transformation passes or input to the parser.
Identifiers¶
LLVM identifiers come in two basic types: global and local. Global
identifiers (functions, global variables) begin with the '@'
character. Local identifiers (register names, types) begin with the
'%'
character. Additionally, there are three different formats for
identifiers, for different purposes:
- Named values are represented as a string of characters with their
prefix. For example,
%foo
,@DivisionByZero
,%a.really.long.identifier
. The actual regular expression used is ‘[%@][a-zA-Z$._][a-zA-Z$._0-9]*
‘. Identifiers which require other characters in their names can be surrounded with quotes. Special characters may be escaped using"\xx"
wherexx
is the ASCII code for the character in hexadecimal. In this way, any character can be used in a name value, even quotes themselves. - Unnamed values are represented as an unsigned numeric value with
their prefix. For example,
%12
,@2
,%44
. - Constants, which are described in the section Constants below.
LLVM requires that values start with a prefix for two reasons: Compilers don’t need to worry about name clashes with reserved words, and the set of reserved words may be expanded in the future without penalty. Additionally, unnamed identifiers allow a compiler to quickly come up with a temporary variable without having to avoid symbol table conflicts.
Reserved words in LLVM are very similar to reserved words in other
languages. There are keywords for different opcodes (‘add
‘,
‘bitcast
‘, ‘ret
‘, etc...), for primitive type names (‘void
‘,
‘i32
‘, etc...), and others. These reserved words cannot conflict
with variable names, because none of them start with a prefix character
('%'
or '@'
).
Here is an example of LLVM code to multiply the integer variable
‘%X
‘ by 8:
The easy way:
%result = mul i32 %X, 8
After strength reduction:
%result = shl i32 %X, 3
And the hard way:
%0 = add i32 %X, %X ; yields {i32}:%0
%1 = add i32 %0, %0 ; yields {i32}:%1
%result = add i32 %1, %1
This last way of multiplying %X
by 8 illustrates several important
lexical features of LLVM:
- Comments are delimited with a ‘
;
‘ and go until the end of line. - Unnamed temporaries are created when the result of a computation is not assigned to a named value.
- Unnamed temporaries are numbered sequentially (using a per-function incrementing counter, starting with 0). Note that basic blocks are included in this numbering. For example, if the entry basic block is not given a label name, then it will get number 0.
It also shows a convention that we follow in this document. When demonstrating instructions, we will follow an instruction with a comment that defines the type and name of value produced.
High Level Structure¶
Module Structure¶
LLVM programs are composed of Module
‘s, each of which is a
translation unit of the input programs. Each module consists of
functions, global variables, and symbol table entries. Modules may be
combined together with the LLVM linker, which merges function (and
global variable) definitions, resolves forward declarations, and merges
symbol table entries. Here is an example of the “hello world” module:
; Declare the string constant as a global constant.
@.str = private unnamed_addr constant [13 x i8] c"hello world\0A\00"
; External declaration of the puts function
declare i32 @puts(i8* nocapture) nounwind
; Definition of main function
define i32 @main() { ; i32()*
; Convert [13 x i8]* to i8 *...
%cast210 = getelementptr [13 x i8]* @.str, i64 0, i64 0
; Call puts function to write out the string to stdout.
call i32 @puts(i8* %cast210)
ret i32 0
}
; Named metadata
!1 = metadata !{i32 42}
!foo = !{!1, null}
This example is made up of a global variable named
“.str
”, an external declaration of the “puts
” function, a
function definition for “main
” and
named metadata “foo
”.
In general, a module is made up of a list of global values (where both functions and global variables are global values). Global values are represented by a pointer to a memory location (in this case, a pointer to an array of char, and a pointer to a function), and have one of the following linkage types.
Linkage Types¶
All Global Variables and Functions have one of the following types of linkage:
private
- Global values with “
private
” linkage are only directly accessible by objects in the current module. In particular, linking code into a module with an private global value may cause the private to be renamed as necessary to avoid collisions. Because the symbol is private to the module, all references can be updated. This doesn’t show up in any symbol table in the object file. linker_private
- Similar to
private
, but the symbol is passed through the assembler and evaluated by the linker. Unlike normal strong symbols, they are removed by the linker from the final linked image (executable or dynamic library). linker_private_weak
- Similar to “
linker_private
”, but the symbol is weak. Note thatlinker_private_weak
symbols are subject to coalescing by the linker. The symbols are removed by the linker from the final linked image (executable or dynamic library). internal
- Similar to private, but the value shows as a local symbol
(
STB_LOCAL
in the case of ELF) in the object file. This corresponds to the notion of the ‘static
‘ keyword in C. available_externally
- Globals with “
available_externally
” linkage are never emitted into the object file corresponding to the LLVM module. They exist to allow inlining and other optimizations to take place given knowledge of the definition of the global, which is known to be somewhere outside the module. Globals withavailable_externally
linkage are allowed to be discarded at will, and are otherwise the same aslinkonce_odr
. This linkage type is only allowed on definitions, not declarations. linkonce
- Globals with “
linkonce
” linkage are merged with other globals of the same name when linkage occurs. This can be used to implement some forms of inline functions, templates, or other code which must be generated in each translation unit that uses it, but where the body may be overridden with a more definitive definition later. Unreferencedlinkonce
globals are allowed to be discarded. Note thatlinkonce
linkage does not actually allow the optimizer to inline the body of this function into callers because it doesn’t know if this definition of the function is the definitive definition within the program or whether it will be overridden by a stronger definition. To enable inlining and other optimizations, use “linkonce_odr
” linkage. weak
- “
weak
” linkage has the same merging semantics aslinkonce
linkage, except that unreferenced globals withweak
linkage may not be discarded. This is used for globals that are declared “weak” in C source code. common
- “
common
” linkage is most similar to “weak
” linkage, but they are used for tentative definitions in C, such as “int X;
” at global scope. Symbols with “common
” linkage are merged in the same way asweak symbols
, and they may not be deleted if unreferenced.common
symbols may not have an explicit section, must have a zero initializer, and may not be marked ‘constant‘. Functions and aliases may not have common linkage.
appending
- “
appending
” linkage may only be applied to global variables of pointer to array type. When two global variables with appending linkage are linked together, the two global arrays are appended together. This is the LLVM, typesafe, equivalent of having the system linker append together “sections” with identical names when .o files are linked. extern_weak
- The semantics of this linkage follow the ELF object file model: the symbol is weak until linked, if not linked, the symbol becomes null instead of being an undefined reference.
linkonce_odr
,weak_odr
- Some languages allow differing globals to be merged, such as two
functions with different semantics. Other languages, such as
C++
, ensure that only equivalent globals are ever merged (the “one definition rule” — “ODR”). Such languages can use thelinkonce_odr
andweak_odr
linkage types to indicate that the global will only be merged with equivalent globals. These linkage types are otherwise the same as their non-odr
versions. external
- If none of the above identifiers are used, the global is externally visible, meaning that it participates in linkage and can be used to resolve external symbol references.
The next two types of linkage are targeted for Microsoft Windows platform only. They are designed to support importing (exporting) symbols from (to) DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries).
dllimport
- “
dllimport
” linkage causes the compiler to reference a function or variable via a global pointer to a pointer that is set up by the DLL exporting the symbol. On Microsoft Windows targets, the pointer name is formed by combining__imp_
and the function or variable name. dllexport
- “
dllexport
” linkage causes the compiler to provide a global pointer to a pointer in a DLL, so that it can be referenced with thedllimport
attribute. On Microsoft Windows targets, the pointer name is formed by combining__imp_
and the function or variable name.
For example, since the “.LC0
” variable is defined to be internal, if
another module defined a “.LC0
” variable and was linked with this
one, one of the two would be renamed, preventing a collision. Since
“main
” and “puts
” are external (i.e., lacking any linkage
declarations), they are accessible outside of the current module.
It is illegal for a function declaration to have any linkage type
other than external
, dllimport
or extern_weak
.
Calling Conventions¶
LLVM functions, calls and invokes can all have an optional calling convention specified for the call. The calling convention of any pair of dynamic caller/callee must match, or the behavior of the program is undefined. The following calling conventions are supported by LLVM, and more may be added in the future:
- “
ccc
” - The C calling convention - This calling convention (the default if no other calling convention is specified) matches the target C calling conventions. This calling convention supports varargs function calls and tolerates some mismatch in the declared prototype and implemented declaration of the function (as does normal C).
- “
fastcc
” - The fast calling convention - This calling convention attempts to make calls as fast as possible (e.g. by passing things in registers). This calling convention allows the target to use whatever tricks it wants to produce fast code for the target, without having to conform to an externally specified ABI (Application Binary Interface). Tail calls can only be optimized when this, the GHC or the HiPE convention is used. This calling convention does not support varargs and requires the prototype of all callees to exactly match the prototype of the function definition.
- “
coldcc
” - The cold calling convention - This calling convention attempts to make code in the caller as efficient as possible under the assumption that the call is not commonly executed. As such, these calls often preserve all registers so that the call does not break any live ranges in the caller side. This calling convention does not support varargs and requires the prototype of all callees to exactly match the prototype of the function definition.
- “
cc 10
” - GHC convention This calling convention has been implemented specifically for use by the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). It passes everything in registers, going to extremes to achieve this by disabling callee save registers. This calling convention should not be used lightly but only for specific situations such as an alternative to the register pinning performance technique often used when implementing functional programming languages. At the moment only X86 supports this convention and it has the following limitations:
- On X86-32 only supports up to 4 bit type parameters. No floating point types are supported.
- On X86-64 only supports up to 10 bit type parameters and 6 floating point parameters.
This calling convention supports tail call optimization but requires both the caller and callee are using it.
- “
cc 11
” - The HiPE calling convention - This calling convention has been implemented specifically for use by the High-Performance Erlang (HiPE) compiler, the native code compiler of the Ericsson’s Open Source Erlang/OTP system. It uses more registers for argument passing than the ordinary C calling convention and defines no callee-saved registers. The calling convention properly supports tail call optimization but requires that both the caller and the callee use it. It uses a register pinning mechanism, similar to GHC’s convention, for keeping frequently accessed runtime components pinned to specific hardware registers. At the moment only X86 supports this convention (both 32 and 64 bit).
- “
cc <n>
” - Numbered convention - Any calling convention may be specified by number, allowing target-specific calling conventions to be used. Target specific calling conventions start at 64.
More calling conventions can be added/defined on an as-needed basis, to support Pascal conventions or any other well-known target-independent convention.
Visibility Styles¶
All Global Variables and Functions have one of the following visibility styles:
- “
default
” - Default style - On targets that use the ELF object file format, default visibility means that the declaration is visible to other modules and, in shared libraries, means that the declared entity may be overridden. On Darwin, default visibility means that the declaration is visible to other modules. Default visibility corresponds to “external linkage” in the language.
- “
hidden
” - Hidden style - Two declarations of an object with hidden visibility refer to the same object if they are in the same shared object. Usually, hidden visibility indicates that the symbol will not be placed into the dynamic symbol table, so no other module (executable or shared library) can reference it directly.
- “
protected
” - Protected style - On ELF, protected visibility indicates that the symbol will be placed in the dynamic symbol table, but that references within the defining module will bind to the local symbol. That is, the symbol cannot be overridden by another module.
Named Types¶
LLVM IR allows you to specify name aliases for certain types. This can make it easier to read the IR and make the IR more condensed (particularly when recursive types are involved). An example of a name specification is:
%mytype = type { %mytype*, i32 }
You may give a name to any type except “void”. Type name aliases may be used anywhere a type is expected with the syntax “%mytype”.
Note that type names are aliases for the structural type that they indicate, and that you can therefore specify multiple names for the same type. This often leads to confusing behavior when dumping out a .ll file. Since LLVM IR uses structural typing, the name is not part of the type. When printing out LLVM IR, the printer will pick one name to render all types of a particular shape. This means that if you have code where two different source types end up having the same LLVM type, that the dumper will sometimes print the “wrong” or unexpected type. This is an important design point and isn’t going to change.
Global Variables¶
Global variables define regions of memory allocated at compilation time instead of run-time.
Global variables definitions must be initialized, may have an explicit section to be placed in, and may have an optional explicit alignment specified.
Global variables in other translation units can also be declared, in which case they don’t have an initializer.
A variable may be defined as thread_local
, which means that it will
not be shared by threads (each thread will have a separated copy of the
variable). Not all targets support thread-local variables. Optionally, a
TLS model may be specified:
localdynamic
- For variables that are only used within the current shared library.
initialexec
- For variables in modules that will not be loaded dynamically.
localexec
- For variables defined in the executable and only used within it.
The models correspond to the ELF TLS models; see ELF Handling For Thread-Local Storage for more information on under which circumstances the different models may be used. The target may choose a different TLS model if the specified model is not supported, or if a better choice of model can be made.
A variable may be defined as a global constant
, which indicates that
the contents of the variable will never be modified (enabling better
optimization, allowing the global data to be placed in the read-only
section of an executable, etc). Note that variables that need runtime
initialization cannot be marked constant
as there is a store to the
variable.
LLVM explicitly allows declarations of global variables to be marked constant, even if the final definition of the global is not. This capability can be used to enable slightly better optimization of the program, but requires the language definition to guarantee that optimizations based on the ‘constantness’ are valid for the translation units that do not include the definition.
As SSA values, global variables define pointer values that are in scope (i.e. they dominate) all basic blocks in the program. Global variables always define a pointer to their “content” type because they describe a region of memory, and all memory objects in LLVM are accessed through pointers.
Global variables can be marked with unnamed_addr
which indicates
that the address is not significant, only the content. Constants marked
like this can be merged with other constants if they have the same
initializer. Note that a constant with significant address can be
merged with a unnamed_addr
constant, the result being a constant
whose address is significant.
A global variable may be declared to reside in a target-specific numbered address space. For targets that support them, address spaces may affect how optimizations are performed and/or what target instructions are used to access the variable. The default address space is zero. The address space qualifier must precede any other attributes.
LLVM allows an explicit section to be specified for globals. If the target supports it, it will emit globals to the section specified.
By default, global initializers are optimized by assuming that global
variables defined within the module are not modified from their
initial values before the start of the global initializer. This is
true even for variables potentially accessible from outside the
module, including those with external linkage or appearing in
@llvm.used
. This assumption may be suppressed by marking the
variable with externally_initialized
.
An explicit alignment may be specified for a global, which must be a power of 2. If not present, or if the alignment is set to zero, the alignment of the global is set by the target to whatever it feels convenient. If an explicit alignment is specified, the global is forced to have exactly that alignment. Targets and optimizers are not allowed to over-align the global if the global has an assigned section. In this case, the extra alignment could be observable: for example, code could assume that the globals are densely packed in their section and try to iterate over them as an array, alignment padding would break this iteration.
For example, the following defines a global in a numbered address space with an initializer, section, and alignment:
@G = addrspace(5) constant float 1.0, section "foo", align 4
The following example just declares a global variable
@G = external global i32
The following example defines a thread-local global with the
initialexec
TLS model:
@G = thread_local(initialexec) global i32 0, align 4
Functions¶
LLVM function definitions consist of the “define
” keyword, an
optional linkage type, an optional visibility
style, an optional calling convention,
an optional unnamed_addr
attribute, a return type, an optional
parameter attribute for the return type, a function
name, a (possibly empty) argument list (each with optional parameter
attributes), optional function attributes,
an optional section, an optional alignment, an optional garbage
collector name, an optional prefix, an opening
curly brace, a list of basic blocks, and a closing curly brace.
LLVM function declarations consist of the “declare
” keyword, an
optional linkage type, an optional visibility
style, an optional calling convention,
an optional unnamed_addr
attribute, a return type, an optional
parameter attribute for the return type, a function
name, a possibly empty list of arguments, an optional alignment, an optional
garbage collector name and an optional prefix.
A function definition contains a list of basic blocks, forming the CFG (Control Flow Graph) for the function. Each basic block may optionally start with a label (giving the basic block a symbol table entry), contains a list of instructions, and ends with a terminator instruction (such as a branch or function return). If an explicit label is not provided, a block is assigned an implicit numbered label, using the next value from the same counter as used for unnamed temporaries (see above). For example, if a function entry block does not have an explicit label, it will be assigned label “%0”, then the first unnamed temporary in that block will be “%1”, etc.
The first basic block in a function is special in two ways: it is immediately executed on entrance to the function, and it is not allowed to have predecessor basic blocks (i.e. there can not be any branches to the entry block of a function). Because the block can have no predecessors, it also cannot have any PHI nodes.
LLVM allows an explicit section to be specified for functions. If the target supports it, it will emit functions to the section specified.
An explicit alignment may be specified for a function. If not present, or if the alignment is set to zero, the alignment of the function is set by the target to whatever it feels convenient. If an explicit alignment is specified, the function is forced to have at least that much alignment. All alignments must be a power of 2.
If the unnamed_addr
attribute is given, the address is know to not
be significant and two identical functions can be merged.
Syntax:
define [linkage] [visibility]
[cconv] [ret attrs]
<ResultType> @<FunctionName> ([argument list])
[fn Attrs] [section "name"] [align N]
[gc] [prefix Constant] { ... }
Aliases¶
Aliases act as “second name” for the aliasee value (which can be either function, global variable, another alias or bitcast of global value). Aliases may have an optional linkage type, and an optional visibility style.
Syntax:
@<Name> = alias [Linkage] [Visibility] <AliaseeTy> @<Aliasee>
The linkage must be one of private
, linker_private
,
linker_private_weak
, internal
, linkonce
, weak
,
linkonce_odr
, weak_odr
, external
. Note that some system linkers
might not correctly handle dropping a weak symbol that is aliased by a non weak
alias.
Named Metadata¶
Named metadata is a collection of metadata. Metadata nodes (but not metadata strings) are the only valid operands for a named metadata.
Syntax:
; Some unnamed metadata nodes, which are referenced by the named metadata.
!0 = metadata !{metadata !"zero"}
!1 = metadata !{metadata !"one"}
!2 = metadata !{metadata !"two"}
; A named metadata.
!name = !{!0, !1, !2}
Parameter Attributes¶
The return type and each parameter of a function type may have a set of parameter attributes associated with them. Parameter attributes are used to communicate additional information about the result or parameters of a function. Parameter attributes are considered to be part of the function, not of the function type, so functions with different parameter attributes can have the same function type.
Parameter attributes are simple keywords that follow the type specified. If multiple parameter attributes are needed, they are space separated. For example:
declare i32 @printf(i8* noalias nocapture, ...)
declare i32 @atoi(i8 zeroext)
declare signext i8 @returns_signed_char()
Note that any attributes for the function result (nounwind
,
readonly
) come immediately after the argument list.
Currently, only the following parameter attributes are defined:
zeroext
- This indicates to the code generator that the parameter or return value should be zero-extended to the extent required by the target’s ABI (which is usually 32-bits, but is 8-bits for a i1 on x86-64) by the caller (for a parameter) or the callee (for a return value).
signext
- This indicates to the code generator that the parameter or return value should be sign-extended to the extent required by the target’s ABI (which is usually 32-bits) by the caller (for a parameter) or the callee (for a return value).
inreg
- This indicates that this parameter or return value should be treated in a special target-dependent fashion during while emitting code for a function call or return (usually, by putting it in a register as opposed to memory, though some targets use it to distinguish between two different kinds of registers). Use of this attribute is target-specific.
byval
This indicates that the pointer parameter should really be passed by value to the function. The attribute implies that a hidden copy of the pointee is made between the caller and the callee, so the callee is unable to modify the value in the caller. This attribute is only valid on LLVM pointer arguments. It is generally used to pass structs and arrays by value, but is also valid on pointers to scalars. The copy is considered to belong to the caller not the callee (for example,
readonly
functions should not write tobyval
parameters). This is not a valid attribute for return values.The byval attribute also supports specifying an alignment with the align attribute. It indicates the alignment of the stack slot to form and the known alignment of the pointer specified to the call site. If the alignment is not specified, then the code generator makes a target-specific assumption.
sret
- This indicates that the pointer parameter specifies the address of a structure that is the return value of the function in the source program. This pointer must be guaranteed by the caller to be valid: loads and stores to the structure may be assumed by the callee not to trap and to be properly aligned. This may only be applied to the first parameter. This is not a valid attribute for return values.
noalias
This indicates that pointer values based on the argument or return value do not alias pointer values which are not based on it, ignoring certain “irrelevant” dependencies. For a call to the parent function, dependencies between memory references from before or after the call and from those during the call are “irrelevant” to the
noalias
keyword for the arguments and return value used in that call. The caller shares the responsibility with the callee for ensuring that these requirements are met. For further details, please see the discussion of the NoAlias response in alias analysis.Note that this definition of
noalias
is intentionally similar to the definition ofrestrict
in C99 for function arguments, though it is slightly weaker.For function return values, C99’s
restrict
is not meaningful, while LLVM’snoalias
is.nocapture
- This indicates that the callee does not make any copies of the pointer that outlive the callee itself. This is not a valid attribute for return values.
nest
- This indicates that the pointer parameter can be excised using the trampoline intrinsics. This is not a valid attribute for return values and can only be applied to one parameter.
returned
- This indicates that the function always returns the argument as its return value. This is an optimization hint to the code generator when generating the caller, allowing tail call optimization and omission of register saves and restores in some cases; it is not checked or enforced when generating the callee. The parameter and the function return type must be valid operands for the bitcast instruction. This is not a valid attribute for return values and can only be applied to one parameter.
Garbage Collector Names¶
Each function may specify a garbage collector name, which is simply a string:
define void @f() gc "name" { ... }
The compiler declares the supported values of name. Specifying a collector which will cause the compiler to alter its output in order to support the named garbage collection algorithm.
Prefix Data¶
Prefix data is data associated with a function which the code generator will emit immediately before the function body. The purpose of this feature is to allow frontends to associate language-specific runtime metadata with specific functions and make it available through the function pointer while still allowing the function pointer to be called. To access the data for a given function, a program may bitcast the function pointer to a pointer to the constant’s type. This implies that the IR symbol points to the start of the prefix data.
To maintain the semantics of ordinary function calls, the prefix data must have a particular format. Specifically, it must begin with a sequence of bytes which decode to a sequence of machine instructions, valid for the module’s target, which transfer control to the point immediately succeeding the prefix data, without performing any other visible action. This allows the inliner and other passes to reason about the semantics of the function definition without needing to reason about the prefix data. Obviously this makes the format of the prefix data highly target dependent.
Prefix data is laid out as if it were an initializer for a global variable of the prefix data’s type. No padding is automatically placed between the prefix data and the function body. If padding is required, it must be part of the prefix data.
A trivial example of valid prefix data for the x86 architecture is i8 144
,
which encodes the nop
instruction:
define void @f() prefix i8 144 { ... }
Generally prefix data can be formed by encoding a relative branch instruction
which skips the metadata, as in this example of valid prefix data for the
x86_64 architecture, where the first two bytes encode jmp .+10
:
%0 = type <{ i8, i8, i8* }>
define void @f() prefix %0 <{ i8 235, i8 8, i8* @md}> { ... }
A function may have prefix data but no body. This has similar semantics
to the available_externally
linkage in that the data may be used by the
optimizers but will not be emitted in the object file.
Attribute Groups¶
Attribute groups are groups of attributes that are referenced by objects within
the IR. They are important for keeping .ll
files readable, because a lot of
functions will use the same set of attributes. In the degenerative case of a
.ll
file that corresponds to a single .c
file, the single attribute
group will capture the important command line flags used to build that file.
An attribute group is a module-level object. To use an attribute group, an
object references the attribute group’s ID (e.g. #37
). An object may refer
to more than one attribute group. In that situation, the attributes from the
different groups are merged.
Here is an example of attribute groups for a function that should always be inlined, has a stack alignment of 4, and which shouldn’t use SSE instructions:
; Target-independent attributes:
attributes #0 = { alwaysinline alignstack=4 }
; Target-dependent attributes:
attributes #1 = { "no-sse" }
; Function @f has attributes: alwaysinline, alignstack=4, and "no-sse".
define void @f() #0 #1 { ... }
Function Attributes¶
Function attributes are set to communicate additional information about a function. Function attributes are considered to be part of the function, not of the function type, so functions with different function attributes can have the same function type.
Function attributes are simple keywords that follow the type specified. If multiple attributes are needed, they are space separated. For example:
define void @f() noinline { ... }
define void @f() alwaysinline { ... }
define void @f() alwaysinline optsize { ... }
define void @f() optsize { ... }
alignstack(<n>)
- This attribute indicates that, when emitting the prologue and epilogue, the backend should forcibly align the stack pointer. Specify the desired alignment, which must be a power of two, in parentheses.
alwaysinline
- This attribute indicates that the inliner should attempt to inline this function into callers whenever possible, ignoring any active inlining size threshold for this caller.
builtin
- This indicates that the callee function at a call site should be
recognized as a built-in function, even though the function’s declaration
uses the
nobuiltin
attribute. This is only valid at call sites for direct calls to functions which are declared with thenobuiltin
attribute. cold
- This attribute indicates that this function is rarely called. When computing edge weights, basic blocks post-dominated by a cold function call are also considered to be cold; and, thus, given low weight.
inlinehint
- This attribute indicates that the source code contained a hint that inlining this function is desirable (such as the “inline” keyword in C/C++). It is just a hint; it imposes no requirements on the inliner.
minsize
- This attribute suggests that optimization passes and code generator passes make choices that keep the code size of this function as small as possible and perform optimizations that may sacrifice runtime performance in order to minimize the size of the generated code.
naked
- This attribute disables prologue / epilogue emission for the function. This can have very system-specific consequences.
nobuiltin
- This indicates that the callee function at a call site is not recognized as
a built-in function. LLVM will retain the original call and not replace it
with equivalent code based on the semantics of the built-in function, unless
the call site uses the
builtin
attribute. This is valid at call sites and on function declarations and definitions. noduplicate
This attribute indicates that calls to the function cannot be duplicated. A call to a
noduplicate
function may be moved within its parent function, but may not be duplicated within its parent function.A function containing a
noduplicate
call may still be an inlining candidate, provided that the call is not duplicated by inlining. That implies that the function has internal linkage and only has one call site, so the original call is dead after inlining.noimplicitfloat
- This attributes disables implicit floating point instructions.
noinline
- This attribute indicates that the inliner should never inline this
function in any situation. This attribute may not be used together
with the
alwaysinline
attribute. nonlazybind
- This attribute suppresses lazy symbol binding for the function. This may make calls to the function faster, at the cost of extra program startup time if the function is not called during program startup.
noredzone
- This attribute indicates that the code generator should not use a red zone, even if the target-specific ABI normally permits it.
noreturn
- This function attribute indicates that the function never returns normally. This produces undefined behavior at runtime if the function ever does dynamically return.
nounwind
- This function attribute indicates that the function never returns with an unwind or exceptional control flow. If the function does unwind, its runtime behavior is undefined.
optnone
This function attribute indicates that the function is not optimized by any optimization or code generator passes with the exception of interprocedural optimization passes. This attribute cannot be used together with the
alwaysinline
attribute; this attribute is also incompatible with theminsize
attribute and theoptsize
attribute.This attribute requires the
noinline
attribute to be specified on the function as well, so the function is never inlined into any caller. Only functions with thealwaysinline
attribute are valid candidates for inlining into the body of this function.optsize
- This attribute suggests that optimization passes and code generator passes make choices that keep the code size of this function low, and otherwise do optimizations specifically to reduce code size as long as they do not significantly impact runtime performance.
readnone
On a function, this attribute indicates that the function computes its result (or decides to unwind an exception) based strictly on its arguments, without dereferencing any pointer arguments or otherwise accessing any mutable state (e.g. memory, control registers, etc) visible to caller functions. It does not write through any pointer arguments (including
byval
arguments) and never changes any state visible to callers. This means that it cannot unwind exceptions by calling theC++
exception throwing methods.On an argument, this attribute indicates that the function does not dereference that pointer argument, even though it may read or write the memory that the pointer points to if accessed through other pointers.
readonly
On a function, this attribute indicates that the function does not write through any pointer arguments (including
byval
arguments) or otherwise modify any state (e.g. memory, control registers, etc) visible to caller functions. It may dereference pointer arguments and read state that may be set in the caller. A readonly function always returns the same value (or unwinds an exception identically) when called with the same set of arguments and global state. It cannot unwind an exception by calling theC++
exception throwing methods.On an argument, this attribute indicates that the function does not write through this pointer argument, even though it may write to the memory that the pointer points to.
returns_twice
- This attribute indicates that this function can return twice. The C
setjmp
is an example of such a function. The compiler disables some optimizations (like tail calls) in the caller of these functions. sanitize_address
- This attribute indicates that AddressSanitizer checks (dynamic address safety analysis) are enabled for this function.
sanitize_memory
- This attribute indicates that MemorySanitizer checks (dynamic detection of accesses to uninitialized memory) are enabled for this function.
sanitize_thread
- This attribute indicates that ThreadSanitizer checks (dynamic thread safety analysis) are enabled for this function.
ssp
This attribute indicates that the function should emit a stack smashing protector. It is in the form of a “canary” — a random value placed on the stack before the local variables that’s checked upon return from the function to see if it has been overwritten. A heuristic is used to determine if a function needs stack protectors or not. The heuristic used will enable protectors for functions with:
- Character arrays larger than
ssp-buffer-size
(default 8). - Aggregates containing character arrays larger than
ssp-buffer-size
. - Calls to alloca() with variable sizes or constant sizes greater than
ssp-buffer-size
.
If a function that has an
ssp
attribute is inlined into a function that doesn’t have anssp
attribute, then the resulting function will have anssp
attribute.- Character arrays larger than
sspreq
This attribute indicates that the function should always emit a stack smashing protector. This overrides the
ssp
function attribute.If a function that has an
sspreq
attribute is inlined into a function that doesn’t have ansspreq
attribute or which has anssp
orsspstrong
attribute, then the resulting function will have ansspreq
attribute.sspstrong
This attribute indicates that the function should emit a stack smashing protector. This attribute causes a strong heuristic to be used when determining if a function needs stack protectors. The strong heuristic will enable protectors for functions with:
- Arrays of any size and type
- Aggregates containing an array of any size and type.
- Calls to alloca().
- Local variables that have had their address taken.
This overrides the
ssp
function attribute.If a function that has an
sspstrong
attribute is inlined into a function that doesn’t have ansspstrong
attribute, then the resulting function will have ansspstrong
attribute.uwtable
- This attribute indicates that the ABI being targeted requires that an unwind table entry be produce for this function even if we can show that no exceptions passes by it. This is normally the case for the ELF x86-64 abi, but it can be disabled for some compilation units.
Module-Level Inline Assembly¶
Modules may contain “module-level inline asm” blocks, which corresponds
to the GCC “file scope inline asm” blocks. These blocks are internally
concatenated by LLVM and treated as a single unit, but may be separated
in the .ll
file if desired. The syntax is very simple:
module asm "inline asm code goes here"
module asm "more can go here"
The strings can contain any character by escaping non-printable characters. The escape sequence used is simply “\xx” where “xx” is the two digit hex code for the number.
The inline asm code is simply printed to the machine code .s file when assembly code is generated.
Data Layout¶
A module may specify a target specific data layout string that specifies how data is to be laid out in memory. The syntax for the data layout is simply:
target datalayout = "layout specification"
The layout specification consists of a list of specifications separated by the minus sign character (‘-‘). Each specification starts with a letter and may include other information after the letter to define some aspect of the data layout. The specifications accepted are as follows:
E
- Specifies that the target lays out data in big-endian form. That is, the bits with the most significance have the lowest address location.
e
- Specifies that the target lays out data in little-endian form. That is, the bits with the least significance have the lowest address location.
S<size>
- Specifies the natural alignment of the stack in bits. Alignment promotion of stack variables is limited to the natural stack alignment to avoid dynamic stack realignment. The stack alignment must be a multiple of 8-bits. If omitted, the natural stack alignment defaults to “unspecified”, which does not prevent any alignment promotions.
p[n]:<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the size of a pointer and its
<abi>
and<pref>
erred alignments for address spacen
. All sizes are in bits. Specifying the<pref>
alignment is optional. If omitted, the preceding:
should be omitted too. The address space,n
is optional, and if not specified, denotes the default address space 0. The value ofn
must be in the range [1,2^23). i<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the alignment for an integer type of a given bit
<size>
. The value of<size>
must be in the range [1,2^23). v<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the alignment for a vector type of a given bit
<size>
. f<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the alignment for a floating point type of a given bit
<size>
. Only values of<size>
that are supported by the target will work. 32 (float) and 64 (double) are supported on all targets; 80 or 128 (different flavors of long double) are also supported on some targets. a<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the alignment for an aggregate type of a given bit
<size>
. s<size>:<abi>:<pref>
- This specifies the alignment for a stack object of a given bit
<size>
. n<size1>:<size2>:<size3>...
- This specifies a set of native integer widths for the target CPU in
bits. For example, it might contain
n32
for 32-bit PowerPC,n32:64
for PowerPC 64, orn8:16:32:64
for X86-64. Elements of this set are considered to support most general arithmetic operations efficiently.
When constructing the data layout for a given target, LLVM starts with a
default set of specifications which are then (possibly) overridden by
the specifications in the datalayout
keyword. The default
specifications are given in this list:
E
- big endianp:64:64:64
- 64-bit pointers with 64-bit alignment.p[n]:64:64:64
- Other address spaces are assumed to be the same as the default address space.S0
- natural stack alignment is unspecifiedi1:8:8
- i1 is 8-bit (byte) alignedi8:8:8
- i8 is 8-bit (byte) alignedi16:16:16
- i16 is 16-bit alignedi32:32:32
- i32 is 32-bit alignedi64:32:64
- i64 has ABI alignment of 32-bits but preferred alignment of 64-bitsf16:16:16
- half is 16-bit alignedf32:32:32
- float is 32-bit alignedf64:64:64
- double is 64-bit alignedf128:128:128
- quad is 128-bit alignedv64:64:64
- 64-bit vector is 64-bit alignedv128:128:128
- 128-bit vector is 128-bit aligneda0:0:64
- aggregates are 64-bit aligned
When LLVM is determining the alignment for a given type, it uses the following rules:
- If the type sought is an exact match for one of the specifications, that specification is used.
- If no match is found, and the type sought is an integer type, then the smallest integer type that is larger than the bitwidth of the sought type is used. If none of the specifications are larger than the bitwidth then the largest integer type is used. For example, given the default specifications above, the i7 type will use the alignment of i8 (next largest) while both i65 and i256 will use the alignment of i64 (largest specified).
- If no match is found, and the type sought is a vector type, then the largest vector type that is smaller than the sought vector type will be used as a fall back. This happens because <128 x double> can be implemented in terms of 64 <2 x double>, for example.
The function of the data layout string may not be what you expect. Notably, this is not a specification from the frontend of what alignment the code generator should use.
Instead, if specified, the target data layout is required to match what the ultimate code generator expects. This string is used by the mid-level optimizers to improve code, and this only works if it matches what the ultimate code generator uses. If you would like to generate IR that does not embed this target-specific detail into the IR, then you don’t have to specify the string. This will disable some optimizations that require precise layout information, but this also prevents those optimizations from introducing target specificity into the IR.
Target Triple¶
A module may specify a target triple string that describes the target host. The syntax for the target triple is simply:
target triple = "x86_64-apple-macosx10.7.0"
The target triple string consists of a series of identifiers delimited by the minus sign character (‘-‘). The canonical forms are:
ARCHITECTURE-VENDOR-OPERATING_SYSTEM
ARCHITECTURE-VENDOR-OPERATING_SYSTEM-ENVIRONMENT
This information is passed along to the backend so that it generates
code for the proper architecture. It’s possible to override this on the
command line with the -mtriple
command line option.
Pointer Aliasing Rules¶
Any memory access must be done through a pointer value associated with an address range of the memory access, otherwise the behavior is undefined. Pointer values are associated with address ranges according to the following rules:
- A pointer value is associated with the addresses associated with any value it is based on.
- An address of a global variable is associated with the address range of the variable’s storage.
- The result value of an allocation instruction is associated with the address range of the allocated storage.
- A null pointer in the default address-space is associated with no address.
- An integer constant other than zero or a pointer value returned from a function not defined within LLVM may be associated with address ranges allocated through mechanisms other than those provided by LLVM. Such ranges shall not overlap with any ranges of addresses allocated by mechanisms provided by LLVM.
A pointer value is based on another pointer value according to the following rules:
- A pointer value formed from a
getelementptr
operation is based on the first operand of thegetelementptr
. - The result value of a
bitcast
is based on the operand of thebitcast
. - A pointer value formed by an
inttoptr
is based on all pointer values that contribute (directly or indirectly) to the computation of the pointer’s value. - The “based on” relationship is transitive.
Note that this definition of “based” is intentionally similar to the definition of “based” in C99, though it is slightly weaker.
LLVM IR does not associate types with memory. The result type of a
load
merely indicates the size and alignment of the memory from
which to load, as well as the interpretation of the value. The first
operand type of a store
similarly only indicates the size and
alignment of the store.
Consequently, type-based alias analysis, aka TBAA, aka
-fstrict-aliasing
, is not applicable to general unadorned LLVM IR.
Metadata may be used to encode additional information
which specialized optimization passes may use to implement type-based
alias analysis.
Volatile Memory Accesses¶
Certain memory accesses, such as load‘s,
store‘s, and llvm.memcpy‘s may be
marked volatile
. The optimizers must not change the number of
volatile operations or change their order of execution relative to other
volatile operations. The optimizers may change the order of volatile
operations relative to non-volatile operations. This is not Java’s
“volatile” and has no cross-thread synchronization behavior.
IR-level volatile loads and stores cannot safely be optimized into llvm.memcpy or llvm.memmove intrinsics even when those intrinsics are flagged volatile. Likewise, the backend should never split or merge target-legal volatile load/store instructions.
Rationale
Platforms may rely on volatile loads and stores of natively supported data width to be executed as single instruction. For example, in C this holds for an l-value of volatile primitive type with native hardware support, but not necessarily for aggregate types. The frontend upholds these expectations, which are intentionally unspecified in the IR. The rules above ensure that IR transformation do not violate the frontend’s contract with the language.
Memory Model for Concurrent Operations¶
The LLVM IR does not define any way to start parallel threads of execution or to register signal handlers. Nonetheless, there are platform-specific ways to create them, and we define LLVM IR’s behavior in their presence. This model is inspired by the C++0x memory model.
For a more informal introduction to this model, see the LLVM Atomic Instructions and Concurrency Guide.
We define a happens-before partial order as the least partial order that
- Is a superset of single-thread program order, and
- When a synchronizes-with
b
, includes an edge froma
tob
. Synchronizes-with pairs are introduced by platform-specific techniques, like pthread locks, thread creation, thread joining, etc., and by atomic instructions. (See also Atomic Memory Ordering Constraints).
Note that program order does not introduce happens-before edges between a thread and signals executing inside that thread.
Every (defined) read operation (load instructions, memcpy, atomic loads/read-modify-writes, etc.) R reads a series of bytes written by (defined) write operations (store instructions, atomic stores/read-modify-writes, memcpy, etc.). For the purposes of this section, initialized globals are considered to have a write of the initializer which is atomic and happens before any other read or write of the memory in question. For each byte of a read R, Rbyte may see any write to the same byte, except:
- If write1 happens before write2, and write2 happens before Rbyte, then Rbyte does not see write1.
- If Rbyte happens before write3, then Rbyte does not see write3.
Given that definition, Rbyte is defined as follows:
- If R is volatile, the result is target-dependent. (Volatile is
supposed to give guarantees which can support
sig_atomic_t
in C/C++, and may be used for accesses to addresses which do not behave like normal memory. It does not generally provide cross-thread synchronization.) - Otherwise, if there is no write to the same byte that happens before
Rbyte, Rbyte returns
undef
for that byte. - Otherwise, if Rbyte may see exactly one write, Rbyte returns the value written by that write.
- Otherwise, if R is atomic, and all the writes Rbyte may see are atomic, it chooses one of the values written. See the Atomic Memory Ordering Constraints section for additional constraints on how the choice is made.
- Otherwise Rbyte returns
undef
.
R returns the value composed of the series of bytes it read. This
implies that some bytes within the value may be undef
without
the entire value being undef
. Note that this only defines the
semantics of the operation; it doesn’t mean that targets will emit more
than one instruction to read the series of bytes.
Note that in cases where none of the atomic intrinsics are used, this model places only one restriction on IR transformations on top of what is required for single-threaded execution: introducing a store to a byte which might not otherwise be stored is not allowed in general. (Specifically, in the case where another thread might write to and read from an address, introducing a store can change a load that may see exactly one write into a load that may see multiple writes.)
Atomic Memory Ordering Constraints¶
Atomic instructions (cmpxchg, atomicrmw, fence, atomic load, and atomic store) take an ordering parameter that determines which other atomic instructions on the same address they synchronize with. These semantics are borrowed from Java and C++0x, but are somewhat more colloquial. If these descriptions aren’t precise enough, check those specs (see spec references in the atomics guide). fence instructions treat these orderings somewhat differently since they don’t take an address. See that instruction’s documentation for details.
For a simpler introduction to the ordering constraints, see the LLVM Atomic Instructions and Concurrency Guide.
unordered
- The set of values that can be read is governed by the happens-before partial order. A value cannot be read unless some operation wrote it. This is intended to provide a guarantee strong enough to model Java’s non-volatile shared variables. This ordering cannot be specified for read-modify-write operations; it is not strong enough to make them atomic in any interesting way.
monotonic
- In addition to the guarantees of
unordered
, there is a single total order for modifications bymonotonic
operations on each address. All modification orders must be compatible with the happens-before order. There is no guarantee that the modification orders can be combined to a global total order for the whole program (and this often will not be possible). The read in an atomic read-modify-write operation (cmpxchg and atomicrmw) reads the value in the modification order immediately before the value it writes. If one atomic read happens before another atomic read of the same address, the later read must see the same value or a later value in the address’s modification order. This disallows reordering ofmonotonic
(or stronger) operations on the same address. If an address is writtenmonotonic
-ally by one thread, and other threadsmonotonic
-ally read that address repeatedly, the other threads must eventually see the write. This corresponds to the C++0x/C1xmemory_order_relaxed
. acquire
- In addition to the guarantees of
monotonic
, a synchronizes-with edge may be formed with arelease
operation. This is intended to model C++’smemory_order_acquire
. release
- In addition to the guarantees of
monotonic
, if this operation writes a value which is subsequently read by anacquire
operation, it synchronizes-with that operation. (This isn’t a complete description; see the C++0x definition of a release sequence.) This corresponds to the C++0x/C1xmemory_order_release
. acq_rel
(acquire+release)- Acts as both an
acquire
andrelease
operation on its address. This corresponds to the C++0x/C1xmemory_order_acq_rel
. seq_cst
(sequentially consistent)- In addition to the guarantees of
acq_rel
(acquire
for an operation which only reads,release
for an operation which only writes), there is a global total order on all sequentially-consistent operations on all addresses, which is consistent with the happens-before partial order and with the modification orders of all the affected addresses. Each sequentially-consistent read sees the last preceding write to the same address in this global order. This corresponds to the C++0x/C1xmemory_order_seq_cst
and Java volatile.
If an atomic operation is marked singlethread
, it only synchronizes
with or participates in modification and seq_cst total orderings with
other operations running in the same thread (for example, in signal
handlers).
Fast-Math Flags¶
LLVM IR floating-point binary ops (fadd, fsub, fmul, fdiv, frem) have the following flags that can set to enable otherwise unsafe floating point operations
nnan
- No NaNs - Allow optimizations to assume the arguments and result are not NaN. Such optimizations are required to retain defined behavior over NaNs, but the value of the result is undefined.
ninf
- No Infs - Allow optimizations to assume the arguments and result are not +/-Inf. Such optimizations are required to retain defined behavior over +/-Inf, but the value of the result is undefined.
nsz
- No Signed Zeros - Allow optimizations to treat the sign of a zero argument or result as insignificant.
arcp
- Allow Reciprocal - Allow optimizations to use the reciprocal of an argument rather than perform division.
fast
- Fast - Allow algebraically equivalent transformations that may dramatically change results in floating point (e.g. reassociate). This flag implies all the others.
Type System¶
The LLVM type system is one of the most important features of the intermediate representation. Being typed enables a number of optimizations to be performed on the intermediate representation directly, without having to do extra analyses on the side before the transformation. A strong type system makes it easier to read the generated code and enables novel analyses and transformations that are not feasible to perform on normal three address code representations.
Type Classifications¶
The types fall into a few useful classifications:
Classification | Types |
---|---|
integer | i1 , i2 , i3 , ... i8 , ... i16 , ... i32 , ...
i64 , ... |
floating point | half , float , double , x86_fp80 , fp128 ,
ppc_fp128 |
first class | integer, floating point, pointer, vector, structure, array, label, metadata. |
primitive | label, void, integer, floating point, x86mmx, metadata. |
derived | array, function, pointer, structure, vector, opaque. |
The first class types are perhaps the most important. Values of these types are the only ones which can be produced by instructions.
Primitive Types¶
The primitive types are the fundamental building blocks of the LLVM system.
Integer Type¶
Overview:¶
The integer type is a very simple type that simply specifies an arbitrary bit width for the integer type desired. Any bit width from 1 bit to 223-1 (about 8 million) can be specified.
Examples:¶
i1 |
a single-bit integer. |
i32 |
a 32-bit integer. |
i1942652 |
a really big integer of over 1 million bits. |
Floating Point Types¶
Type | Description |
---|---|
half |
16-bit floating point value |
float |
32-bit floating point value |
double |
64-bit floating point value |
fp128 |
128-bit floating point value (112-bit mantissa) |
x86_fp80 |
80-bit floating point value (X87) |
ppc_fp128 |
128-bit floating point value (two 64-bits) |
X86mmx Type¶
Overview:¶
The x86mmx type represents a value held in an MMX register on an x86 machine. The operations allowed on it are quite limited: parameters and return values, load and store, and bitcast. User-specified MMX instructions are represented as intrinsic or asm calls with arguments and/or results of this type. There are no arrays, vectors or constants of this type.
Syntax:¶
x86mmx
Metadata Type¶
Overview:¶
The metadata type represents embedded metadata. No derived types may be created from metadata except for function arguments.
Syntax:¶
metadata
Derived Types¶
The real power in LLVM comes from the derived types in the system. This is what allows a programmer to represent arrays, functions, pointers, and other useful types. Each of these types contain one or more element types which may be a primitive type, or another derived type. For example, it is possible to have a two dimensional array, using an array as the element type of another array.
Aggregate Types¶
Aggregate Types are a subset of derived types that can contain multiple member types. Arrays and structs are aggregate types. Vectors are not considered to be aggregate types.
Array Type¶
Overview:¶
The array type is a very simple derived type that arranges elements sequentially in memory. The array type requires a size (number of elements) and an underlying data type.
Syntax:¶
[<# elements> x <elementtype>]
The number of elements is a constant integer value; elementtype
may
be any type with a size.
Examples:¶
[40 x i32] |
Array of 40 32-bit integer values. |
[41 x i32] |
Array of 41 32-bit integer values. |
[4 x i8] |
Array of 4 8-bit integer values. |
Here are some examples of multidimensional arrays:
[3 x [4 x i32]] |
3x4 array of 32-bit integer values. |
[12 x [10 x float]] |
12x10 array of single precision floating point values. |
[2 x [3 x [4 x i16]]] |
2x3x4 array of 16-bit integer values. |
There is no restriction on indexing beyond the end of the array implied
by a static type (though there are restrictions on indexing beyond the
bounds of an allocated object in some cases). This means that
single-dimension ‘variable sized array’ addressing can be implemented in
LLVM with a zero length array type. An implementation of ‘pascal style
arrays’ in LLVM could use the type “{ i32, [0 x float]}
”, for
example.
Function Type¶
Overview:¶
The function type can be thought of as a function signature. It consists of a return type and a list of formal parameter types. The return type of a function type is a void type or first class type — except for label and metadata types.
Syntax:¶
<returntype> (<parameter list>)
...where ‘<parameter list>
‘ is a comma-separated list of type
specifiers. Optionally, the parameter list may include a type ...
, which
indicates that the function takes a variable number of arguments. Variable
argument functions can access their arguments with the variable argument
handling intrinsic functions. ‘<returntype>
‘ is any type
except label and metadata.
Examples:¶
i32 (i32) |
function taking an i32 , returning an i32 |
float (i16, i32 *) * |
Pointer to a function that takes an i16 and a pointer to i32 , returning float . |
i32 (i8*, ...) |
A vararg function that takes at least one pointer to i8 (char in C), which returns an integer. This is the signature for printf in LLVM. |
{i32, i32} (i32) |
A function taking an i32 , returning a structure containing two i32 values |
Structure Type¶
Overview:¶
The structure type is used to represent a collection of data members together in memory. The elements of a structure may be any type that has a size.
Structures in memory are accessed using ‘load
‘ and ‘store
‘ by
getting a pointer to a field with the ‘getelementptr
‘ instruction.
Structures in registers are accessed using the ‘extractvalue
‘ and
‘insertvalue
‘ instructions.
Structures may optionally be “packed” structures, which indicate that the alignment of the struct is one byte, and that there is no padding between the elements. In non-packed structs, padding between field types is inserted as defined by the DataLayout string in the module, which is required to match what the underlying code generator expects.
Structures can either be “literal” or “identified”. A literal structure
is defined inline with other types (e.g. {i32, i32}*
) whereas
identified types are always defined at the top level with a name.
Literal types are uniqued by their contents and can never be recursive
or opaque since there is no way to write one. Identified types can be
recursive, can be opaqued, and are never uniqued.
Syntax:¶
%T1 = type { <type list> } ; Identified normal struct type
%T2 = type <{ <type list> }> ; Identified packed struct type
Opaque Structure Types¶
Overview:¶
Opaque structure types are used to represent named structure types that do not have a body specified. This corresponds (for example) to the C notion of a forward declared structure.
Syntax:¶
%X = type opaque
%52 = type opaque
Examples:¶
opaque |
An opaque type. |
Pointer Type¶
Overview:¶
The pointer type is used to specify memory locations. Pointers are commonly used to reference objects in memory.
Pointer types may have an optional address space attribute defining the numbered address space where the pointed-to object resides. The default address space is number zero. The semantics of non-zero address spaces are target-specific.
Note that LLVM does not permit pointers to void (void*
) nor does it
permit pointers to labels (label*
). Use i8*
instead.
Syntax:¶
<type> *
Vector Type¶
Overview:¶
A vector type is a simple derived type that represents a vector of elements. Vector types are used when multiple primitive data are operated in parallel using a single instruction (SIMD). A vector type requires a size (number of elements) and an underlying primitive data type. Vector types are considered first class.
Syntax:¶
< <# elements> x <elementtype> >
The number of elements is a constant integer value larger than 0; elementtype may be any integer or floating point type, or a pointer to these types. Vectors of size zero are not allowed.
Examples:¶
<4 x i32> |
Vector of 4 32-bit integer values. |
<8 x float> |
Vector of 8 32-bit floating-point values. |
<2 x i64> |
Vector of 2 64-bit integer values. |
<4 x i64*> |
Vector of 4 pointers to 64-bit integer values. |
Constants¶
LLVM has several different basic types of constants. This section describes them all and their syntax.
Simple Constants¶
- Boolean constants
- The two strings ‘
true
‘ and ‘false
‘ are both valid constants of thei1
type. - Integer constants
- Standard integers (such as ‘4’) are constants of the integer type. Negative numbers may be used with integer types.
- Floating point constants
- Floating point constants use standard decimal notation (e.g. 123.421), exponential notation (e.g. 1.23421e+2), or a more precise hexadecimal notation (see below). The assembler requires the exact decimal value of a floating-point constant. For example, the assembler accepts 1.25 but rejects 1.3 because 1.3 is a repeating decimal in binary. Floating point constants must have a floating point type.
- Null pointer constants
- The identifier ‘
null
‘ is recognized as a null pointer constant and must be of pointer type.
The one non-intuitive notation for constants is the hexadecimal form of
floating point constants. For example, the form
‘double 0x432ff973cafa8000
‘ is equivalent to (but harder to read
than) ‘double 4.5e+15
‘. The only time hexadecimal floating point
constants are required (and the only time that they are generated by the
disassembler) is when a floating point constant must be emitted but it
cannot be represented as a decimal floating point number in a reasonable
number of digits. For example, NaN’s, infinities, and other special
values are represented in their IEEE hexadecimal format so that assembly
and disassembly do not cause any bits to change in the constants.
When using the hexadecimal form, constants of types half, float, and
double are represented using the 16-digit form shown above (which
matches the IEEE754 representation for double); half and float values
must, however, be exactly representable as IEEE 754 half and single
precision, respectively. Hexadecimal format is always used for long
double, and there are three forms of long double. The 80-bit format used
by x86 is represented as 0xK
followed by 20 hexadecimal digits. The
128-bit format used by PowerPC (two adjacent doubles) is represented by
0xM
followed by 32 hexadecimal digits. The IEEE 128-bit format is
represented by 0xL
followed by 32 hexadecimal digits. Long doubles
will only work if they match the long double format on your target.
The IEEE 16-bit format (half precision) is represented by 0xH
followed by 4 hexadecimal digits. All hexadecimal formats are big-endian
(sign bit at the left).
There are no constants of type x86mmx.
Complex Constants¶
Complex constants are a (potentially recursive) combination of simple constants and smaller complex constants.
- Structure constants
- Structure constants are represented with notation similar to
structure type definitions (a comma separated list of elements,
surrounded by braces (
{}
)). For example: “{ i32 4, float 17.0, i32* @G }
”, where “@G
” is declared as “@G = external global i32
”. Structure constants must have structure type, and the number and types of elements must match those specified by the type. - Array constants
- Array constants are represented with notation similar to array type
definitions (a comma separated list of elements, surrounded by
square brackets (
[]
)). For example: “[ i32 42, i32 11, i32 74 ]
”. Array constants must have array type, and the number and types of elements must match those specified by the type. - Vector constants
- Vector constants are represented with notation similar to vector
type definitions (a comma separated list of elements, surrounded by
less-than/greater-than’s (
<>
)). For example: “< i32 42, i32 11, i32 74, i32 100 >
”. Vector constants must have vector type, and the number and types of elements must match those specified by the type. - Zero initialization
- The string ‘
zeroinitializer
‘ can be used to zero initialize a value to zero of any type, including scalar and aggregate types. This is often used to avoid having to print large zero initializers (e.g. for large arrays) and is always exactly equivalent to using explicit zero initializers. - Metadata node
- A metadata node is a structure-like constant with metadata
type. For example:
“
metadata !{ i32 0, metadata !"test" }
”. Unlike other constants that are meant to be interpreted as part of the instruction stream, metadata is a place to attach additional information such as debug info.
Global Variable and Function Addresses¶
The addresses of global variables and functions are always implicitly valid (link-time) constants. These constants are explicitly referenced when the identifier for the global is used and always have pointer type. For example, the following is a legal LLVM file:
@X = global i32 17
@Y = global i32 42
@Z = global [2 x i32*] [ i32* @X, i32* @Y ]
Undefined Values¶
The string ‘undef
‘ can be used anywhere a constant is expected, and
indicates that the user of the value may receive an unspecified
bit-pattern. Undefined values may be of any type (other than ‘label
‘
or ‘void
‘) and be used anywhere a constant is permitted.
Undefined values are useful because they indicate to the compiler that the program is well defined no matter what value is used. This gives the compiler more freedom to optimize. Here are some examples of (potentially surprising) transformations that are valid (in pseudo IR):
%A = add %X, undef
%B = sub %X, undef
%C = xor %X, undef
Safe:
%A = undef
%B = undef
%C = undef
This is safe because all of the output bits are affected by the undef bits. Any output bit can have a zero or one depending on the input bits.
%A = or %X, undef
%B = and %X, undef
Safe:
%A = -1
%B = 0
Unsafe:
%A = undef
%B = undef
These logical operations have bits that are not always affected by the
input. For example, if %X
has a zero bit, then the output of the
‘and
‘ operation will always be a zero for that bit, no matter what
the corresponding bit from the ‘undef
‘ is. As such, it is unsafe to
optimize or assume that the result of the ‘and
‘ is ‘undef
‘.
However, it is safe to assume that all bits of the ‘undef
‘ could be
0, and optimize the ‘and
‘ to 0. Likewise, it is safe to assume that
all the bits of the ‘undef
‘ operand to the ‘or
‘ could be set,
allowing the ‘or
‘ to be folded to -1.
%A = select undef, %X, %Y
%B = select undef, 42, %Y
%C = select %X, %Y, undef
Safe:
%A = %X (or %Y)
%B = 42 (or %Y)
%C = %Y
Unsafe:
%A = undef
%B = undef
%C = undef
This set of examples shows that undefined ‘select
‘ (and conditional
branch) conditions can go either way, but they have to come from one
of the two operands. In the %A
example, if %X
and %Y
were
both known to have a clear low bit, then %A
would have to have a
cleared low bit. However, in the %C
example, the optimizer is
allowed to assume that the ‘undef
‘ operand could be the same as
%Y
, allowing the whole ‘select
‘ to be eliminated.
%A = xor undef, undef
%B = undef
%C = xor %B, %B
%D = undef
%E = icmp lt %D, 4
%F = icmp gte %D, 4
Safe:
%A = undef
%B = undef
%C = undef
%D = undef
%E = undef
%F = undef
This example points out that two ‘undef
‘ operands are not
necessarily the same. This can be surprising to people (and also matches
C semantics) where they assume that “X^X
” is always zero, even if
X
is undefined. This isn’t true for a number of reasons, but the
short answer is that an ‘undef
‘ “variable” can arbitrarily change
its value over its “live range”. This is true because the variable
doesn’t actually have a live range. Instead, the value is logically
read from arbitrary registers that happen to be around when needed, so
the value is not necessarily consistent over time. In fact, %A
and
%C
need to have the same semantics or the core LLVM “replace all
uses with” concept would not hold.
%A = fdiv undef, %X
%B = fdiv %X, undef
Safe:
%A = undef
b: unreachable
These examples show the crucial difference between an undefined value
and undefined behavior. An undefined value (like ‘undef
‘) is
allowed to have an arbitrary bit-pattern. This means that the %A
operation can be constant folded to ‘undef
‘, because the ‘undef
‘
could be an SNaN, and fdiv
is not (currently) defined on SNaN’s.
However, in the second example, we can make a more aggressive
assumption: because the undef
is allowed to be an arbitrary value,
we are allowed to assume that it could be zero. Since a divide by zero
has undefined behavior, we are allowed to assume that the operation
does not execute at all. This allows us to delete the divide and all
code after it. Because the undefined operation “can’t happen”, the
optimizer can assume that it occurs in dead code.
a: store undef -> %X
b: store %X -> undef
Safe:
a: <deleted>
b: unreachable
These examples reiterate the fdiv
example: a store of an undefined
value can be assumed to not have any effect; we can assume that the
value is overwritten with bits that happen to match what was already
there. However, a store to an undefined location could clobber
arbitrary memory, therefore, it has undefined behavior.
Poison Values¶
Poison values are similar to undef values, however they also represent the fact that an instruction or constant expression which cannot evoke side effects has nevertheless detected a condition which results in undefined behavior.
There is currently no way of representing a poison value in the IR; they
only exist when produced by operations such as add with
the nsw
flag.
Poison value behavior is defined in terms of value dependence:
- Values other than phi nodes depend on their operands.
- Phi nodes depend on the operand corresponding to their dynamic predecessor basic block.
- Function arguments depend on the corresponding actual argument values in the dynamic callers of their functions.
- Call instructions depend on the ret instructions that dynamically transfer control back to them.
- Invoke instructions depend on the ret, resume, or exception-throwing call instructions that dynamically transfer control back to them.
- Non-volatile loads and stores depend on the most recent stores to all of the referenced memory addresses, following the order in the IR (including loads and stores implied by intrinsics such as @llvm.memcpy.)
- An instruction with externally visible side effects depends on the most recent preceding instruction with externally visible side effects, following the order in the IR. (This includes volatile operations.)
- An instruction control-depends on a terminator instruction if the terminator instruction has multiple successors and the instruction is always executed when control transfers to one of the successors, and may not be executed when control is transferred to another.
- Additionally, an instruction also control-depends on a terminator instruction if the set of instructions it otherwise depends on would be different if the terminator had transferred control to a different successor.
- Dependence is transitive.
Poison Values have the same behavior as undef values, with the additional affect that any instruction which has a dependence on a poison value has undefined behavior.
Here are some examples:
entry:
%poison = sub nuw i32 0, 1 ; Results in a poison value.
%still_poison = and i32 %poison, 0 ; 0, but also poison.
%poison_yet_again = getelementptr i32* @h, i32 %still_poison
store i32 0, i32* %poison_yet_again ; memory at @h[0] is poisoned
store i32 %poison, i32* @g ; Poison value stored to memory.
%poison2 = load i32* @g ; Poison value loaded back from memory.
store volatile i32 %poison, i32* @g ; External observation; undefined behavior.
%narrowaddr = bitcast i32* @g to i16*
%wideaddr = bitcast i32* @g to i64*
%poison3 = load i16* %narrowaddr ; Returns a poison value.
%poison4 = load i64* %wideaddr ; Returns a poison value.
%cmp = icmp slt i32 %poison, 0 ; Returns a poison value.
br i1 %cmp, label %true, label %end ; Branch to either destination.
true:
store volatile i32 0, i32* @g ; This is control-dependent on %cmp, so
; it has undefined behavior.
br label %end
end:
%p = phi i32 [ 0, %entry ], [ 1, %true ]
; Both edges into this PHI are
; control-dependent on %cmp, so this
; always results in a poison value.
store volatile i32 0, i32* @g ; This would depend on the store in %true
; if %cmp is true, or the store in %entry
; otherwise, so this is undefined behavior.
br i1 %cmp, label %second_true, label %second_end
; The same branch again, but this time the
; true block doesn't have side effects.
second_true:
; No side effects!
ret void
second_end:
store volatile i32 0, i32* @g ; This time, the instruction always depends
; on the store in %end. Also, it is
; control-equivalent to %end, so this is
; well-defined (ignoring earlier undefined
; behavior in this example).
Addresses of Basic Blocks¶
blockaddress(@function, %block)
The ‘blockaddress
‘ constant computes the address of the specified
basic block in the specified function, and always has an i8*
type.
Taking the address of the entry block is illegal.
This value only has defined behavior when used as an operand to the
‘indirectbr‘ instruction, or for comparisons
against null. Pointer equality tests between labels addresses results in
undefined behavior — though, again, comparison against null is ok, and
no label is equal to the null pointer. This may be passed around as an
opaque pointer sized value as long as the bits are not inspected. This
allows ptrtoint
and arithmetic to be performed on these values so
long as the original value is reconstituted before the indirectbr
instruction.
Finally, some targets may provide defined semantics when using the value as the operand to an inline assembly, but that is target specific.
Constant Expressions¶
Constant expressions are used to allow expressions involving other constants to be used as constants. Constant expressions may be of any first class type and may involve any LLVM operation that does not have side effects (e.g. load and call are not supported). The following is the syntax for constant expressions:
trunc (CST to TYPE)
- Truncate a constant to another type. The bit size of CST must be larger than the bit size of TYPE. Both types must be integers.
zext (CST to TYPE)
- Zero extend a constant to another type. The bit size of CST must be smaller than the bit size of TYPE. Both types must be integers.
sext (CST to TYPE)
- Sign extend a constant to another type. The bit size of CST must be smaller than the bit size of TYPE. Both types must be integers.
fptrunc (CST to TYPE)
- Truncate a floating point constant to another floating point type. The size of CST must be larger than the size of TYPE. Both types must be floating point.
fpext (CST to TYPE)
- Floating point extend a constant to another type. The size of CST must be smaller or equal to the size of TYPE. Both types must be floating point.
fptoui (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a floating point constant to the corresponding unsigned integer constant. TYPE must be a scalar or vector integer type. CST must be of scalar or vector floating point type. Both CST and TYPE must be scalars, or vectors of the same number of elements. If the value won’t fit in the integer type, the results are undefined.
fptosi (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a floating point constant to the corresponding signed integer constant. TYPE must be a scalar or vector integer type. CST must be of scalar or vector floating point type. Both CST and TYPE must be scalars, or vectors of the same number of elements. If the value won’t fit in the integer type, the results are undefined.
uitofp (CST to TYPE)
- Convert an unsigned integer constant to the corresponding floating point constant. TYPE must be a scalar or vector floating point type. CST must be of scalar or vector integer type. Both CST and TYPE must be scalars, or vectors of the same number of elements. If the value won’t fit in the floating point type, the results are undefined.
sitofp (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a signed integer constant to the corresponding floating point constant. TYPE must be a scalar or vector floating point type. CST must be of scalar or vector integer type. Both CST and TYPE must be scalars, or vectors of the same number of elements. If the value won’t fit in the floating point type, the results are undefined.
ptrtoint (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a pointer typed constant to the corresponding integer
constant.
TYPE
must be an integer type.CST
must be of pointer type. TheCST
value is zero extended, truncated, or unchanged to make it fit inTYPE
. inttoptr (CST to TYPE)
- Convert an integer constant to a pointer constant. TYPE must be a pointer type. CST must be of integer type. The CST value is zero extended, truncated, or unchanged to make it fit in a pointer size. This one is really dangerous!
bitcast (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a constant, CST, to another TYPE. The constraints of the operands are the same as those for the bitcast instruction.
addrspacecast (CST to TYPE)
- Convert a constant pointer or constant vector of pointer, CST, to another TYPE in a different address space. The constraints of the operands are the same as those for the addrspacecast instruction.
getelementptr (CSTPTR, IDX0, IDX1, ...)
,getelementptr inbounds (CSTPTR, IDX0, IDX1, ...)
- Perform the getelementptr operation on constants. As with the getelementptr instruction, the index list may have zero or more indexes, which are required to make sense for the type of “CSTPTR”.
select (COND, VAL1, VAL2)
- Perform the select operation on constants.
icmp COND (VAL1, VAL2)
- Performs the icmp operation on constants.
fcmp COND (VAL1, VAL2)
- Performs the fcmp operation on constants.
extractelement (VAL, IDX)
- Perform the extractelement operation on constants.
insertelement (VAL, ELT, IDX)
- Perform the insertelement operation on constants.
shufflevector (VEC1, VEC2, IDXMASK)
- Perform the shufflevector operation on constants.
extractvalue (VAL, IDX0, IDX1, ...)
- Perform the extractvalue operation on constants. The index list is interpreted in a similar manner as indices in a ‘getelementptr‘ operation. At least one index value must be specified.
insertvalue (VAL, ELT, IDX0, IDX1, ...)
- Perform the insertvalue operation on constants. The index list is interpreted in a similar manner as indices in a ‘getelementptr‘ operation. At least one index value must be specified.
OPCODE (LHS, RHS)
- Perform the specified operation of the LHS and RHS constants. OPCODE may be any of the binary or bitwise binary operations. The constraints on operands are the same as those for the corresponding instruction (e.g. no bitwise operations on floating point values are allowed).
Other Values¶
Inline Assembler Expressions¶
LLVM supports inline assembler expressions (as opposed to Module-Level Inline Assembly) through the use of a special value. This value represents the inline assembler as a string (containing the instructions to emit), a list of operand constraints (stored as a string), a flag that indicates whether or not the inline asm expression has side effects, and a flag indicating whether the function containing the asm needs to align its stack conservatively. An example inline assembler expression is:
i32 (i32) asm "bswap $0", "=r,r"
Inline assembler expressions may only be used as the callee operand of a call or an invoke instruction. Thus, typically we have:
%X = call i32 asm "bswap $0", "=r,r"(i32 %Y)
Inline asms with side effects not visible in the constraint list must be
marked as having side effects. This is done through the use of the
‘sideeffect
‘ keyword, like so:
call void asm sideeffect "eieio", ""()
In some cases inline asms will contain code that will not work unless
the stack is aligned in some way, such as calls or SSE instructions on
x86, yet will not contain code that does that alignment within the asm.
The compiler should make conservative assumptions about what the asm
might contain and should generate its usual stack alignment code in the
prologue if the ‘alignstack
‘ keyword is present:
call void asm alignstack "eieio", ""()
Inline asms also support using non-standard assembly dialects. The
assumed dialect is ATT. When the ‘inteldialect
‘ keyword is present,
the inline asm is using the Intel dialect. Currently, ATT and Intel are
the only supported dialects. An example is:
call void asm inteldialect "eieio", ""()
If multiple keywords appear the ‘sideeffect
‘ keyword must come
first, the ‘alignstack
‘ keyword second and the ‘inteldialect
‘
keyword last.
Inline Asm Metadata¶
The call instructions that wrap inline asm nodes may have a
“!srcloc
” MDNode attached to it that contains a list of constant
integers. If present, the code generator will use the integer as the
location cookie value when report errors through the LLVMContext
error reporting mechanisms. This allows a front-end to correlate backend
errors that occur with inline asm back to the source code that produced
it. For example:
call void asm sideeffect "something bad", ""(), !srcloc !42
...
!42 = !{ i32 1234567 }
It is up to the front-end to make sense of the magic numbers it places in the IR. If the MDNode contains multiple constants, the code generator will use the one that corresponds to the line of the asm that the error occurs on.
Metadata Nodes and Metadata Strings¶
LLVM IR allows metadata to be attached to instructions in the program
that can convey extra information about the code to the optimizers and
code generator. One example application of metadata is source-level
debug information. There are two metadata primitives: strings and nodes.
All metadata has the metadata
type and is identified in syntax by a
preceding exclamation point (‘!
‘).
A metadata string is a string surrounded by double quotes. It can
contain any character by escaping non-printable characters with
“\xx
” where “xx
” is the two digit hex code. For example:
“!"test\00"
”.
Metadata nodes are represented with notation similar to structure constants (a comma separated list of elements, surrounded by braces and preceded by an exclamation point). Metadata nodes can have any values as their operand. For example:
!{ metadata !"test\00", i32 10}
A named metadata is a collection of metadata nodes, which can be looked up in the module symbol table. For example:
!foo = metadata !{!4, !3}
Metadata can be used as function arguments. Here llvm.dbg.value
function is using two metadata arguments:
call void @llvm.dbg.value(metadata !24, i64 0, metadata !25)
Metadata can be attached with an instruction. Here metadata !21
is
attached to the add
instruction using the !dbg
identifier:
%indvar.next = add i64 %indvar, 1, !dbg !21
More information about specific metadata nodes recognized by the optimizers and code generator is found below.
‘tbaa
‘ Metadata¶
In LLVM IR, memory does not have types, so LLVM’s own type system is not suitable for doing TBAA. Instead, metadata is added to the IR to describe a type system of a higher level language. This can be used to implement typical C/C++ TBAA, but it can also be used to implement custom alias analysis behavior for other languages.
The current metadata format is very simple. TBAA metadata nodes have up to three fields, e.g.:
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !"an example type tree" }
!1 = metadata !{ metadata !"int", metadata !0 }
!2 = metadata !{ metadata !"float", metadata !0 }
!3 = metadata !{ metadata !"const float", metadata !2, i64 1 }
The first field is an identity field. It can be any value, usually a metadata string, which uniquely identifies the type. The most important name in the tree is the name of the root node. Two trees with different root node names are entirely disjoint, even if they have leaves with common names.
The second field identifies the type’s parent node in the tree, or is null or omitted for a root node. A type is considered to alias all of its descendants and all of its ancestors in the tree. Also, a type is considered to alias all types in other trees, so that bitcode produced from multiple front-ends is handled conservatively.
If the third field is present, it’s an integer which if equal to 1
indicates that the type is “constant” (meaning
pointsToConstantMemory
should return true; see other useful
AliasAnalysis methods).
‘tbaa.struct
‘ Metadata¶
The llvm.memcpy is often used to implement aggregate assignment operations in C and similar languages, however it is defined to copy a contiguous region of memory, which is more than strictly necessary for aggregate types which contain holes due to padding. Also, it doesn’t contain any TBAA information about the fields of the aggregate.
!tbaa.struct
metadata can describe which memory subregions in a
memcpy are padding and what the TBAA tags of the struct are.
The current metadata format is very simple. !tbaa.struct
metadata
nodes are a list of operands which are in conceptual groups of three.
For each group of three, the first operand gives the byte offset of a
field in bytes, the second gives its size in bytes, and the third gives
its tbaa tag. e.g.:
!4 = metadata !{ i64 0, i64 4, metadata !1, i64 8, i64 4, metadata !2 }
This describes a struct with two fields. The first is at offset 0 bytes with size 4 bytes, and has tbaa tag !1. The second is at offset 8 bytes and has size 4 bytes and has tbaa tag !2.
Note that the fields need not be contiguous. In this example, there is a 4 byte gap between the two fields. This gap represents padding which does not carry useful data and need not be preserved.
‘fpmath
‘ Metadata¶
fpmath
metadata may be attached to any instruction of floating point
type. It can be used to express the maximum acceptable error in the
result of that instruction, in ULPs, thus potentially allowing the
compiler to use a more efficient but less accurate method of computing
it. ULP is defined as follows:
Ifx
is a real number that lies between two finite consecutive floating-point numbersa
andb
, without being equal to one of them, thenulp(x) = |b - a|
, otherwiseulp(x)
is the distance between the two non-equal finite floating-point numbers nearestx
. Moreover,ulp(NaN)
isNaN
.
The metadata node shall consist of a single positive floating point number representing the maximum relative error, for example:
!0 = metadata !{ float 2.5 } ; maximum acceptable inaccuracy is 2.5 ULPs
‘range
‘ Metadata¶
range
metadata may be attached only to loads of integer types. It
expresses the possible ranges the loaded value is in. The ranges are
represented with a flattened list of integers. The loaded value is known
to be in the union of the ranges defined by each consecutive pair. Each
pair has the following properties:
- The type must match the type loaded by the instruction.
- The pair
a,b
represents the range[a,b)
. - Both
a
andb
are constants. - The range is allowed to wrap.
- The range should not represent the full or empty set. That is,
a!=b
.
In addition, the pairs must be in signed order of the lower bound and they must be non-contiguous.
Examples:
%a = load i8* %x, align 1, !range !0 ; Can only be 0 or 1
%b = load i8* %y, align 1, !range !1 ; Can only be 255 (-1), 0 or 1
%c = load i8* %z, align 1, !range !2 ; Can only be 0, 1, 3, 4 or 5
%d = load i8* %z, align 1, !range !3 ; Can only be -2, -1, 3, 4 or 5
...
!0 = metadata !{ i8 0, i8 2 }
!1 = metadata !{ i8 255, i8 2 }
!2 = metadata !{ i8 0, i8 2, i8 3, i8 6 }
!3 = metadata !{ i8 -2, i8 0, i8 3, i8 6 }
‘llvm.loop
‘¶
It is sometimes useful to attach information to loop constructs. Currently,
loop metadata is implemented as metadata attached to the branch instruction
in the loop latch block. This type of metadata refer to a metadata node that is
guaranteed to be separate for each loop. The loop identifier metadata is
specified with the name llvm.loop
.
The loop identifier metadata is implemented using a metadata that refers to itself to avoid merging it with any other identifier metadata, e.g., during module linkage or function inlining. That is, each loop should refer to their own identification metadata even if they reside in separate functions. The following example contains loop identifier metadata for two separate loop constructs:
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !0 }
!1 = metadata !{ metadata !1 }
The loop identifier metadata can be used to specify additional per-loop
metadata. Any operands after the first operand can be treated as user-defined
metadata. For example the llvm.vectorizer.unroll
metadata is understood
by the loop vectorizer to indicate how many times to unroll the loop:
br i1 %exitcond, label %._crit_edge, label %.lr.ph, !llvm.loop !0
...
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !0, metadata !1 }
!1 = metadata !{ metadata !"llvm.vectorizer.unroll", i32 2 }
‘llvm.mem
‘¶
Metadata types used to annotate memory accesses with information helpful
for optimizations are prefixed with llvm.mem
.
‘llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access
‘ Metadata¶
For a loop to be parallel, in addition to using
the llvm.loop
metadata to mark the loop latch branch instruction,
also all of the memory accessing instructions in the loop body need to be
marked with the llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access
metadata. If there
is at least one memory accessing instruction not marked with the metadata,
the loop must be considered a sequential loop. This causes parallel loops to be
converted to sequential loops due to optimization passes that are unaware of
the parallel semantics and that insert new memory instructions to the loop
body.
Example of a loop that is considered parallel due to its correct use of
both llvm.loop
and llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access
metadata types that refer to the same loop identifier metadata.
for.body:
...
%0 = load i32* %arrayidx, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
store i32 %0, i32* %arrayidx4, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
br i1 %exitcond, label %for.end, label %for.body, !llvm.loop !0
for.end:
...
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !0 }
It is also possible to have nested parallel loops. In that case the memory accesses refer to a list of loop identifier metadata nodes instead of the loop identifier metadata node directly:
outer.for.body:
...
inner.for.body:
...
%0 = load i32* %arrayidx, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
store i32 %0, i32* %arrayidx4, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
br i1 %exitcond, label %inner.for.end, label %inner.for.body, !llvm.loop !1
inner.for.end:
...
%0 = load i32* %arrayidx, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
store i32 %0, i32* %arrayidx4, align 4, !llvm.mem.parallel_loop_access !0
...
br i1 %exitcond, label %outer.for.end, label %outer.for.body, !llvm.loop !2
outer.for.end: ; preds = %for.body
...
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !1, metadata !2 } ; a list of loop identifiers
!1 = metadata !{ metadata !1 } ; an identifier for the inner loop
!2 = metadata !{ metadata !2 } ; an identifier for the outer loop
‘llvm.vectorizer
‘¶
Metadata prefixed with llvm.vectorizer
is used to control per-loop
vectorization parameters such as vectorization factor and unroll factor.
llvm.vectorizer
metadata should be used in conjunction with llvm.loop
loop identification metadata.
‘llvm.vectorizer.unroll
‘ Metadata¶
This metadata instructs the loop vectorizer to unroll the specified
loop exactly N
times.
The first operand is the string llvm.vectorizer.unroll
and the second
operand is an integer specifying the unroll factor. For example:
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !"llvm.vectorizer.unroll", i32 4 }
Note that setting llvm.vectorizer.unroll
to 1 disables unrolling of the
loop.
If llvm.vectorizer.unroll
is set to 0 then the amount of unrolling will be
determined automatically.
‘llvm.vectorizer.width
‘ Metadata¶
This metadata sets the target width of the vectorizer to N
. Without
this metadata, the vectorizer will choose a width automatically.
Regardless of this metadata, the vectorizer will only vectorize loops if
it believes it is valid to do so.
The first operand is the string llvm.vectorizer.width
and the second
operand is an integer specifying the width. For example:
!0 = metadata !{ metadata !"llvm.vectorizer.width", i32 4 }
Note that setting llvm.vectorizer.width
to 1 disables vectorization of the
loop.
If llvm.vectorizer.width
is set to 0 then the width will be determined
automatically.
Module Flags Metadata¶
Information about the module as a whole is difficult to convey to LLVM’s
subsystems. The LLVM IR isn’t sufficient to transmit this information.
The llvm.module.flags
named metadata exists in order to facilitate
this. These flags are in the form of key / value pairs — much like a
dictionary — making it easy for any subsystem who cares about a flag to
look it up.
The llvm.module.flags
metadata contains a list of metadata triplets.
Each triplet has the following form:
- The first element is a behavior flag, which specifies the behavior when two (or more) modules are merged together, and it encounters two (or more) metadata with the same ID. The supported behaviors are described below.
- The second element is a metadata string that is a unique ID for the metadata. Each module may only have one flag entry for each unique ID (not including entries with the Require behavior).
- The third element is the value of the flag.
When two (or more) modules are merged together, the resulting
llvm.module.flags
metadata is the union of the modules’ flags. That is, for
each unique metadata ID string, there will be exactly one entry in the merged
modules llvm.module.flags
metadata table, and the value for that entry will
be determined by the merge behavior flag, as described below. The only exception
is that entries with the Require behavior are always preserved.
The following behaviors are supported:
Value | Behavior |
---|---|
1 |
|
2 |
|
3 |
|
4 |
|
5 |
|
6 |
|
It is an error for a particular unique flag ID to have multiple behaviors, except in the case of Require (which adds restrictions on another metadata value) or Override.
An example of module flags:
!0 = metadata !{ i32 1, metadata !"foo", i32 1 }
!1 = metadata !{ i32 4, metadata !"bar", i32 37 }
!2 = metadata !{ i32 2, metadata !"qux", i32 42 }
!3 = metadata !{ i32 3, metadata !"qux",
metadata !{
metadata !"foo", i32 1
}
}
!llvm.module.flags = !{ !0, !1, !2, !3 }
Metadata
!0
has the ID!"foo"
and the value ‘1’. The behavior if two or more!"foo"
flags are seen is to emit an error if their values are not equal.Metadata
!1
has the ID!"bar"
and the value ‘37’. The behavior if two or more!"bar"
flags are seen is to use the value ‘37’.Metadata
!2
has the ID!"qux"
and the value ‘42’. The behavior if two or more!"qux"
flags are seen is to emit a warning if their values are not equal.Metadata
!3
has the ID!"qux"
and the value:metadata !{ metadata !"foo", i32 1 }
The behavior is to emit an error if the
llvm.module.flags
does not contain a flag with the ID!"foo"
that has the value ‘1’ after linking is performed.
Objective-C Garbage Collection Module Flags Metadata¶
On the Mach-O platform, Objective-C stores metadata about garbage collection in a special section called “image info”. The metadata consists of a version number and a bitmask specifying what types of garbage collection are supported (if any) by the file. If two or more modules are linked together their garbage collection metadata needs to be merged rather than appended together.
The Objective-C garbage collection module flags metadata consists of the following key-value pairs:
Key | Value |
---|---|
Objective-C Version |
[Required] — The Objective-C ABI version. Valid values are 1 and 2. |
Objective-C Image Info Version |
[Required] — The version of the image info section. Currently always 0. |
Objective-C Image Info Section |
[Required] — The section to place the metadata. Valid values are
"__OBJC, __image_info, regular" for Objective-C ABI version 1, and
"__DATA,__objc_imageinfo, regular, no_dead_strip" for
Objective-C ABI version 2. |
Objective-C Garbage Collection |
[Required] — Specifies whether garbage collection is supported or not. Valid values are 0, for no garbage collection, and 2, for garbage collection supported. |
Objective-C GC Only |
[Optional] — Specifies that only garbage collection is supported.
If present, its value must be 6. This flag requires that the
Objective-C Garbage Collection flag have the value 2. |
Some important flag interactions:
- If a module with
Objective-C Garbage Collection
set to 0 is merged with a module withObjective-C Garbage Collection
set to 2, then the resulting module has theObjective-C Garbage Collection
flag set to 0. - A module with
Objective-C Garbage Collection
set to 0 cannot be merged with a module withObjective-C GC Only
set to 6.
Automatic Linker Flags Module Flags Metadata¶
Some targets support embedding flags to the linker inside individual object files. Typically this is used in conjunction with language extensions which allow source files to explicitly declare the libraries they depend on, and have these automatically be transmitted to the linker via object files.
These flags are encoded in the IR using metadata in the module flags section,
using the Linker Options
key. The merge behavior for this flag is required
to be AppendUnique
, and the value for the key is expected to be a metadata
node which should be a list of other metadata nodes, each of which should be a
list of metadata strings defining linker options.
For example, the following metadata section specifies two separate sets of
linker options, presumably to link against libz
and the Cocoa
framework:
!0 = metadata !{ i32 6, metadata !"Linker Options",
metadata !{
metadata !{ metadata !"-lz" },
metadata !{ metadata !"-framework", metadata !"Cocoa" } } }
!llvm.module.flags = !{ !0 }
The metadata encoding as lists of lists of options, as opposed to a collapsed list of options, is chosen so that the IR encoding can use multiple option strings to specify e.g., a single library, while still having that specifier be preserved as an atomic element that can be recognized by a target specific assembly writer or object file emitter.
Each individual option is required to be either a valid option for the target’s linker, or an option that is reserved by the target specific assembly writer or object file emitter. No other aspect of these options is defined by the IR.
Intrinsic Global Variables¶
LLVM has a number of “magic” global variables that contain data that
affect code generation or other IR semantics. These are documented here.
All globals of this sort should have a section specified as
“llvm.metadata
”. This section and all globals that start with
“llvm.
” are reserved for use by LLVM.
The ‘llvm.used
‘ Global Variable¶
The @llvm.used
global is an array which has
appending linkage. This array contains a list of
pointers to named global variables, functions and aliases which may optionally
have a pointer cast formed of bitcast or getelementptr. For example, a legal
use of it is:
@X = global i8 4
@Y = global i32 123
@llvm.used = appending global [2 x i8*] [
i8* @X,
i8* bitcast (i32* @Y to i8*)
], section "llvm.metadata"
If a symbol appears in the @llvm.used
list, then the compiler, assembler,
and linker are required to treat the symbol as if there is a reference to the
symbol that it cannot see (which is why they have to be named). For example, if
a variable has internal linkage and no references other than that from the
@llvm.used
list, it cannot be deleted. This is commonly used to represent
references from inline asms and other things the compiler cannot “see”, and
corresponds to “attribute((used))
” in GNU C.
On some targets, the code generator must emit a directive to the assembler or object file to prevent the assembler and linker from molesting the symbol.
The ‘llvm.compiler.used
‘ Global Variable¶
The @llvm.compiler.used
directive is the same as the @llvm.used
directive, except that it only prevents the compiler from touching the
symbol. On targets that support it, this allows an intelligent linker to
optimize references to the symbol without being impeded as it would be
by @llvm.used
.
This is a rare construct that should only be used in rare circumstances, and should not be exposed to source languages.
The ‘llvm.global_ctors
‘ Global Variable¶
%0 = type { i32, void ()* }
@llvm.global_ctors = appending global [1 x %0] [%0 { i32 65535, void ()* @ctor }]
The @llvm.global_ctors
array contains a list of constructor
functions and associated priorities. The functions referenced by this
array will be called in ascending order of priority (i.e. lowest first)
when the module is loaded. The order of functions with the same priority
is not defined.
The ‘llvm.global_dtors
‘ Global Variable¶
%0 = type { i32, void ()* }
@llvm.global_dtors = appending global [1 x %0] [%0 { i32 65535, void ()* @dtor }]
The @llvm.global_dtors
array contains a list of destructor functions
and associated priorities. The functions referenced by this array will
be called in descending order of priority (i.e. highest first) when the
module is loaded. The order of functions with the same priority is not
defined.
Instruction Reference¶
The LLVM instruction set consists of several different classifications of instructions: terminator instructions, binary instructions, bitwise binary instructions, memory instructions, and other instructions.
Terminator Instructions¶
As mentioned previously, every basic block in a
program ends with a “Terminator” instruction, which indicates which
block should be executed after the current block is finished. These
terminator instructions typically yield a ‘void
‘ value: they produce
control flow, not values (the one exception being the
‘invoke‘ instruction).
The terminator instructions are: ‘ret‘, ‘br‘, ‘switch‘, ‘indirectbr‘, ‘invoke‘, ‘resume‘, and ‘unreachable‘.
‘ret
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
ret <type> <value> ; Return a value from a non-void function
ret void ; Return from void function
Overview:¶
The ‘ret
‘ instruction is used to return control flow (and optionally
a value) from a function back to the caller.
There are two forms of the ‘ret
‘ instruction: one that returns a
value and then causes control flow, and one that just causes control
flow to occur.
Arguments:¶
The ‘ret
‘ instruction optionally accepts a single argument, the
return value. The type of the return value must be a ‘first
class‘ type.
A function is not well formed if it it has a non-void
return type and contains a ‘ret
‘ instruction with no return value or
a return value with a type that does not match its type, or if it has a
void return type and contains a ‘ret
‘ instruction with a return
value.
Semantics:¶
When the ‘ret
‘ instruction is executed, control flow returns back to
the calling function’s context. If the caller is a
“call” instruction, execution continues at the
instruction after the call. If the caller was an
“invoke” instruction, execution continues at the
beginning of the “normal” destination block. If the instruction returns
a value, that value shall set the call or invoke instruction’s return
value.
Example:¶
ret i32 5 ; Return an integer value of 5
ret void ; Return from a void function
ret { i32, i8 } { i32 4, i8 2 } ; Return a struct of values 4 and 2
‘br
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
br i1 <cond>, label <iftrue>, label <iffalse>
br label <dest> ; Unconditional branch
Overview:¶
The ‘br
‘ instruction is used to cause control flow to transfer to a
different basic block in the current function. There are two forms of
this instruction, corresponding to a conditional branch and an
unconditional branch.
Arguments:¶
The conditional branch form of the ‘br
‘ instruction takes a single
‘i1
‘ value and two ‘label
‘ values. The unconditional form of the
‘br
‘ instruction takes a single ‘label
‘ value as a target.
Semantics:¶
Upon execution of a conditional ‘br
‘ instruction, the ‘i1
‘
argument is evaluated. If the value is true
, control flows to the
‘iftrue
‘ label
argument. If “cond” is false
, control flows
to the ‘iffalse
‘ label
argument.
Example:¶
Test:
%cond = icmp eq i32 %a, %b
br i1 %cond, label %IfEqual, label %IfUnequal
IfEqual:
ret i32 1
IfUnequal:
ret i32 0
‘switch
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
switch <intty> <value>, label <defaultdest> [ <intty> <val>, label <dest> ... ]
Overview:¶
The ‘switch
‘ instruction is used to transfer control flow to one of
several different places. It is a generalization of the ‘br
‘
instruction, allowing a branch to occur to one of many possible
destinations.
Arguments:¶
The ‘switch
‘ instruction uses three parameters: an integer
comparison value ‘value
‘, a default ‘label
‘ destination, and an
array of pairs of comparison value constants and ‘label
‘s. The table
is not allowed to contain duplicate constant entries.
Semantics:¶
The switch
instruction specifies a table of values and destinations.
When the ‘switch
‘ instruction is executed, this table is searched
for the given value. If the value is found, control flow is transferred
to the corresponding destination; otherwise, control flow is transferred
to the default destination.
Implementation:¶
Depending on properties of the target machine and the particular
switch
instruction, this instruction may be code generated in
different ways. For example, it could be generated as a series of
chained conditional branches or with a lookup table.
Example:¶
; Emulate a conditional br instruction
%Val = zext i1 %value to i32
switch i32 %Val, label %truedest [ i32 0, label %falsedest ]
; Emulate an unconditional br instruction
switch i32 0, label %dest [ ]
; Implement a jump table:
switch i32 %val, label %otherwise [ i32 0, label %onzero
i32 1, label %onone
i32 2, label %ontwo ]
‘indirectbr
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
indirectbr <somety>* <address>, [ label <dest1>, label <dest2>, ... ]
Overview:¶
The ‘indirectbr
‘ instruction implements an indirect branch to a
label within the current function, whose address is specified by
“address
”. Address must be derived from a
blockaddress constant.
Arguments:¶
The ‘address
‘ argument is the address of the label to jump to. The
rest of the arguments indicate the full set of possible destinations
that the address may point to. Blocks are allowed to occur multiple
times in the destination list, though this isn’t particularly useful.
This destination list is required so that dataflow analysis has an accurate understanding of the CFG.
Semantics:¶
Control transfers to the block specified in the address argument. All possible destination blocks must be listed in the label list, otherwise this instruction has undefined behavior. This implies that jumps to labels defined in other functions have undefined behavior as well.
Implementation:¶
This is typically implemented with a jump through a register.
Example:¶
indirectbr i8* %Addr, [ label %bb1, label %bb2, label %bb3 ]
‘invoke
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = invoke [cconv] [ret attrs] <ptr to function ty> <function ptr val>(<function args>) [fn attrs]
to label <normal label> unwind label <exception label>
Overview:¶
The ‘invoke
‘ instruction causes control to transfer to a specified
function, with the possibility of control flow transfer to either the
‘normal
‘ label or the ‘exception
‘ label. If the callee function
returns with the “ret
” instruction, control flow will return to the
“normal” label. If the callee (or any indirect callees) returns via the
“resume” instruction or other exception handling
mechanism, control is interrupted and continued at the dynamically
nearest “exception” label.
The ‘exception
‘ label is a landing
pad for the exception. As such,
‘exception
‘ label is required to have the
“landingpad” instruction, which contains the
information about the behavior of the program after unwinding happens,
as its first non-PHI instruction. The restrictions on the
“landingpad
” instruction’s tightly couples it to the “invoke
”
instruction, so that the important information contained within the
“landingpad
” instruction can’t be lost through normal code motion.
Arguments:¶
This instruction requires several arguments:
- The optional “cconv” marker indicates which calling convention the call should use. If none is specified, the call defaults to using C calling conventions.
- The optional Parameter Attributes list for return
values. Only ‘
zeroext
‘, ‘signext
‘, and ‘inreg
‘ attributes are valid here. - ‘
ptr to function ty
‘: shall be the signature of the pointer to function value being invoked. In most cases, this is a direct function invocation, but indirectinvoke
‘s are just as possible, branching off an arbitrary pointer to function value. - ‘
function ptr val
‘: An LLVM value containing a pointer to a function to be invoked. - ‘
function args
‘: argument list whose types match the function signature argument types and parameter attributes. All arguments must be of first class type. If the function signature indicates the function accepts a variable number of arguments, the extra arguments can be specified. - ‘
normal label
‘: the label reached when the called function executes a ‘ret
‘ instruction. - ‘
exception label
‘: the label reached when a callee returns via the resume instruction or other exception handling mechanism. - The optional function attributes list. Only
‘
noreturn
‘, ‘nounwind
‘, ‘readonly
‘ and ‘readnone
‘ attributes are valid here.
Semantics:¶
This instruction is designed to operate as a standard ‘call
‘
instruction in most regards. The primary difference is that it
establishes an association with a label, which is used by the runtime
library to unwind the stack.
This instruction is used in languages with destructors to ensure that
proper cleanup is performed in the case of either a longjmp
or a
thrown exception. Additionally, this is important for implementation of
‘catch
‘ clauses in high-level languages that support them.
For the purposes of the SSA form, the definition of the value returned
by the ‘invoke
‘ instruction is deemed to occur on the edge from the
current block to the “normal” label. If the callee unwinds then no
return value is available.
Example:¶
%retval = invoke i32 @Test(i32 15) to label %Continue
unwind label %TestCleanup ; {i32}:retval set
%retval = invoke coldcc i32 %Testfnptr(i32 15) to label %Continue
unwind label %TestCleanup ; {i32}:retval set
‘resume
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
resume <type> <value>
Overview:¶
The ‘resume
‘ instruction is a terminator instruction that has no
successors.
Arguments:¶
The ‘resume
‘ instruction requires one argument, which must have the
same type as the result of any ‘landingpad
‘ instruction in the same
function.
Semantics:¶
The ‘resume
‘ instruction resumes propagation of an existing
(in-flight) exception whose unwinding was interrupted with a
landingpad instruction.
Example:¶
resume { i8*, i32 } %exn
‘unreachable
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
unreachable
Overview:¶
The ‘unreachable
‘ instruction has no defined semantics. This
instruction is used to inform the optimizer that a particular portion of
the code is not reachable. This can be used to indicate that the code
after a no-return function cannot be reached, and other facts.
Semantics:¶
The ‘unreachable
‘ instruction has no defined semantics.
Binary Operations¶
Binary operators are used to do most of the computation in a program. They require two operands of the same type, execute an operation on them, and produce a single value. The operands might represent multiple data, as is the case with the vector data type. The result value has the same type as its operands.
There are several different binary operators:
‘add
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = add <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = add nuw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = add nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = add nuw nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘add
‘ instruction returns the sum of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘add
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the integer sum of the two operands.
If the sum has unsigned overflow, the result returned is the mathematical result modulo 2n, where n is the bit width of the result.
Because LLVM integers use a two’s complement representation, this instruction is appropriate for both signed and unsigned integers.
nuw
and nsw
stand for “No Unsigned Wrap” and “No Signed Wrap”,
respectively. If the nuw
and/or nsw
keywords are present, the
result value of the add
is a poison value if
unsigned and/or signed overflow, respectively, occurs.
Example:¶
<result> = add i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 + %var
‘fadd
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fadd [fast-math flags]* <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘fadd
‘ instruction returns the sum of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘fadd
‘ instruction must be floating
point or vector of floating point values.
Both arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the floating point sum of the two operands. This instruction can also take any number of fast-math flags, which are optimization hints to enable otherwise unsafe floating point optimizations:
Example:¶
<result> = fadd float 4.0, %var ; yields {float}:result = 4.0 + %var
‘sub
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = sub <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = sub nuw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = sub nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = sub nuw nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘sub
‘ instruction returns the difference of its two operands.
Note that the ‘sub
‘ instruction is used to represent the ‘neg
‘
instruction present in most other intermediate representations.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘sub
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the integer difference of the two operands.
If the difference has unsigned overflow, the result returned is the mathematical result modulo 2n, where n is the bit width of the result.
Because LLVM integers use a two’s complement representation, this instruction is appropriate for both signed and unsigned integers.
nuw
and nsw
stand for “No Unsigned Wrap” and “No Signed Wrap”,
respectively. If the nuw
and/or nsw
keywords are present, the
result value of the sub
is a poison value if
unsigned and/or signed overflow, respectively, occurs.
Example:¶
<result> = sub i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 - %var
<result> = sub i32 0, %val ; yields {i32}:result = -%var
‘fsub
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fsub [fast-math flags]* <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘fsub
‘ instruction returns the difference of its two operands.
Note that the ‘fsub
‘ instruction is used to represent the ‘fneg
‘
instruction present in most other intermediate representations.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘fsub
‘ instruction must be floating
point or vector of floating point values.
Both arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the floating point difference of the two operands. This instruction can also take any number of fast-math flags, which are optimization hints to enable otherwise unsafe floating point optimizations:
Example:¶
<result> = fsub float 4.0, %var ; yields {float}:result = 4.0 - %var
<result> = fsub float -0.0, %val ; yields {float}:result = -%var
‘mul
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = mul <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = mul nuw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = mul nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = mul nuw nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘mul
‘ instruction returns the product of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘mul
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the integer product of the two operands.
If the result of the multiplication has unsigned overflow, the result returned is the mathematical result modulo 2n, where n is the bit width of the result.
Because LLVM integers use a two’s complement representation, and the
result is the same width as the operands, this instruction returns the
correct result for both signed and unsigned integers. If a full product
(e.g. i32
* i32
-> i64
) is needed, the operands should be
sign-extended or zero-extended as appropriate to the width of the full
product.
nuw
and nsw
stand for “No Unsigned Wrap” and “No Signed Wrap”,
respectively. If the nuw
and/or nsw
keywords are present, the
result value of the mul
is a poison value if
unsigned and/or signed overflow, respectively, occurs.
Example:¶
<result> = mul i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 * %var
‘fmul
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fmul [fast-math flags]* <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘fmul
‘ instruction returns the product of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘fmul
‘ instruction must be floating
point or vector of floating point values.
Both arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the floating point product of the two operands. This instruction can also take any number of fast-math flags, which are optimization hints to enable otherwise unsafe floating point optimizations:
Example:¶
<result> = fmul float 4.0, %var ; yields {float}:result = 4.0 * %var
‘udiv
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = udiv <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = udiv exact <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘udiv
‘ instruction returns the quotient of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘udiv
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the unsigned integer quotient of the two operands.
Note that unsigned integer division and signed integer division are
distinct operations; for signed integer division, use ‘sdiv
‘.
Division by zero leads to undefined behavior.
If the exact
keyword is present, the result value of the udiv
is
a poison value if %op1 is not a multiple of %op2 (as
such, “((a udiv exact b) mul b) == a”).
Example:¶
<result> = udiv i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 / %var
‘sdiv
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = sdiv <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = sdiv exact <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘sdiv
‘ instruction returns the quotient of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘sdiv
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the signed integer quotient of the two operands rounded towards zero.
Note that signed integer division and unsigned integer division are
distinct operations; for unsigned integer division, use ‘udiv
‘.
Division by zero leads to undefined behavior. Overflow also leads to undefined behavior; this is a rare case, but can occur, for example, by doing a 32-bit division of -2147483648 by -1.
If the exact
keyword is present, the result value of the sdiv
is
a poison value if the result would be rounded.
Example:¶
<result> = sdiv i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 / %var
‘fdiv
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fdiv [fast-math flags]* <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘fdiv
‘ instruction returns the quotient of its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘fdiv
‘ instruction must be floating
point or vector of floating point values.
Both arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is the floating point quotient of the two operands. This instruction can also take any number of fast-math flags, which are optimization hints to enable otherwise unsafe floating point optimizations:
Example:¶
<result> = fdiv float 4.0, %var ; yields {float}:result = 4.0 / %var
‘urem
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = urem <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘urem
‘ instruction returns the remainder from the unsigned
division of its two arguments.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘urem
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
This instruction returns the unsigned integer remainder of a division. This instruction always performs an unsigned division to get the remainder.
Note that unsigned integer remainder and signed integer remainder are
distinct operations; for signed integer remainder, use ‘srem
‘.
Taking the remainder of a division by zero leads to undefined behavior.
Example:¶
<result> = urem i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 % %var
‘srem
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = srem <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘srem
‘ instruction returns the remainder from the signed
division of its two operands. This instruction can also take
vector versions of the values in which case the elements
must be integers.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘srem
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
This instruction returns the remainder of a division (where the result
is either zero or has the same sign as the dividend, op1
), not the
modulo operator (where the result is either zero or has the same sign
as the divisor, op2
) of a value. For more information about the
difference, see The Math
Forum. For a
table of how this is implemented in various languages, please see
Wikipedia: modulo
operation.
Note that signed integer remainder and unsigned integer remainder are
distinct operations; for unsigned integer remainder, use ‘urem
‘.
Taking the remainder of a division by zero leads to undefined behavior. Overflow also leads to undefined behavior; this is a rare case, but can occur, for example, by taking the remainder of a 32-bit division of -2147483648 by -1. (The remainder doesn’t actually overflow, but this rule lets srem be implemented using instructions that return both the result of the division and the remainder.)
Example:¶
<result> = srem i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 % %var
‘frem
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = frem [fast-math flags]* <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘frem
‘ instruction returns the remainder from the division of
its two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘frem
‘ instruction must be floating
point or vector of floating point values.
Both arguments must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
This instruction returns the remainder of a division. The remainder has the same sign as the dividend. This instruction can also take any number of fast-math flags, which are optimization hints to enable otherwise unsafe floating point optimizations:
Example:¶
<result> = frem float 4.0, %var ; yields {float}:result = 4.0 % %var
Bitwise Binary Operations¶
Bitwise binary operators are used to do various forms of bit-twiddling in a program. They are generally very efficient instructions and can commonly be strength reduced from other instructions. They require two operands of the same type, execute an operation on them, and produce a single value. The resulting value is the same type as its operands.
‘shl
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = shl <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = shl nuw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = shl nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = shl nuw nsw <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘shl
‘ instruction returns the first operand shifted to the left
a specified number of bits.
Arguments:¶
Both arguments to the ‘shl
‘ instruction must be the same
integer or vector of integer type.
‘op2
‘ is treated as an unsigned value.
Semantics:¶
The value produced is op1
* 2op2 mod 2n,
where n
is the width of the result. If op2
is (statically or
dynamically) negative or equal to or larger than the number of bits in
op1
, the result is undefined. If the arguments are vectors, each
vector element of op1
is shifted by the corresponding shift amount
in op2
.
If the nuw
keyword is present, then the shift produces a poison
value if it shifts out any non-zero bits. If the
nsw
keyword is present, then the shift produces a poison
value if it shifts out any bits that disagree with the
resultant sign bit. As such, NUW/NSW have the same semantics as they
would if the shift were expressed as a mul instruction with the same
nsw/nuw bits in (mul %op1, (shl 1, %op2)).
Example:¶
<result> = shl i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}: 4 << %var
<result> = shl i32 4, 2 ; yields {i32}: 16
<result> = shl i32 1, 10 ; yields {i32}: 1024
<result> = shl i32 1, 32 ; undefined
<result> = shl <2 x i32> < i32 1, i32 1>, < i32 1, i32 2> ; yields: result=<2 x i32> < i32 2, i32 4>
‘lshr
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = lshr <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = lshr exact <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘lshr
‘ instruction (logical shift right) returns the first
operand shifted to the right a specified number of bits with zero fill.
Arguments:¶
Both arguments to the ‘lshr
‘ instruction must be the same
integer or vector of integer type.
‘op2
‘ is treated as an unsigned value.
Semantics:¶
This instruction always performs a logical shift right operation. The
most significant bits of the result will be filled with zero bits after
the shift. If op2
is (statically or dynamically) equal to or larger
than the number of bits in op1
, the result is undefined. If the
arguments are vectors, each vector element of op1
is shifted by the
corresponding shift amount in op2
.
If the exact
keyword is present, the result value of the lshr
is
a poison value if any of the bits shifted out are
non-zero.
Example:¶
<result> = lshr i32 4, 1 ; yields {i32}:result = 2
<result> = lshr i32 4, 2 ; yields {i32}:result = 1
<result> = lshr i8 4, 3 ; yields {i8}:result = 0
<result> = lshr i8 -2, 1 ; yields {i8}:result = 0x7F
<result> = lshr i32 1, 32 ; undefined
<result> = lshr <2 x i32> < i32 -2, i32 4>, < i32 1, i32 2> ; yields: result=<2 x i32> < i32 0x7FFFFFFF, i32 1>
‘ashr
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = ashr <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
<result> = ashr exact <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘ashr
‘ instruction (arithmetic shift right) returns the first
operand shifted to the right a specified number of bits with sign
extension.
Arguments:¶
Both arguments to the ‘ashr
‘ instruction must be the same
integer or vector of integer type.
‘op2
‘ is treated as an unsigned value.
Semantics:¶
This instruction always performs an arithmetic shift right operation,
The most significant bits of the result will be filled with the sign bit
of op1
. If op2
is (statically or dynamically) equal to or larger
than the number of bits in op1
, the result is undefined. If the
arguments are vectors, each vector element of op1
is shifted by the
corresponding shift amount in op2
.
If the exact
keyword is present, the result value of the ashr
is
a poison value if any of the bits shifted out are
non-zero.
Example:¶
<result> = ashr i32 4, 1 ; yields {i32}:result = 2
<result> = ashr i32 4, 2 ; yields {i32}:result = 1
<result> = ashr i8 4, 3 ; yields {i8}:result = 0
<result> = ashr i8 -2, 1 ; yields {i8}:result = -1
<result> = ashr i32 1, 32 ; undefined
<result> = ashr <2 x i32> < i32 -2, i32 4>, < i32 1, i32 3> ; yields: result=<2 x i32> < i32 -1, i32 0>
‘and
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = and <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘and
‘ instruction returns the bitwise logical and of its two
operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘and
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Example:¶
<result> = and i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 & %var
<result> = and i32 15, 40 ; yields {i32}:result = 8
<result> = and i32 4, 8 ; yields {i32}:result = 0
‘or
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = or <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘or
‘ instruction returns the bitwise logical inclusive or of its
two operands.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘or
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Example:¶
<result> = or i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 | %var
<result> = or i32 15, 40 ; yields {i32}:result = 47
<result> = or i32 4, 8 ; yields {i32}:result = 12
‘xor
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = xor <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {ty}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘xor
‘ instruction returns the bitwise logical exclusive or of
its two operands. The xor
is used to implement the “one’s
complement” operation, which is the “~” operator in C.
Arguments:¶
The two arguments to the ‘xor
‘ instruction must be
integer or vector of integer values. Both
arguments must have identical types.
Example:¶
<result> = xor i32 4, %var ; yields {i32}:result = 4 ^ %var
<result> = xor i32 15, 40 ; yields {i32}:result = 39
<result> = xor i32 4, 8 ; yields {i32}:result = 12
<result> = xor i32 %V, -1 ; yields {i32}:result = ~%V
Vector Operations¶
LLVM supports several instructions to represent vector operations in a target-independent manner. These instructions cover the element-access and vector-specific operations needed to process vectors effectively. While LLVM does directly support these vector operations, many sophisticated algorithms will want to use target-specific intrinsics to take full advantage of a specific target.
‘extractelement
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = extractelement <n x <ty>> <val>, i32 <idx> ; yields <ty>
Overview:¶
The ‘extractelement
‘ instruction extracts a single scalar element
from a vector at a specified index.
Arguments:¶
The first operand of an ‘extractelement
‘ instruction is a value of
vector type. The second operand is an index indicating
the position from which to extract the element. The index may be a
variable.
Semantics:¶
The result is a scalar of the same type as the element type of val
.
Its value is the value at position idx
of val
. If idx
exceeds the length of val
, the results are undefined.
Example:¶
<result> = extractelement <4 x i32> %vec, i32 0 ; yields i32
‘insertelement
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = insertelement <n x <ty>> <val>, <ty> <elt>, i32 <idx> ; yields <n x <ty>>
Overview:¶
The ‘insertelement
‘ instruction inserts a scalar element into a
vector at a specified index.
Arguments:¶
The first operand of an ‘insertelement
‘ instruction is a value of
vector type. The second operand is a scalar value whose
type must equal the element type of the first operand. The third operand
is an index indicating the position at which to insert the value. The
index may be a variable.
Semantics:¶
The result is a vector of the same type as val
. Its element values
are those of val
except at position idx
, where it gets the value
elt
. If idx
exceeds the length of val
, the results are
undefined.
Example:¶
<result> = insertelement <4 x i32> %vec, i32 1, i32 0 ; yields <4 x i32>
‘shufflevector
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = shufflevector <n x <ty>> <v1>, <n x <ty>> <v2>, <m x i32> <mask> ; yields <m x <ty>>
Overview:¶
The ‘shufflevector
‘ instruction constructs a permutation of elements
from two input vectors, returning a vector with the same element type as
the input and length that is the same as the shuffle mask.
Arguments:¶
The first two operands of a ‘shufflevector
‘ instruction are vectors
with the same type. The third argument is a shuffle mask whose element
type is always ‘i32’. The result of the instruction is a vector whose
length is the same as the shuffle mask and whose element type is the
same as the element type of the first two operands.
The shuffle mask operand is required to be a constant vector with either constant integer or undef values.
Semantics:¶
The elements of the two input vectors are numbered from left to right across both of the vectors. The shuffle mask operand specifies, for each element of the result vector, which element of the two input vectors the result element gets. The element selector may be undef (meaning “don’t care”) and the second operand may be undef if performing a shuffle from only one vector.
Example:¶
<result> = shufflevector <4 x i32> %v1, <4 x i32> %v2,
<4 x i32> <i32 0, i32 4, i32 1, i32 5> ; yields <4 x i32>
<result> = shufflevector <4 x i32> %v1, <4 x i32> undef,
<4 x i32> <i32 0, i32 1, i32 2, i32 3> ; yields <4 x i32> - Identity shuffle.
<result> = shufflevector <8 x i32> %v1, <8 x i32> undef,
<4 x i32> <i32 0, i32 1, i32 2, i32 3> ; yields <4 x i32>
<result> = shufflevector <4 x i32> %v1, <4 x i32> %v2,
<8 x i32> <i32 0, i32 1, i32 2, i32 3, i32 4, i32 5, i32 6, i32 7 > ; yields <8 x i32>
Aggregate Operations¶
LLVM supports several instructions for working with aggregate values.
‘extractvalue
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = extractvalue <aggregate type> <val>, <idx>{, <idx>}*
Overview:¶
The ‘extractvalue
‘ instruction extracts the value of a member field
from an aggregate value.
Arguments:¶
The first operand of an ‘extractvalue
‘ instruction is a value of
struct or array type. The operands are
constant indices to specify which value to extract in a similar manner
as indices in a ‘getelementptr
‘ instruction.
The major differences to getelementptr
indexing are:
- Since the value being indexed is not a pointer, the first index is omitted and assumed to be zero.
- At least one index must be specified.
- Not only struct indices but also array indices must be in bounds.
Semantics:¶
The result is the value at the position in the aggregate specified by the index operands.
Example:¶
<result> = extractvalue {i32, float} %agg, 0 ; yields i32
‘insertvalue
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = insertvalue <aggregate type> <val>, <ty> <elt>, <idx>{, <idx>}* ; yields <aggregate type>
Arguments:¶
The first operand of an ‘insertvalue
‘ instruction is a value of
struct or array type. The second operand is
a first-class value to insert. The following operands are constant
indices indicating the position at which to insert the value in a
similar manner as indices in a ‘extractvalue
‘ instruction. The value
to insert must have the same type as the value identified by the
indices.
Semantics:¶
The result is an aggregate of the same type as val
. Its value is
that of val
except that the value at the position specified by the
indices is that of elt
.
Example:¶
%agg1 = insertvalue {i32, float} undef, i32 1, 0 ; yields {i32 1, float undef}
%agg2 = insertvalue {i32, float} %agg1, float %val, 1 ; yields {i32 1, float %val}
%agg3 = insertvalue {i32, {float}} %agg1, float %val, 1, 0 ; yields {i32 1, float %val}
Memory Access and Addressing Operations¶
A key design point of an SSA-based representation is how it represents memory. In LLVM, no memory locations are in SSA form, which makes things very simple. This section describes how to read, write, and allocate memory in LLVM.
‘alloca
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = alloca <type>[, <ty> <NumElements>][, align <alignment>] ; yields {type*}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘alloca
‘ instruction allocates memory on the stack frame of the
currently executing function, to be automatically released when this
function returns to its caller. The object is always allocated in the
generic address space (address space zero).
Arguments:¶
The ‘alloca
‘ instruction allocates sizeof(<type>)*NumElements
bytes of memory on the runtime stack, returning a pointer of the
appropriate type to the program. If “NumElements” is specified, it is
the number of elements allocated, otherwise “NumElements” is defaulted
to be one. If a constant alignment is specified, the value result of the
allocation is guaranteed to be aligned to at least that boundary. If not
specified, or if zero, the target can choose to align the allocation on
any convenient boundary compatible with the type.
‘type
‘ may be any sized type.
Semantics:¶
Memory is allocated; a pointer is returned. The operation is undefined
if there is insufficient stack space for the allocation. ‘alloca
‘d
memory is automatically released when the function returns. The
‘alloca
‘ instruction is commonly used to represent automatic
variables that must have an address available. When the function returns
(either with the ret
or resume
instructions), the memory is
reclaimed. Allocating zero bytes is legal, but the result is undefined.
The order in which memory is allocated (ie., which way the stack grows)
is not specified.
Example:¶
%ptr = alloca i32 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
%ptr = alloca i32, i32 4 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
%ptr = alloca i32, i32 4, align 1024 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
%ptr = alloca i32, align 1024 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
‘load
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = load [volatile] <ty>* <pointer>[, align <alignment>][, !nontemporal !<index>][, !invariant.load !<index>]
<result> = load atomic [volatile] <ty>* <pointer> [singlethread] <ordering>, align <alignment>
!<index> = !{ i32 1 }
Overview:¶
The ‘load
‘ instruction is used to read from memory.
Arguments:¶
The argument to the load
instruction specifies the memory address
from which to load. The pointer must point to a first
class type. If the load
is marked as volatile
,
then the optimizer is not allowed to modify the number or order of
execution of this load
with other volatile
operations.
If the load
is marked as atomic
, it takes an extra
ordering and optional singlethread
argument. The
release
and acq_rel
orderings are not valid on load
instructions. Atomic loads produce defined results
when they may see multiple atomic stores. The type of the pointee must
be an integer type whose bit width is a power of two greater than or
equal to eight and less than or equal to a target-specific size limit.
align
must be explicitly specified on atomic loads, and the load has
undefined behavior if the alignment is not set to a value which is at
least the size in bytes of the pointee. !nontemporal
does not have
any defined semantics for atomic loads.
The optional constant align
argument specifies the alignment of the
operation (that is, the alignment of the memory address). A value of 0
or an omitted align
argument means that the operation has the ABI
alignment for the target. It is the responsibility of the code emitter
to ensure that the alignment information is correct. Overestimating the
alignment results in undefined behavior. Underestimating the alignment
may produce less efficient code. An alignment of 1 is always safe.
The optional !nontemporal
metadata must reference a single
metadata name <index>
corresponding to a metadata node with one
i32
entry of value 1. The existence of the !nontemporal
metadata on the instruction tells the optimizer and code generator
that this load is not expected to be reused in the cache. The code
generator may select special instructions to save cache bandwidth, such
as the MOVNT
instruction on x86.
The optional !invariant.load
metadata must reference a single
metadata name <index>
corresponding to a metadata node with no
entries. The existence of the !invariant.load
metadata on the
instruction tells the optimizer and code generator that this load
address points to memory which does not change value during program
execution. The optimizer may then move this load around, for example, by
hoisting it out of loops using loop invariant code motion.
Semantics:¶
The location of memory pointed to is loaded. If the value being loaded
is of scalar type then the number of bytes read does not exceed the
minimum number of bytes needed to hold all bits of the type. For
example, loading an i24
reads at most three bytes. When loading a
value of a type like i20
with a size that is not an integral number
of bytes, the result is undefined if the value was not originally
written using a store of the same type.
Examples:¶
%ptr = alloca i32 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
store i32 3, i32* %ptr ; yields {void}
%val = load i32* %ptr ; yields {i32}:val = i32 3
‘store
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
store [volatile] <ty> <value>, <ty>* <pointer>[, align <alignment>][, !nontemporal !<index>] ; yields {void}
store atomic [volatile] <ty> <value>, <ty>* <pointer> [singlethread] <ordering>, align <alignment> ; yields {void}
Overview:¶
The ‘store
‘ instruction is used to write to memory.
Arguments:¶
There are two arguments to the store
instruction: a value to store
and an address at which to store it. The type of the <pointer>
operand must be a pointer to the first class type of
the <value>
operand. If the store
is marked as volatile
,
then the optimizer is not allowed to modify the number or order of
execution of this store
with other volatile
operations.
If the store
is marked as atomic
, it takes an extra
ordering and optional singlethread
argument. The
acquire
and acq_rel
orderings aren’t valid on store
instructions. Atomic loads produce defined results
when they may see multiple atomic stores. The type of the pointee must
be an integer type whose bit width is a power of two greater than or
equal to eight and less than or equal to a target-specific size limit.
align
must be explicitly specified on atomic stores, and the store
has undefined behavior if the alignment is not set to a value which is
at least the size in bytes of the pointee. !nontemporal
does not
have any defined semantics for atomic stores.
The optional constant align
argument specifies the alignment of the
operation (that is, the alignment of the memory address). A value of 0
or an omitted align
argument means that the operation has the ABI
alignment for the target. It is the responsibility of the code emitter
to ensure that the alignment information is correct. Overestimating the
alignment results in undefined behavior. Underestimating the
alignment may produce less efficient code. An alignment of 1 is always
safe.
The optional !nontemporal
metadata must reference a single metadata
name <index>
corresponding to a metadata node with one i32
entry of
value 1. The existence of the !nontemporal
metadata on the instruction
tells the optimizer and code generator that this load is not expected to
be reused in the cache. The code generator may select special
instructions to save cache bandwidth, such as the MOVNT instruction on
x86.
Semantics:¶
The contents of memory are updated to contain <value>
at the
location specified by the <pointer>
operand. If <value>
is
of scalar type then the number of bytes written does not exceed the
minimum number of bytes needed to hold all bits of the type. For
example, storing an i24
writes at most three bytes. When writing a
value of a type like i20
with a size that is not an integral number
of bytes, it is unspecified what happens to the extra bits that do not
belong to the type, but they will typically be overwritten.
Example:¶
%ptr = alloca i32 ; yields {i32*}:ptr
store i32 3, i32* %ptr ; yields {void}
%val = load i32* %ptr ; yields {i32}:val = i32 3
‘fence
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
fence [singlethread] <ordering> ; yields {void}
Overview:¶
The ‘fence
‘ instruction is used to introduce happens-before edges
between operations.
Arguments:¶
‘fence
‘ instructions take an ordering argument which
defines what synchronizes-with edges they add. They can only be given
acquire
, release
, acq_rel
, and seq_cst
orderings.
Semantics:¶
A fence A which has (at least) release
ordering semantics
synchronizes with a fence B with (at least) acquire
ordering
semantics if and only if there exist atomic operations X and Y, both
operating on some atomic object M, such that A is sequenced before X, X
modifies M (either directly or through some side effect of a sequence
headed by X), Y is sequenced before B, and Y observes M. This provides a
happens-before dependency between A and B. Rather than an explicit
fence
, one (but not both) of the atomic operations X or Y might
provide a release
or acquire
(resp.) ordering constraint and
still synchronize-with the explicit fence
and establish the
happens-before edge.
A fence
which has seq_cst
ordering, in addition to having both
acquire
and release
semantics specified above, participates in
the global program order of other seq_cst
operations and/or fences.
The optional “singlethread” argument specifies that the fence only synchronizes with other fences in the same thread. (This is useful for interacting with signal handlers.)
Example:¶
fence acquire ; yields {void}
fence singlethread seq_cst ; yields {void}
‘cmpxchg
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
cmpxchg [volatile] <ty>* <pointer>, <ty> <cmp>, <ty> <new> [singlethread] <ordering> ; yields {ty}
Overview:¶
The ‘cmpxchg
‘ instruction is used to atomically modify memory. It
loads a value in memory and compares it to a given value. If they are
equal, it stores a new value into the memory.
Arguments:¶
There are three arguments to the ‘cmpxchg
‘ instruction: an address
to operate on, a value to compare to the value currently be at that
address, and a new value to place at that address if the compared values
are equal. The type of ‘<cmp>’ must be an integer type whose bit width
is a power of two greater than or equal to eight and less than or equal
to a target-specific size limit. ‘<cmp>’ and ‘<new>’ must have the same
type, and the type of ‘<pointer>’ must be a pointer to that type. If the
cmpxchg
is marked as volatile
, then the optimizer is not allowed
to modify the number or order of execution of this cmpxchg
with
other volatile operations.
The ordering argument specifies how this cmpxchg
synchronizes with other atomic operations.
The optional “singlethread
” argument declares that the cmpxchg
is only atomic with respect to code (usually signal handlers) running in
the same thread as the cmpxchg
. Otherwise the cmpxchg is atomic with
respect to all other code in the system.
The pointer passed into cmpxchg must have alignment greater than or equal to the size in memory of the operand.
Semantics:¶
The contents of memory at the location specified by the ‘<pointer>
‘
operand is read and compared to ‘<cmp>
‘; if the read value is the
equal, ‘<new>
‘ is written. The original value at the location is
returned.
A successful cmpxchg
is a read-modify-write instruction for the purpose
of identifying release sequences. A failed cmpxchg
is equivalent to an
atomic load with an ordering parameter determined by dropping any
release
part of the cmpxchg
‘s ordering.
Example:¶
entry:
%orig = atomic load i32* %ptr unordered ; yields {i32}
br label %loop
loop:
%cmp = phi i32 [ %orig, %entry ], [%old, %loop]
%squared = mul i32 %cmp, %cmp
%old = cmpxchg i32* %ptr, i32 %cmp, i32 %squared ; yields {i32}
%success = icmp eq i32 %cmp, %old
br i1 %success, label %done, label %loop
done:
...
‘atomicrmw
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
atomicrmw [volatile] <operation> <ty>* <pointer>, <ty> <value> [singlethread] <ordering> ; yields {ty}
Overview:¶
The ‘atomicrmw
‘ instruction is used to atomically modify memory.
Arguments:¶
There are three arguments to the ‘atomicrmw
‘ instruction: an
operation to apply, an address whose value to modify, an argument to the
operation. The operation must be one of the following keywords:
- xchg
- add
- sub
- and
- nand
- or
- xor
- max
- min
- umax
- umin
The type of ‘<value>’ must be an integer type whose bit width is a power
of two greater than or equal to eight and less than or equal to a
target-specific size limit. The type of the ‘<pointer>
‘ operand must
be a pointer to that type. If the atomicrmw
is marked as
volatile
, then the optimizer is not allowed to modify the number or
order of execution of this atomicrmw
with other volatile
operations.
Semantics:¶
The contents of memory at the location specified by the ‘<pointer>
‘
operand are atomically read, modified, and written back. The original
value at the location is returned. The modification is specified by the
operation argument:
- xchg:
*ptr = val
- add:
*ptr = *ptr + val
- sub:
*ptr = *ptr - val
- and:
*ptr = *ptr & val
- nand:
*ptr = ~(*ptr & val)
- or:
*ptr = *ptr | val
- xor:
*ptr = *ptr ^ val
- max:
*ptr = *ptr > val ? *ptr : val
(using a signed comparison) - min:
*ptr = *ptr < val ? *ptr : val
(using a signed comparison) - umax:
*ptr = *ptr > val ? *ptr : val
(using an unsigned comparison) - umin:
*ptr = *ptr < val ? *ptr : val
(using an unsigned comparison)
Example:¶
%old = atomicrmw add i32* %ptr, i32 1 acquire ; yields {i32}
‘getelementptr
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = getelementptr <pty>* <ptrval>{, <ty> <idx>}*
<result> = getelementptr inbounds <pty>* <ptrval>{, <ty> <idx>}*
<result> = getelementptr <ptr vector> ptrval, <vector index type> idx
Overview:¶
The ‘getelementptr
‘ instruction is used to get the address of a
subelement of an aggregate data structure. It performs
address calculation only and does not access memory.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is always a pointer or a vector of pointers, and forms the basis of the calculation. The remaining arguments are indices that indicate which of the elements of the aggregate object are indexed. The interpretation of each index is dependent on the type being indexed into. The first index always indexes the pointer value given as the first argument, the second index indexes a value of the type pointed to (not necessarily the value directly pointed to, since the first index can be non-zero), etc. The first type indexed into must be a pointer value, subsequent types can be arrays, vectors, and structs. Note that subsequent types being indexed into can never be pointers, since that would require loading the pointer before continuing calculation.
The type of each index argument depends on the type it is indexing into.
When indexing into a (optionally packed) structure, only i32
integer
constants are allowed (when using a vector of indices they must all
be the same i32
integer constant). When indexing into an array,
pointer or vector, integers of any width are allowed, and they are not
required to be constant. These integers are treated as signed values
where relevant.
For example, let’s consider a C code fragment and how it gets compiled to LLVM:
struct RT {
char A;
int B[10][20];
char C;
};
struct ST {
int X;
double Y;
struct RT Z;
};
int *foo(struct ST *s) {
return &s[1].Z.B[5][13];
}
The LLVM code generated by Clang is:
%struct.RT = type { i8, [10 x [20 x i32]], i8 }
%struct.ST = type { i32, double, %struct.RT }
define i32* @foo(%struct.ST* %s) nounwind uwtable readnone optsize ssp {
entry:
%arrayidx = getelementptr inbounds %struct.ST* %s, i64 1, i32 2, i32 1, i64 5, i64 13
ret i32* %arrayidx
}
Semantics:¶
In the example above, the first index is indexing into the
‘%struct.ST*
‘ type, which is a pointer, yielding a ‘%struct.ST
‘
= ‘{ i32, double, %struct.RT }
‘ type, a structure. The second index
indexes into the third element of the structure, yielding a
‘%struct.RT
‘ = ‘{ i8 , [10 x [20 x i32]], i8 }
‘ type, another
structure. The third index indexes into the second element of the
structure, yielding a ‘[10 x [20 x i32]]
‘ type, an array. The two
dimensions of the array are subscripted into, yielding an ‘i32
‘
type. The ‘getelementptr
‘ instruction returns a pointer to this
element, thus computing a value of ‘i32*
‘ type.
Note that it is perfectly legal to index partially through a structure, returning a pointer to an inner element. Because of this, the LLVM code for the given testcase is equivalent to:
define i32* @foo(%struct.ST* %s) {
%t1 = getelementptr %struct.ST* %s, i32 1 ; yields %struct.ST*:%t1
%t2 = getelementptr %struct.ST* %t1, i32 0, i32 2 ; yields %struct.RT*:%t2
%t3 = getelementptr %struct.RT* %t2, i32 0, i32 1 ; yields [10 x [20 x i32]]*:%t3
%t4 = getelementptr [10 x [20 x i32]]* %t3, i32 0, i32 5 ; yields [20 x i32]*:%t4
%t5 = getelementptr [20 x i32]* %t4, i32 0, i32 13 ; yields i32*:%t5
ret i32* %t5
}
If the inbounds
keyword is present, the result value of the
getelementptr
is a poison value if the base
pointer is not an in bounds address of an allocated object, or if any
of the addresses that would be formed by successive addition of the
offsets implied by the indices to the base address with infinitely
precise signed arithmetic are not an in bounds address of that
allocated object. The in bounds addresses for an allocated object are
all the addresses that point into the object, plus the address one byte
past the end. In cases where the base is a vector of pointers the
inbounds
keyword applies to each of the computations element-wise.
If the inbounds
keyword is not present, the offsets are added to the
base address with silently-wrapping two’s complement arithmetic. If the
offsets have a different width from the pointer, they are sign-extended
or truncated to the width of the pointer. The result value of the
getelementptr
may be outside the object pointed to by the base
pointer. The result value may not necessarily be used to access memory
though, even if it happens to point into allocated storage. See the
Pointer Aliasing Rules section for more
information.
The getelementptr instruction is often confusing. For some more insight into how it works, see the getelementptr FAQ.
Example:¶
; yields [12 x i8]*:aptr
%aptr = getelementptr {i32, [12 x i8]}* %saptr, i64 0, i32 1
; yields i8*:vptr
%vptr = getelementptr {i32, <2 x i8>}* %svptr, i64 0, i32 1, i32 1
; yields i8*:eptr
%eptr = getelementptr [12 x i8]* %aptr, i64 0, i32 1
; yields i32*:iptr
%iptr = getelementptr [10 x i32]* @arr, i16 0, i16 0
In cases where the pointer argument is a vector of pointers, each index must be a vector with the same number of elements. For example:
%A = getelementptr <4 x i8*> %ptrs, <4 x i64> %offsets,
Conversion Operations¶
The instructions in this category are the conversion instructions (casting) which all take a single operand and a type. They perform various bit conversions on the operand.
‘trunc .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = trunc <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘trunc
‘ instruction truncates its operand to the type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘trunc
‘ instruction takes a value to trunc, and a type to trunc
it to. Both types must be of integer types, or vectors
of the same number of integers. The bit size of the value
must be
larger than the bit size of the destination type, ty2
. Equal sized
types are not allowed.
Semantics:¶
The ‘trunc
‘ instruction truncates the high order bits in value
and converts the remaining bits to ty2
. Since the source size must
be larger than the destination size, trunc
cannot be a no-op cast.
It will always truncate bits.
Example:¶
%X = trunc i32 257 to i8 ; yields i8:1
%Y = trunc i32 123 to i1 ; yields i1:true
%Z = trunc i32 122 to i1 ; yields i1:false
%W = trunc <2 x i16> <i16 8, i16 7> to <2 x i8> ; yields <i8 8, i8 7>
‘zext .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = zext <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘zext
‘ instruction zero extends its operand to type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘zext
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, and a type to cast it
to. Both types must be of integer types, or vectors of
the same number of integers. The bit size of the value
must be
smaller than the bit size of the destination type, ty2
.
Semantics:¶
The zext
fills the high order bits of the value
with zero bits
until it reaches the size of the destination type, ty2
.
When zero extending from i1, the result will always be either 0 or 1.
Example:¶
%X = zext i32 257 to i64 ; yields i64:257
%Y = zext i1 true to i32 ; yields i32:1
%Z = zext <2 x i16> <i16 8, i16 7> to <2 x i32> ; yields <i32 8, i32 7>
‘sext .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = sext <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘sext
‘ sign extends value
to the type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘sext
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, and a type to cast it
to. Both types must be of integer types, or vectors of
the same number of integers. The bit size of the value
must be
smaller than the bit size of the destination type, ty2
.
Semantics:¶
The ‘sext
‘ instruction performs a sign extension by copying the sign
bit (highest order bit) of the value
until it reaches the bit size
of the type ty2
.
When sign extending from i1, the extension always results in -1 or 0.
Example:¶
%X = sext i8 -1 to i16 ; yields i16 :65535
%Y = sext i1 true to i32 ; yields i32:-1
%Z = sext <2 x i16> <i16 8, i16 7> to <2 x i32> ; yields <i32 8, i32 7>
‘fptrunc .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fptrunc <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘fptrunc
‘ instruction truncates value
to type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘fptrunc
‘ instruction takes a floating point
value to cast and a floating point type to cast it to.
The size of value
must be larger than the size of ty2
. This
implies that fptrunc
cannot be used to make a no-op cast.
Semantics:¶
The ‘fptrunc
‘ instruction truncates a value
from a larger
floating point type to a smaller floating
point type. If the value cannot fit within the
destination type, ty2
, then the results are undefined.
Example:¶
%X = fptrunc double 123.0 to float ; yields float:123.0
%Y = fptrunc double 1.0E+300 to float ; yields undefined
‘fpext .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fpext <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘fpext
‘ extends a floating point value
to a larger floating
point value.
Arguments:¶
The ‘fpext
‘ instruction takes a floating point
value
to cast, and a floating point type to cast it
to. The source type must be smaller than the destination type.
Semantics:¶
The ‘fpext
‘ instruction extends the value
from a smaller
floating point type to a larger floating
point type. The fpext
cannot be used to make a
no-op cast because it always changes bits. Use bitcast
to make a
no-op cast for a floating point cast.
Example:¶
%X = fpext float 3.125 to double ; yields double:3.125000e+00
%Y = fpext double %X to fp128 ; yields fp128:0xL00000000000000004000900000000000
‘fptoui .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fptoui <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘fptoui
‘ converts a floating point value
to its unsigned
integer equivalent of type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘fptoui
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, which must be a
scalar or vector floating point value, and a type to
cast it to ty2
, which must be an integer type. If
ty
is a vector floating point type, ty2
must be a vector integer
type with the same number of elements as ty
Semantics:¶
The ‘fptoui
‘ instruction converts its floating
point operand into the nearest (rounding towards zero)
unsigned integer value. If the value cannot fit in ty2
, the results
are undefined.
Example:¶
%X = fptoui double 123.0 to i32 ; yields i32:123
%Y = fptoui float 1.0E+300 to i1 ; yields undefined:1
%Z = fptoui float 1.04E+17 to i8 ; yields undefined:1
‘fptosi .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fptosi <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘fptosi
‘ instruction converts floating point
value
to type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘fptosi
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, which must be a
scalar or vector floating point value, and a type to
cast it to ty2
, which must be an integer type. If
ty
is a vector floating point type, ty2
must be a vector integer
type with the same number of elements as ty
Semantics:¶
The ‘fptosi
‘ instruction converts its floating
point operand into the nearest (rounding towards zero)
signed integer value. If the value cannot fit in ty2
, the results
are undefined.
Example:¶
%X = fptosi double -123.0 to i32 ; yields i32:-123
%Y = fptosi float 1.0E-247 to i1 ; yields undefined:1
%Z = fptosi float 1.04E+17 to i8 ; yields undefined:1
‘uitofp .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = uitofp <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘uitofp
‘ instruction regards value
as an unsigned integer
and converts that value to the ty2
type.
Arguments:¶
The ‘uitofp
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, which must be a
scalar or vector integer value, and a type to cast it to
ty2
, which must be an floating point type. If
ty
is a vector integer type, ty2
must be a vector floating point
type with the same number of elements as ty
Semantics:¶
The ‘uitofp
‘ instruction interprets its operand as an unsigned
integer quantity and converts it to the corresponding floating point
value. If the value cannot fit in the floating point value, the results
are undefined.
Example:¶
%X = uitofp i32 257 to float ; yields float:257.0
%Y = uitofp i8 -1 to double ; yields double:255.0
‘sitofp .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = sitofp <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘sitofp
‘ instruction regards value
as a signed integer and
converts that value to the ty2
type.
Arguments:¶
The ‘sitofp
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, which must be a
scalar or vector integer value, and a type to cast it to
ty2
, which must be an floating point type. If
ty
is a vector integer type, ty2
must be a vector floating point
type with the same number of elements as ty
Semantics:¶
The ‘sitofp
‘ instruction interprets its operand as a signed integer
quantity and converts it to the corresponding floating point value. If
the value cannot fit in the floating point value, the results are
undefined.
Example:¶
%X = sitofp i32 257 to float ; yields float:257.0
%Y = sitofp i8 -1 to double ; yields double:-1.0
‘ptrtoint .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = ptrtoint <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘ptrtoint
‘ instruction converts the pointer or a vector of
pointers value
to the integer (or vector of integers) type ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘ptrtoint
‘ instruction takes a value
to cast, which must be
a a value of type pointer or a vector of pointers, and a
type to cast it to ty2
, which must be an integer or
a vector of integers type.
Semantics:¶
The ‘ptrtoint
‘ instruction converts value
to integer type
ty2
by interpreting the pointer value as an integer and either
truncating or zero extending that value to the size of the integer type.
If value
is smaller than ty2
then a zero extension is done. If
value
is larger than ty2
then a truncation is done. If they are
the same size, then nothing is done (no-op cast) other than a type
change.
Example:¶
%X = ptrtoint i32* %P to i8 ; yields truncation on 32-bit architecture
%Y = ptrtoint i32* %P to i64 ; yields zero extension on 32-bit architecture
%Z = ptrtoint <4 x i32*> %P to <4 x i64>; yields vector zero extension for a vector of addresses on 32-bit architecture
‘inttoptr .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = inttoptr <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘inttoptr
‘ instruction converts an integer value
to a
pointer type, ty2
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘inttoptr
‘ instruction takes an integer value to
cast, and a type to cast it to, which must be a pointer
type.
Semantics:¶
The ‘inttoptr
‘ instruction converts value
to type ty2
by
applying either a zero extension or a truncation depending on the size
of the integer value
. If value
is larger than the size of a
pointer then a truncation is done. If value
is smaller than the size
of a pointer then a zero extension is done. If they are the same size,
nothing is done (no-op cast).
Example:¶
%X = inttoptr i32 255 to i32* ; yields zero extension on 64-bit architecture
%Y = inttoptr i32 255 to i32* ; yields no-op on 32-bit architecture
%Z = inttoptr i64 0 to i32* ; yields truncation on 32-bit architecture
%Z = inttoptr <4 x i32> %G to <4 x i8*>; yields truncation of vector G to four pointers
‘bitcast .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = bitcast <ty> <value> to <ty2> ; yields ty2
Overview:¶
The ‘bitcast
‘ instruction converts value
to type ty2
without
changing any bits.
Arguments:¶
The ‘bitcast
‘ instruction takes a value to cast, which must be a
non-aggregate first class value, and a type to cast it to, which must
also be a non-aggregate first class type. The
bit sizes of value
and the destination type, ty2
, must be
identical. If the source type is a pointer, the destination type must
also be a pointer of the same size. This instruction supports bitwise
conversion of vectors to integers and to vectors of other types (as
long as they have the same size).
Semantics:¶
The ‘bitcast
‘ instruction converts value
to type ty2
. It
is always a no-op cast because no bits change with this
conversion. The conversion is done as if the value
had been stored
to memory and read back as type ty2
. Pointer (or vector of
pointers) types may only be converted to other pointer (or vector of
pointers) types with the same address space through this instruction.
To convert pointers to other types, use the inttoptr
or ptrtoint instructions first.
Example:¶
%X = bitcast i8 255 to i8 ; yields i8 :-1
%Y = bitcast i32* %x to sint* ; yields sint*:%x
%Z = bitcast <2 x int> %V to i64; ; yields i64: %V
%Z = bitcast <2 x i32*> %V to <2 x i64*> ; yields <2 x i64*>
‘addrspacecast .. to
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = addrspacecast <pty> <ptrval> to <pty2> ; yields pty2
Overview:¶
The ‘addrspacecast
‘ instruction converts ptrval
from pty
in
address space n
to type pty2
in address space m
.
Arguments:¶
The ‘addrspacecast
‘ instruction takes a pointer or vector of pointer value
to cast and a pointer type to cast it to, which must have a different
address space.
Semantics:¶
The ‘addrspacecast
‘ instruction converts the pointer value
ptrval
to type pty2
. It can be a no-op cast or a complex
value modification, depending on the target and the address space
pair. Pointer conversions within the same address space must be
performed with the bitcast
instruction. Note that if the address space
conversion is legal then both result and operand refer to the same memory
location.
Example:¶
%X = addrspacecast i32* %x to i32 addrspace(1)* ; yields i32 addrspace(1)*:%x
%Y = addrspacecast i32 addrspace(1)* %y to i64 addrspace(2)* ; yields i64 addrspace(2)*:%y
%Z = addrspacecast <4 x i32*> %z to <4 x float addrspace(3)*> ; yields <4 x float addrspace(3)*>:%z
Other Operations¶
The instructions in this category are the “miscellaneous” instructions, which defy better classification.
‘icmp
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = icmp <cond> <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {i1} or {<N x i1>}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘icmp
‘ instruction returns a boolean value or a vector of
boolean values based on comparison of its two integer, integer vector,
pointer, or pointer vector operands.
Arguments:¶
The ‘icmp
‘ instruction takes three operands. The first operand is
the condition code indicating the kind of comparison to perform. It is
not a value, just a keyword. The possible condition code are:
eq
: equalne
: not equalugt
: unsigned greater thanuge
: unsigned greater or equalult
: unsigned less thanule
: unsigned less or equalsgt
: signed greater thansge
: signed greater or equalslt
: signed less thansle
: signed less or equal
The remaining two arguments must be integer or pointer or integer vector typed. They must also be identical types.
Semantics:¶
The ‘icmp
‘ compares op1
and op2
according to the condition
code given as cond
. The comparison performed always yields either an
i1 or vector of i1
result, as follows:
eq
: yieldstrue
if the operands are equal,false
otherwise. No sign interpretation is necessary or performed.ne
: yieldstrue
if the operands are unequal,false
otherwise. No sign interpretation is necessary or performed.ugt
: interprets the operands as unsigned values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is greater thanop2
.uge
: interprets the operands as unsigned values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is greater than or equal toop2
.ult
: interprets the operands as unsigned values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is less thanop2
.ule
: interprets the operands as unsigned values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is less than or equal toop2
.sgt
: interprets the operands as signed values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is greater thanop2
.sge
: interprets the operands as signed values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is greater than or equal toop2
.slt
: interprets the operands as signed values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is less thanop2
.sle
: interprets the operands as signed values and yieldstrue
ifop1
is less than or equal toop2
.
If the operands are pointer typed, the pointer values are compared as if they were integers.
If the operands are integer vectors, then they are compared element by
element. The result is an i1
vector with the same number of elements
as the values being compared. Otherwise, the result is an i1
.
Example:¶
<result> = icmp eq i32 4, 5 ; yields: result=false
<result> = icmp ne float* %X, %X ; yields: result=false
<result> = icmp ult i16 4, 5 ; yields: result=true
<result> = icmp sgt i16 4, 5 ; yields: result=false
<result> = icmp ule i16 -4, 5 ; yields: result=false
<result> = icmp sge i16 4, 5 ; yields: result=false
Note that the code generator does not yet support vector types with the
icmp
instruction.
‘fcmp
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = fcmp <cond> <ty> <op1>, <op2> ; yields {i1} or {<N x i1>}:result
Overview:¶
The ‘fcmp
‘ instruction returns a boolean value or vector of boolean
values based on comparison of its operands.
If the operands are floating point scalars, then the result type is a boolean (i1).
If the operands are floating point vectors, then the result type is a vector of boolean with the same number of elements as the operands being compared.
Arguments:¶
The ‘fcmp
‘ instruction takes three operands. The first operand is
the condition code indicating the kind of comparison to perform. It is
not a value, just a keyword. The possible condition code are:
false
: no comparison, always returns falseoeq
: ordered and equalogt
: ordered and greater thanoge
: ordered and greater than or equalolt
: ordered and less thanole
: ordered and less than or equalone
: ordered and not equalord
: ordered (no nans)ueq
: unordered or equalugt
: unordered or greater thanuge
: unordered or greater than or equalult
: unordered or less thanule
: unordered or less than or equalune
: unordered or not equaluno
: unordered (either nans)true
: no comparison, always returns true
Ordered means that neither operand is a QNAN while unordered means that either operand may be a QNAN.
Each of val1
and val2
arguments must be either a floating
point type or a vector of floating point
type. They must have identical types.
Semantics:¶
The ‘fcmp
‘ instruction compares op1
and op2
according to the
condition code given as cond
. If the operands are vectors, then the
vectors are compared element by element. Each comparison performed
always yields an i1 result, as follows:
false
: always yieldsfalse
, regardless of operands.oeq
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is equal toop2
.ogt
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is greater thanop2
.oge
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is greater than or equal toop2
.olt
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is less thanop2
.ole
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is less than or equal toop2
.one
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN andop1
is not equal toop2
.ord
: yieldstrue
if both operands are not a QNAN.ueq
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is equal toop2
.ugt
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is greater thanop2
.uge
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is greater than or equal toop2
.ult
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is less thanop2
.ule
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is less than or equal toop2
.une
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN orop1
is not equal toop2
.uno
: yieldstrue
if either operand is a QNAN.true
: always yieldstrue
, regardless of operands.
Example:¶
<result> = fcmp oeq float 4.0, 5.0 ; yields: result=false
<result> = fcmp one float 4.0, 5.0 ; yields: result=true
<result> = fcmp olt float 4.0, 5.0 ; yields: result=true
<result> = fcmp ueq double 1.0, 2.0 ; yields: result=false
Note that the code generator does not yet support vector types with the
fcmp
instruction.
‘phi
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = phi <ty> [ <val0>, <label0>], ...
Overview:¶
The ‘phi
‘ instruction is used to implement the φ node in the SSA
graph representing the function.
Arguments:¶
The type of the incoming values is specified with the first type field.
After this, the ‘phi
‘ instruction takes a list of pairs as
arguments, with one pair for each predecessor basic block of the current
block. Only values of first class type may be used as
the value arguments to the PHI node. Only labels may be used as the
label arguments.
There must be no non-phi instructions between the start of a basic block and the PHI instructions: i.e. PHI instructions must be first in a basic block.
For the purposes of the SSA form, the use of each incoming value is
deemed to occur on the edge from the corresponding predecessor block to
the current block (but after any definition of an ‘invoke
‘
instruction’s return value on the same edge).
Semantics:¶
At runtime, the ‘phi
‘ instruction logically takes on the value
specified by the pair corresponding to the predecessor basic block that
executed just prior to the current block.
Example:¶
Loop: ; Infinite loop that counts from 0 on up...
%indvar = phi i32 [ 0, %LoopHeader ], [ %nextindvar, %Loop ]
%nextindvar = add i32 %indvar, 1
br label %Loop
‘select
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = select selty <cond>, <ty> <val1>, <ty> <val2> ; yields ty
selty is either i1 or {<N x i1>}
Overview:¶
The ‘select
‘ instruction is used to choose one value based on a
condition, without branching.
Arguments:¶
The ‘select
‘ instruction requires an ‘i1’ value or a vector of ‘i1’
values indicating the condition, and two values of the same first
class type. If the val1/val2 are vectors and the
condition is a scalar, then entire vectors are selected, not individual
elements.
Semantics:¶
If the condition is an i1 and it evaluates to 1, the instruction returns the first value argument; otherwise, it returns the second value argument.
If the condition is a vector of i1, then the value arguments must be vectors of the same size, and the selection is done element by element.
Example:¶
%X = select i1 true, i8 17, i8 42 ; yields i8:17
‘call
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<result> = [tail] call [cconv] [ret attrs] <ty> [<fnty>*] <fnptrval>(<function args>) [fn attrs]
Overview:¶
The ‘call
‘ instruction represents a simple function call.
Arguments:¶
This instruction requires several arguments:
- The optional “tail” marker indicates that the callee function does
not access any allocas or varargs in the caller. Note that calls may
be marked “tail” even if they do not occur before a
ret instruction. If the “tail” marker is present, the
function call is eligible for tail call optimization, but might not
in fact be optimized into a jump.
The code generator may optimize calls marked “tail” with either 1)
automatic sibling call
optimization when the caller and
callee have matching signatures, or 2) forced tail call optimization
when the following extra requirements are met:
- Caller and callee both have the calling convention
fastcc
. - The call is in tail position (ret immediately follows call and ret uses value of call or is void).
- Option
-tailcallopt
is enabled, orllvm::GuaranteedTailCallOpt
istrue
. - Platform specific constraints are met.
- Caller and callee both have the calling convention
- The optional “cconv” marker indicates which calling convention the call should use. If none is specified, the call defaults to using C calling conventions. The calling convention of the call must match the calling convention of the target function, or else the behavior is undefined.
- The optional Parameter Attributes list for return
values. Only ‘
zeroext
‘, ‘signext
‘, and ‘inreg
‘ attributes are valid here. - ‘
ty
‘: the type of the call instruction itself which is also the type of the return value. Functions that return no value are markedvoid
. - ‘
fnty
‘: shall be the signature of the pointer to function value being invoked. The argument types must match the types implied by this signature. This type can be omitted if the function is not varargs and if the function type does not return a pointer to a function. - ‘
fnptrval
‘: An LLVM value containing a pointer to a function to be invoked. In most cases, this is a direct function invocation, but indirectcall
‘s are just as possible, calling an arbitrary pointer to function value. - ‘
function args
‘: argument list whose types match the function signature argument types and parameter attributes. All arguments must be of first class type. If the function signature indicates the function accepts a variable number of arguments, the extra arguments can be specified. - The optional function attributes list. Only
‘
noreturn
‘, ‘nounwind
‘, ‘readonly
‘ and ‘readnone
‘ attributes are valid here.
Semantics:¶
The ‘call
‘ instruction is used to cause control flow to transfer to
a specified function, with its incoming arguments bound to the specified
values. Upon a ‘ret
‘ instruction in the called function, control
flow continues with the instruction after the function call, and the
return value of the function is bound to the result argument.
Example:¶
%retval = call i32 @test(i32 %argc)
call i32 (i8*, ...)* @printf(i8* %msg, i32 12, i8 42) ; yields i32
%X = tail call i32 @foo() ; yields i32
%Y = tail call fastcc i32 @foo() ; yields i32
call void %foo(i8 97 signext)
%struct.A = type { i32, i8 }
%r = call %struct.A @foo() ; yields { 32, i8 }
%gr = extractvalue %struct.A %r, 0 ; yields i32
%gr1 = extractvalue %struct.A %r, 1 ; yields i8
%Z = call void @foo() noreturn ; indicates that %foo never returns normally
%ZZ = call zeroext i32 @bar() ; Return value is %zero extended
llvm treats calls to some functions with names and arguments that match the standard C99 library as being the C99 library functions, and may perform optimizations or generate code for them under that assumption. This is something we’d like to change in the future to provide better support for freestanding environments and non-C-based languages.
‘va_arg
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<resultval> = va_arg <va_list*> <arglist>, <argty>
Overview:¶
The ‘va_arg
‘ instruction is used to access arguments passed through
the “variable argument” area of a function call. It is used to implement
the va_arg
macro in C.
Arguments:¶
This instruction takes a va_list*
value and the type of the
argument. It returns a value of the specified argument type and
increments the va_list
to point to the next argument. The actual
type of va_list
is target specific.
Semantics:¶
The ‘va_arg
‘ instruction loads an argument of the specified type
from the specified va_list
and causes the va_list
to point to
the next argument. For more information, see the variable argument
handling Intrinsic Functions.
It is legal for this instruction to be called in a function which does
not take a variable number of arguments, for example, the vfprintf
function.
va_arg
is an LLVM instruction instead of an intrinsic
function because it takes a type as an argument.
Example:¶
See the variable argument processing section.
Note that the code generator does not yet fully support va_arg on many targets. Also, it does not currently support va_arg with aggregate types on any target.
‘landingpad
‘ Instruction¶
Syntax:¶
<resultval> = landingpad <resultty> personality <type> <pers_fn> <clause>+
<resultval> = landingpad <resultty> personality <type> <pers_fn> cleanup <clause>*
<clause> := catch <type> <value>
<clause> := filter <array constant type> <array constant>
Overview:¶
The ‘landingpad
‘ instruction is used by LLVM’s exception handling
system to specify that a basic block
is a landing pad — one where the exception lands, and corresponds to the
code found in the catch
portion of a try
/catch
sequence. It
defines values supplied by the personality function (pers_fn
) upon
re-entry to the function. The resultval
has the type resultty
.
Arguments:¶
This instruction takes a pers_fn
value. This is the personality
function associated with the unwinding mechanism. The optional
cleanup
flag indicates that the landing pad block is a cleanup.
A clause
begins with the clause type — catch
or filter
— and
contains the global variable representing the “type” that may be caught
or filtered respectively. Unlike the catch
clause, the filter
clause takes an array constant as its argument. Use
“[0 x i8**] undef
” for a filter which cannot throw. The
‘landingpad
‘ instruction must contain at least one clause
or
the cleanup
flag.
Semantics:¶
The ‘landingpad
‘ instruction defines the values which are set by the
personality function (pers_fn
) upon re-entry to the function, and
therefore the “result type” of the landingpad
instruction. As with
calling conventions, how the personality function results are
represented in LLVM IR is target specific.
The clauses are applied in order from top to bottom. If two
landingpad
instructions are merged together through inlining, the
clauses from the calling function are appended to the list of clauses.
When the call stack is being unwound due to an exception being thrown,
the exception is compared against each clause
in turn. If it doesn’t
match any of the clauses, and the cleanup
flag is not set, then
unwinding continues further up the call stack.
The landingpad
instruction has several restrictions:
- A landing pad block is a basic block which is the unwind destination
of an ‘
invoke
‘ instruction. - A landing pad block must have a ‘
landingpad
‘ instruction as its first non-PHI instruction. - There can be only one ‘
landingpad
‘ instruction within the landing pad block. - A basic block that is not a landing pad block may not include a
‘
landingpad
‘ instruction. - All ‘
landingpad
‘ instructions in a function must have the same personality function.
Example:¶
;; A landing pad which can catch an integer.
%res = landingpad { i8*, i32 } personality i32 (...)* @__gxx_personality_v0
catch i8** @_ZTIi
;; A landing pad that is a cleanup.
%res = landingpad { i8*, i32 } personality i32 (...)* @__gxx_personality_v0
cleanup
;; A landing pad which can catch an integer and can only throw a double.
%res = landingpad { i8*, i32 } personality i32 (...)* @__gxx_personality_v0
catch i8** @_ZTIi
filter [1 x i8**] [@_ZTId]
Intrinsic Functions¶
LLVM supports the notion of an “intrinsic function”. These functions have well known names and semantics and are required to follow certain restrictions. Overall, these intrinsics represent an extension mechanism for the LLVM language that does not require changing all of the transformations in LLVM when adding to the language (or the bitcode reader/writer, the parser, etc...).
Intrinsic function names must all start with an “llvm.
” prefix. This
prefix is reserved in LLVM for intrinsic names; thus, function names may
not begin with this prefix. Intrinsic functions must always be external
functions: you cannot define the body of intrinsic functions. Intrinsic
functions may only be used in call or invoke instructions: it is illegal
to take the address of an intrinsic function. Additionally, because
intrinsic functions are part of the LLVM language, it is required if any
are added that they be documented here.
Some intrinsic functions can be overloaded, i.e., the intrinsic represents a family of functions that perform the same operation but on different data types. Because LLVM can represent over 8 million different integer types, overloading is used commonly to allow an intrinsic function to operate on any integer type. One or more of the argument types or the result type can be overloaded to accept any integer type. Argument types may also be defined as exactly matching a previous argument’s type or the result type. This allows an intrinsic function which accepts multiple arguments, but needs all of them to be of the same type, to only be overloaded with respect to a single argument or the result.
Overloaded intrinsics will have the names of its overloaded argument
types encoded into its function name, each preceded by a period. Only
those types which are overloaded result in a name suffix. Arguments
whose type is matched against another type do not. For example, the
llvm.ctpop
function can take an integer of any width and returns an
integer of exactly the same integer width. This leads to a family of
functions such as i8 @llvm.ctpop.i8(i8 %val)
and
i29 @llvm.ctpop.i29(i29 %val)
. Only one type, the return type, is
overloaded, and only one type suffix is required. Because the argument’s
type is matched against the return type, it does not require its own
name suffix.
To learn how to add an intrinsic function, please see the Extending LLVM Guide.
Variable Argument Handling Intrinsics¶
Variable argument support is defined in LLVM with the
va_arg instruction and these three intrinsic
functions. These functions are related to the similarly named macros
defined in the <stdarg.h>
header file.
All of these functions operate on arguments that use a target-specific
value type “va_list
”. The LLVM assembly language reference manual
does not define what this type is, so all transformations should be
prepared to handle these functions regardless of the type used.
This example shows how the va_arg instruction and the variable argument handling intrinsic functions are used.
define i32 @test(i32 %X, ...) {
; Initialize variable argument processing
%ap = alloca i8*
%ap2 = bitcast i8** %ap to i8*
call void @llvm.va_start(i8* %ap2)
; Read a single integer argument
%tmp = va_arg i8** %ap, i32
; Demonstrate usage of llvm.va_copy and llvm.va_end
%aq = alloca i8*
%aq2 = bitcast i8** %aq to i8*
call void @llvm.va_copy(i8* %aq2, i8* %ap2)
call void @llvm.va_end(i8* %aq2)
; Stop processing of arguments.
call void @llvm.va_end(i8* %ap2)
ret i32 %tmp
}
declare void @llvm.va_start(i8*)
declare void @llvm.va_copy(i8*, i8*)
declare void @llvm.va_end(i8*)
‘llvm.va_start
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.va_start(i8* <arglist>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.va_start
‘ intrinsic initializes *<arglist>
for
subsequent use by va_arg
.
Arguments:¶
The argument is a pointer to a va_list
element to initialize.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.va_start
‘ intrinsic works just like the va_start
macro
available in C. In a target-dependent way, it initializes the
va_list
element to which the argument points, so that the next call
to va_arg
will produce the first variable argument passed to the
function. Unlike the C va_start
macro, this intrinsic does not need
to know the last argument of the function as the compiler can figure
that out.
‘llvm.va_end
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.va_end(i8* <arglist>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.va_end
‘ intrinsic destroys *<arglist>
, which has been
initialized previously with llvm.va_start
or llvm.va_copy
.
Arguments:¶
The argument is a pointer to a va_list
to destroy.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.va_end
‘ intrinsic works just like the va_end
macro
available in C. In a target-dependent way, it destroys the va_list
element to which the argument points. Calls to
llvm.va_start and
llvm.va_copy must be matched exactly with calls to
llvm.va_end
.
‘llvm.va_copy
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.va_copy(i8* <destarglist>, i8* <srcarglist>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.va_copy
‘ intrinsic copies the current argument position
from the source argument list to the destination argument list.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to a va_list
element to initialize.
The second argument is a pointer to a va_list
element to copy from.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.va_copy
‘ intrinsic works just like the va_copy
macro
available in C. In a target-dependent way, it copies the source
va_list
element into the destination va_list
element. This
intrinsic is necessary because the `` llvm.va_start`` intrinsic may be
arbitrarily complex and require, for example, memory allocation.
Accurate Garbage Collection Intrinsics¶
LLVM support for Accurate Garbage Collection (GC) requires the implementation and generation of these intrinsics. These intrinsics allow identification of GC roots on the stack, as well as garbage collector implementations that require read and write barriers. Front-ends for type-safe garbage collected languages should generate these intrinsics to make use of the LLVM garbage collectors. For more details, see Accurate Garbage Collection with LLVM.
The garbage collection intrinsics only operate on objects in the generic address space (address space zero).
‘llvm.gcroot
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.gcroot(i8** %ptrloc, i8* %metadata)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.gcroot
‘ intrinsic declares the existence of a GC root to
the code generator, and allows some metadata to be associated with it.
Arguments:¶
The first argument specifies the address of a stack object that contains the root pointer. The second pointer (which must be either a constant or a global value address) contains the meta-data to be associated with the root.
Semantics:¶
At runtime, a call to this intrinsic stores a null pointer into the
“ptrloc” location. At compile-time, the code generator generates
information to allow the runtime to find the pointer at GC safe points.
The ‘llvm.gcroot
‘ intrinsic may only be used in a function which
specifies a GC algorithm.
‘llvm.gcread
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i8* @llvm.gcread(i8* %ObjPtr, i8** %Ptr)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.gcread
‘ intrinsic identifies reads of references from heap
locations, allowing garbage collector implementations that require read
barriers.
Arguments:¶
The second argument is the address to read from, which should be an address allocated from the garbage collector. The first object is a pointer to the start of the referenced object, if needed by the language runtime (otherwise null).
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.gcread
‘ intrinsic has the same semantics as a load
instruction, but may be replaced with substantially more complex code by
the garbage collector runtime, as needed. The ‘llvm.gcread
‘
intrinsic may only be used in a function which specifies a GC
algorithm.
‘llvm.gcwrite
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.gcwrite(i8* %P1, i8* %Obj, i8** %P2)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.gcwrite
‘ intrinsic identifies writes of references to heap
locations, allowing garbage collector implementations that require write
barriers (such as generational or reference counting collectors).
Arguments:¶
The first argument is the reference to store, the second is the start of the object to store it to, and the third is the address of the field of Obj to store to. If the runtime does not require a pointer to the object, Obj may be null.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.gcwrite
‘ intrinsic has the same semantics as a store
instruction, but may be replaced with substantially more complex code by
the garbage collector runtime, as needed. The ‘llvm.gcwrite
‘
intrinsic may only be used in a function which specifies a GC
algorithm.
Code Generator Intrinsics¶
These intrinsics are provided by LLVM to expose special features that may only be implemented with code generator support.
‘llvm.returnaddress
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i8 *@llvm.returnaddress(i32 <level>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.returnaddress
‘ intrinsic attempts to compute a
target-specific value indicating the return address of the current
function or one of its callers.
Arguments:¶
The argument to this intrinsic indicates which function to return the address for. Zero indicates the calling function, one indicates its caller, etc. The argument is required to be a constant integer value.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.returnaddress
‘ intrinsic either returns a pointer
indicating the return address of the specified call frame, or zero if it
cannot be identified. The value returned by this intrinsic is likely to
be incorrect or 0 for arguments other than zero, so it should only be
used for debugging purposes.
Note that calling this intrinsic does not prevent function inlining or other aggressive transformations, so the value returned may not be that of the obvious source-language caller.
‘llvm.frameaddress
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i8* @llvm.frameaddress(i32 <level>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.frameaddress
‘ intrinsic attempts to return the
target-specific frame pointer value for the specified stack frame.
Arguments:¶
The argument to this intrinsic indicates which function to return the frame pointer for. Zero indicates the calling function, one indicates its caller, etc. The argument is required to be a constant integer value.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.frameaddress
‘ intrinsic either returns a pointer
indicating the frame address of the specified call frame, or zero if it
cannot be identified. The value returned by this intrinsic is likely to
be incorrect or 0 for arguments other than zero, so it should only be
used for debugging purposes.
Note that calling this intrinsic does not prevent function inlining or other aggressive transformations, so the value returned may not be that of the obvious source-language caller.
‘llvm.stacksave
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i8* @llvm.stacksave()
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.stacksave
‘ intrinsic is used to remember the current state
of the function stack, for use with
llvm.stackrestore. This is useful for
implementing language features like scoped automatic variable sized
arrays in C99.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic returns a opaque pointer value that can be passed to
llvm.stackrestore. When an
llvm.stackrestore
intrinsic is executed with a value saved from
llvm.stacksave
, it effectively restores the state of the stack to
the state it was in when the llvm.stacksave
intrinsic executed. In
practice, this pops any alloca blocks from the stack that
were allocated after the llvm.stacksave
was executed.
‘llvm.stackrestore
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.stackrestore(i8* %ptr)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.stackrestore
‘ intrinsic is used to restore the state of
the function stack to the state it was in when the corresponding
llvm.stacksave intrinsic executed. This is
useful for implementing language features like scoped automatic variable
sized arrays in C99.
Semantics:¶
See the description for llvm.stacksave.
‘llvm.prefetch
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.prefetch(i8* <address>, i32 <rw>, i32 <locality>, i32 <cache type>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.prefetch
‘ intrinsic is a hint to the code generator to
insert a prefetch instruction if supported; otherwise, it is a noop.
Prefetches have no effect on the behavior of the program but can change
its performance characteristics.
Arguments:¶
address
is the address to be prefetched, rw
is the specifier
determining if the fetch should be for a read (0) or write (1), and
locality
is a temporal locality specifier ranging from (0) - no
locality, to (3) - extremely local keep in cache. The cache type
specifies whether the prefetch is performed on the data (1) or
instruction (0) cache. The rw
, locality
and cache type
arguments must be constant integers.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic does not modify the behavior of the program. In particular, prefetches cannot trap and do not produce a value. On targets that support this intrinsic, the prefetch can provide hints to the processor cache for better performance.
‘llvm.pcmarker
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.pcmarker(i32 <id>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.pcmarker
‘ intrinsic is a method to export a Program
Counter (PC) in a region of code to simulators and other tools. The
method is target specific, but it is expected that the marker will use
exported symbols to transmit the PC of the marker. The marker makes no
guarantees that it will remain with any specific instruction after
optimizations. It is possible that the presence of a marker will inhibit
optimizations. The intended use is to be inserted after optimizations to
allow correlations of simulation runs.
Arguments:¶
id
is a numerical id identifying the marker.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic does not modify the behavior of the program. Backends that do not support this intrinsic may ignore it.
‘llvm.readcyclecounter
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i64 @llvm.readcyclecounter()
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.readcyclecounter
‘ intrinsic provides access to the cycle
counter register (or similar low latency, high accuracy clocks) on those
targets that support it. On X86, it should map to RDTSC. On Alpha, it
should map to RPCC. As the backing counters overflow quickly (on the
order of 9 seconds on alpha), this should only be used for small
timings.
Semantics:¶
When directly supported, reading the cycle counter should not modify any memory. Implementations are allowed to either return a application specific value or a system wide value. On backends without support, this is lowered to a constant 0.
Note that runtime support may be conditional on the privilege-level code is running at and the host platform.
Standard C Library Intrinsics¶
LLVM provides intrinsics for a few important standard C library functions. These intrinsics allow source-language front-ends to pass information about the alignment of the pointer arguments to the code generator, providing opportunity for more efficient code generation.
‘llvm.memcpy
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.memcpy
on any
integer bit width and for different address spaces. Not all targets
support all bit widths however.
declare void @llvm.memcpy.p0i8.p0i8.i32(i8* <dest>, i8* <src>,
i32 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
declare void @llvm.memcpy.p0i8.p0i8.i64(i8* <dest>, i8* <src>,
i64 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.memcpy.*
‘ intrinsics copy a block of memory from the
source location to the destination location.
Note that, unlike the standard libc function, the llvm.memcpy.*
intrinsics do not return a value, takes extra alignment/isvolatile
arguments and the pointers can be in specified address spaces.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to the destination, the second is a pointer to the source. The third argument is an integer argument specifying the number of bytes to copy, the fourth argument is the alignment of the source and destination locations, and the fifth is a boolean indicating a volatile access.
If the call to this intrinsic has an alignment value that is not 0 or 1, then the caller guarantees that both the source and destination pointers are aligned to that boundary.
If the isvolatile
parameter is true
, the llvm.memcpy
call is
a volatile operation. The detailed access behavior is not
very cleanly specified and it is unwise to depend on it.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.memcpy.*
‘ intrinsics copy a block of memory from the
source location to the destination location, which are not allowed to
overlap. It copies “len” bytes of memory over. If the argument is known
to be aligned to some boundary, this can be specified as the fourth
argument, otherwise it should be set to 0 or 1 (both meaning no alignment).
‘llvm.memmove
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.memmove on any integer bit width and for different address space. Not all targets support all bit widths however.
declare void @llvm.memmove.p0i8.p0i8.i32(i8* <dest>, i8* <src>,
i32 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
declare void @llvm.memmove.p0i8.p0i8.i64(i8* <dest>, i8* <src>,
i64 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.memmove.*
‘ intrinsics move a block of memory from the
source location to the destination location. It is similar to the
‘llvm.memcpy
‘ intrinsic but allows the two memory locations to
overlap.
Note that, unlike the standard libc function, the llvm.memmove.*
intrinsics do not return a value, takes extra alignment/isvolatile
arguments and the pointers can be in specified address spaces.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to the destination, the second is a pointer to the source. The third argument is an integer argument specifying the number of bytes to copy, the fourth argument is the alignment of the source and destination locations, and the fifth is a boolean indicating a volatile access.
If the call to this intrinsic has an alignment value that is not 0 or 1, then the caller guarantees that the source and destination pointers are aligned to that boundary.
If the isvolatile
parameter is true
, the llvm.memmove
call
is a volatile operation. The detailed access behavior is
not very cleanly specified and it is unwise to depend on it.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.memmove.*
‘ intrinsics copy a block of memory from the
source location to the destination location, which may overlap. It
copies “len” bytes of memory over. If the argument is known to be
aligned to some boundary, this can be specified as the fourth argument,
otherwise it should be set to 0 or 1 (both meaning no alignment).
‘llvm.memset.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.memset on any integer bit width and for different address spaces. However, not all targets support all bit widths.
declare void @llvm.memset.p0i8.i32(i8* <dest>, i8 <val>,
i32 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
declare void @llvm.memset.p0i8.i64(i8* <dest>, i8 <val>,
i64 <len>, i32 <align>, i1 <isvolatile>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.memset.*
‘ intrinsics fill a block of memory with a
particular byte value.
Note that, unlike the standard libc function, the llvm.memset
intrinsic does not return a value and takes extra alignment/volatile
arguments. Also, the destination can be in an arbitrary address space.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to the destination to fill, the second is the byte value with which to fill it, the third argument is an integer argument specifying the number of bytes to fill, and the fourth argument is the known alignment of the destination location.
If the call to this intrinsic has an alignment value that is not 0 or 1, then the caller guarantees that the destination pointer is aligned to that boundary.
If the isvolatile
parameter is true
, the llvm.memset
call is
a volatile operation. The detailed access behavior is not
very cleanly specified and it is unwise to depend on it.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.memset.*
‘ intrinsics fill “len” bytes of memory starting
at the destination location. If the argument is known to be aligned to
some boundary, this can be specified as the fourth argument, otherwise
it should be set to 0 or 1 (both meaning no alignment).
‘llvm.sqrt.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.sqrt
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.sqrt.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.sqrt.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.sqrt.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.sqrt.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.sqrt.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.sqrt
‘ intrinsics return the sqrt of the specified operand,
returning the same value as the libm ‘sqrt
‘ functions would. Unlike
sqrt
in libm, however, llvm.sqrt
has undefined behavior for
negative numbers other than -0.0 (which allows for better optimization,
because there is no need to worry about errno being set).
llvm.sqrt(-0.0)
is defined to return -0.0 like IEEE sqrt.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the sqrt of the specified operand if it is a nonnegative floating point number.
‘llvm.powi.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.powi
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.powi.f32(float %Val, i32 %power)
declare double @llvm.powi.f64(double %Val, i32 %power)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.powi.f80(x86_fp80 %Val, i32 %power)
declare fp128 @llvm.powi.f128(fp128 %Val, i32 %power)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.powi.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val, i32 %power)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.powi.*
‘ intrinsics return the first operand raised to the
specified (positive or negative) power. The order of evaluation of
multiplications is not defined. When a vector of floating point type is
used, the second argument remains a scalar integer value.
Arguments:¶
The second argument is an integer power, and the first is a value to raise to that power.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the first value raised to the second power with an unspecified sequence of rounding operations.
‘llvm.sin.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.sin
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.sin.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.sin.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.sin.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.sin.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.sin.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.sin.*
‘ intrinsics return the sine of the operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the sine of the specified operand, returning the
same values as the libm sin
functions would, and handles error
conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.cos.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.cos
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.cos.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.cos.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.cos.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.cos.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.cos.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.cos.*
‘ intrinsics return the cosine of the operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the cosine of the specified operand, returning the
same values as the libm cos
functions would, and handles error
conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.pow.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.pow
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.pow.f32(float %Val, float %Power)
declare double @llvm.pow.f64(double %Val, double %Power)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.pow.f80(x86_fp80 %Val, x86_fp80 %Power)
declare fp128 @llvm.pow.f128(fp128 %Val, fp128 %Power)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.pow.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val, ppc_fp128 Power)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.pow.*
‘ intrinsics return the first operand raised to the
specified (positive or negative) power.
Arguments:¶
The second argument is a floating point power, and the first is a value to raise to that power.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the first value raised to the second power,
returning the same values as the libm pow
functions would, and
handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.exp.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.exp
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.exp.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.exp.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.exp.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.exp.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.exp.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.exp.*
‘ intrinsics perform the exp function.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm exp
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.exp2.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.exp2
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.exp2.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.exp2.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.exp2.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.exp2.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.exp2.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.exp2.*
‘ intrinsics perform the exp2 function.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm exp2
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.log.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.log
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.log.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.log.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.log.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.log.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.log.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.log.*
‘ intrinsics perform the log function.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm log
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.log10.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.log10
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.log10.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.log10.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.log10.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.log10.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.log10.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.log10.*
‘ intrinsics perform the log10 function.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm log10
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.log2.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.log2
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.log2.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.log2.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.log2.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.log2.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.log2.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.log2.*
‘ intrinsics perform the log2 function.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm log2
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.fma.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.fma
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.fma.f32(float %a, float %b, float %c)
declare double @llvm.fma.f64(double %a, double %b, double %c)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.fma.f80(x86_fp80 %a, x86_fp80 %b, x86_fp80 %c)
declare fp128 @llvm.fma.f128(fp128 %a, fp128 %b, fp128 %c)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.fma.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %a, ppc_fp128 %b, ppc_fp128 %c)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.fma.*
‘ intrinsics perform the fused multiply-add
operation.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm fma
functions
would.
‘llvm.fabs.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.fabs
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.fabs.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.fabs.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.fabs.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.fabs.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.fabs.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.fabs.*
‘ intrinsics return the absolute value of the
operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm fabs
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.copysign.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.copysign
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.copysign.f32(float %Mag, float %Sgn)
declare double @llvm.copysign.f64(double %Mag, double %Sgn)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.copysign.f80(x86_fp80 %Mag, x86_fp80 %Sgn)
declare fp128 @llvm.copysign.f128(fp128 %Mag, fp128 %Sgn)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.copysign.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Mag, ppc_fp128 %Sgn)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.copysign.*
‘ intrinsics return a value with the magnitude of the
first operand and the sign of the second operand.
Arguments:¶
The arguments and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm copysign
functions would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.floor.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.floor
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.floor.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.floor.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.floor.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.floor.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.floor.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.floor.*
‘ intrinsics return the floor of the operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm floor
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.ceil.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.ceil
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.ceil.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.ceil.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.ceil.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.ceil.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.ceil.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.ceil.*
‘ intrinsics return the ceiling of the operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm ceil
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.trunc.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.trunc
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.trunc.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.trunc.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.trunc.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.trunc.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.trunc.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.trunc.*
‘ intrinsics returns the operand rounded to the
nearest integer not larger in magnitude than the operand.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm trunc
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.rint.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.rint
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.rint.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.rint.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.rint.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.rint.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.rint.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.rint.*
‘ intrinsics returns the operand rounded to the
nearest integer. It may raise an inexact floating-point exception if the
operand isn’t an integer.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm rint
functions
would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.nearbyint.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.nearbyint
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.nearbyint.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.nearbyint.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.nearbyint.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.nearbyint.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.nearbyint.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.nearbyint.*
‘ intrinsics returns the operand rounded to the
nearest integer.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm nearbyint
functions would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
‘llvm.round.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.round
on any
floating point or vector of floating point type. Not all targets support
all types however.
declare float @llvm.round.f32(float %Val)
declare double @llvm.round.f64(double %Val)
declare x86_fp80 @llvm.round.f80(x86_fp80 %Val)
declare fp128 @llvm.round.f128(fp128 %Val)
declare ppc_fp128 @llvm.round.ppcf128(ppc_fp128 %Val)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.round.*
‘ intrinsics returns the operand rounded to the
nearest integer.
Arguments:¶
The argument and return value are floating point numbers of the same type.
Semantics:¶
This function returns the same values as the libm round
functions would, and handles error conditions in the same way.
Bit Manipulation Intrinsics¶
LLVM provides intrinsics for a few important bit manipulation operations. These allow efficient code generation for some algorithms.
‘llvm.bswap.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic function. You can use bswap on any integer type that is an even number of bytes (i.e. BitWidth % 16 == 0).
declare i16 @llvm.bswap.i16(i16 <id>)
declare i32 @llvm.bswap.i32(i32 <id>)
declare i64 @llvm.bswap.i64(i64 <id>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.bswap
‘ family of intrinsics is used to byte swap integer
values with an even number of bytes (positive multiple of 16 bits).
These are useful for performing operations on data that is not in the
target’s native byte order.
Semantics:¶
The llvm.bswap.i16
intrinsic returns an i16 value that has the high
and low byte of the input i16 swapped. Similarly, the llvm.bswap.i32
intrinsic returns an i32 value that has the four bytes of the input i32
swapped, so that if the input bytes are numbered 0, 1, 2, 3 then the
returned i32 will have its bytes in 3, 2, 1, 0 order. The
llvm.bswap.i48
, llvm.bswap.i64
and other intrinsics extend this
concept to additional even-byte lengths (6 bytes, 8 bytes and more,
respectively).
‘llvm.ctpop.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.ctpop on any integer bit width, or on any vector with integer elements. Not all targets support all bit widths or vector types, however.
declare i8 @llvm.ctpop.i8(i8 <src>)
declare i16 @llvm.ctpop.i16(i16 <src>)
declare i32 @llvm.ctpop.i32(i32 <src>)
declare i64 @llvm.ctpop.i64(i64 <src>)
declare i256 @llvm.ctpop.i256(i256 <src>)
declare <2 x i32> @llvm.ctpop.v2i32(<2 x i32> <src>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.ctpop
‘ family of intrinsics counts the number of bits set
in a value.
Arguments:¶
The only argument is the value to be counted. The argument may be of any integer type, or a vector with integer elements. The return type must match the argument type.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.ctpop
‘ intrinsic counts the 1’s in a variable, or within
each element of a vector.
‘llvm.ctlz.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.ctlz
on any
integer bit width, or any vector whose elements are integers. Not all
targets support all bit widths or vector types, however.
declare i8 @llvm.ctlz.i8 (i8 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i16 @llvm.ctlz.i16 (i16 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i32 @llvm.ctlz.i32 (i32 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i64 @llvm.ctlz.i64 (i64 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i256 @llvm.ctlz.i256(i256 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declase <2 x i32> @llvm.ctlz.v2i32(<2 x i32> <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.ctlz
‘ family of intrinsic functions counts the number of
leading zeros in a variable.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is the value to be counted. This argument may be of any integer type, or a vectory with integer element type. The return type must match the first argument type.
The second argument must be a constant and is a flag to indicate whether the intrinsic should ensure that a zero as the first argument produces a defined result. Historically some architectures did not provide a defined result for zero values as efficiently, and many algorithms are now predicated on avoiding zero-value inputs.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.ctlz
‘ intrinsic counts the leading (most significant)
zeros in a variable, or within each element of the vector. If
src == 0
then the result is the size in bits of the type of src
if is_zero_undef == 0
and undef
otherwise. For example,
llvm.ctlz(i32 2) = 30
.
‘llvm.cttz.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.cttz
on any
integer bit width, or any vector of integer elements. Not all targets
support all bit widths or vector types, however.
declare i8 @llvm.cttz.i8 (i8 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i16 @llvm.cttz.i16 (i16 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i32 @llvm.cttz.i32 (i32 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i64 @llvm.cttz.i64 (i64 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declare i256 @llvm.cttz.i256(i256 <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
declase <2 x i32> @llvm.cttz.v2i32(<2 x i32> <src>, i1 <is_zero_undef>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.cttz
‘ family of intrinsic functions counts the number of
trailing zeros.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is the value to be counted. This argument may be of any integer type, or a vectory with integer element type. The return type must match the first argument type.
The second argument must be a constant and is a flag to indicate whether the intrinsic should ensure that a zero as the first argument produces a defined result. Historically some architectures did not provide a defined result for zero values as efficiently, and many algorithms are now predicated on avoiding zero-value inputs.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.cttz
‘ intrinsic counts the trailing (least significant)
zeros in a variable, or within each element of a vector. If src == 0
then the result is the size in bits of the type of src
if
is_zero_undef == 0
and undef
otherwise. For example,
llvm.cttz(2) = 1
.
Arithmetic with Overflow Intrinsics¶
LLVM provides intrinsics for some arithmetic with overflow operations.
‘llvm.sadd.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.sadd.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.sadd.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.sadd.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.sadd.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.sadd.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed addition of the two arguments, and indicate whether an overflow
occurred during the signed summation.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo signed
addition.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.sadd.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed addition of the two variables. They return a structure — the
first element of which is the signed summation, and the second element
of which is a bit specifying if the signed summation resulted in an
overflow.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.sadd.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %overflow, label %normal
‘llvm.uadd.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.uadd.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.uadd.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.uadd.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.uadd.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.uadd.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
an unsigned addition of the two arguments, and indicate whether a carry
occurred during the unsigned summation.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo unsigned
addition.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.uadd.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
an unsigned addition of the two arguments. They return a structure — the
first element of which is the sum, and the second element of which is a
bit specifying if the unsigned summation resulted in a carry.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.uadd.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %carry, label %normal
‘llvm.ssub.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.ssub.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.ssub.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.ssub.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.ssub.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.ssub.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed subtraction of the two arguments, and indicate whether an
overflow occurred during the signed subtraction.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo signed
subtraction.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.ssub.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed subtraction of the two arguments. They return a structure — the
first element of which is the subtraction, and the second element of
which is a bit specifying if the signed subtraction resulted in an
overflow.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.ssub.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %overflow, label %normal
‘llvm.usub.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.usub.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.usub.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.usub.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.usub.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.usub.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
an unsigned subtraction of the two arguments, and indicate whether an
overflow occurred during the unsigned subtraction.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo unsigned
subtraction.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.usub.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
an unsigned subtraction of the two arguments. They return a structure —
the first element of which is the subtraction, and the second element of
which is a bit specifying if the unsigned subtraction resulted in an
overflow.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.usub.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %overflow, label %normal
‘llvm.smul.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.smul.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.smul.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.smul.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.smul.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.smul.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed multiplication of the two arguments, and indicate whether an
overflow occurred during the signed multiplication.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo signed
multiplication.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.smul.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a signed multiplication of the two arguments. They return a structure —
the first element of which is the multiplication, and the second element
of which is a bit specifying if the signed multiplication resulted in an
overflow.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.smul.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %overflow, label %normal
‘llvm.umul.with.overflow.*
‘ Intrinsics¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use llvm.umul.with.overflow
on any integer bit width.
declare {i16, i1} @llvm.umul.with.overflow.i16(i16 %a, i16 %b)
declare {i32, i1} @llvm.umul.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
declare {i64, i1} @llvm.umul.with.overflow.i64(i64 %a, i64 %b)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.umul.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
a unsigned multiplication of the two arguments, and indicate whether an
overflow occurred during the unsigned multiplication.
Arguments:¶
The arguments (%a and %b) and the first element of the result structure
may be of integer types of any bit width, but they must have the same
bit width. The second element of the result structure must be of type
i1
. %a
and %b
are the two values that will undergo unsigned
multiplication.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.umul.with.overflow
‘ family of intrinsic functions perform
an unsigned multiplication of the two arguments. They return a structure —
the first element of which is the multiplication, and the second
element of which is a bit specifying if the unsigned multiplication
resulted in an overflow.
Examples:¶
%res = call {i32, i1} @llvm.umul.with.overflow.i32(i32 %a, i32 %b)
%sum = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 0
%obit = extractvalue {i32, i1} %res, 1
br i1 %obit, label %overflow, label %normal
Specialised Arithmetic Intrinsics¶
‘llvm.fmuladd.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare float @llvm.fmuladd.f32(float %a, float %b, float %c)
declare double @llvm.fmuladd.f64(double %a, double %b, double %c)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.fmuladd.*
‘ intrinsic functions represent multiply-add
expressions that can be fused if the code generator determines that (a) the
target instruction set has support for a fused operation, and (b) that the
fused operation is more efficient than the equivalent, separate pair of mul
and add instructions.
Arguments:¶
The ‘llvm.fmuladd.*
‘ intrinsics each take three arguments: two
multiplicands, a and b, and an addend c.
Semantics:¶
The expression:
%0 = call float @llvm.fmuladd.f32(%a, %b, %c)
is equivalent to the expression a * b + c, except that rounding will not be performed between the multiplication and addition steps if the code generator fuses the operations. Fusion is not guaranteed, even if the target platform supports it. If a fused multiply-add is required the corresponding llvm.fma.* intrinsic function should be used instead.
Examples:¶
%r2 = call float @llvm.fmuladd.f32(float %a, float %b, float %c) ; yields {float}:r2 = (a * b) + c
Half Precision Floating Point Intrinsics¶
For most target platforms, half precision floating point is a storage-only format. This means that it is a dense encoding (in memory) but does not support computation in the format.
This means that code must first load the half-precision floating point value as an i16, then convert it to float with llvm.convert.from.fp16. Computation can then be performed on the float value (including extending to double etc). To store the value back to memory, it is first converted to float if needed, then converted to i16 with llvm.convert.to.fp16, then storing as an i16 value.
‘llvm.convert.to.fp16
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i16 @llvm.convert.to.fp16(f32 %a)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.convert.to.fp16
‘ intrinsic function performs a conversion
from single precision floating point format to half precision floating
point format.
Arguments:¶
The intrinsic function contains single argument - the value to be converted.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.convert.to.fp16
‘ intrinsic function performs a conversion
from single precision floating point format to half precision floating
point format. The return value is an i16
which contains the
converted number.
Examples:¶
%res = call i16 @llvm.convert.to.fp16(f32 %a)
store i16 %res, i16* @x, align 2
‘llvm.convert.from.fp16
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare f32 @llvm.convert.from.fp16(i16 %a)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.convert.from.fp16
‘ intrinsic function performs a
conversion from half precision floating point format to single precision
floating point format.
Arguments:¶
The intrinsic function contains single argument - the value to be converted.
Semantics:¶
The ‘llvm.convert.from.fp16
‘ intrinsic function performs a
conversion from half single precision floating point format to single
precision floating point format. The input half-float value is
represented by an i16
value.
Examples:¶
%a = load i16* @x, align 2
%res = call f32 @llvm.convert.from.fp16(i16 %a)
Debugger Intrinsics¶
The LLVM debugger intrinsics (which all start with llvm.dbg.
prefix), are described in the LLVM Source Level
Debugging
document.
Exception Handling Intrinsics¶
The LLVM exception handling intrinsics (which all start with
llvm.eh.
prefix), are described in the LLVM Exception
Handling document.
Trampoline Intrinsics¶
These intrinsics make it possible to excise one parameter, marked with the nest attribute, from a function. The result is a callable function pointer lacking the nest parameter - the caller does not need to provide a value for it. Instead, the value to use is stored in advance in a “trampoline”, a block of memory usually allocated on the stack, which also contains code to splice the nest value into the argument list. This is used to implement the GCC nested function address extension.
For example, if the function is i32 f(i8* nest %c, i32 %x, i32 %y)
then the resulting function pointer has signature i32 (i32, i32)*
.
It can be created as follows:
%tramp = alloca [10 x i8], align 4 ; size and alignment only correct for X86
%tramp1 = getelementptr [10 x i8]* %tramp, i32 0, i32 0
call i8* @llvm.init.trampoline(i8* %tramp1, i8* bitcast (i32 (i8*, i32, i32)* @f to i8*), i8* %nval)
%p = call i8* @llvm.adjust.trampoline(i8* %tramp1)
%fp = bitcast i8* %p to i32 (i32, i32)*
The call %val = call i32 %fp(i32 %x, i32 %y)
is then equivalent to
%val = call i32 %f(i8* %nval, i32 %x, i32 %y)
.
‘llvm.init.trampoline
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.init.trampoline(i8* <tramp>, i8* <func>, i8* <nval>)
Overview:¶
This fills the memory pointed to by tramp
with executable code,
turning it into a trampoline.
Arguments:¶
The llvm.init.trampoline
intrinsic takes three arguments, all
pointers. The tramp
argument must point to a sufficiently large and
sufficiently aligned block of memory; this memory is written to by the
intrinsic. Note that the size and the alignment are target-specific -
LLVM currently provides no portable way of determining them, so a
front-end that generates this intrinsic needs to have some
target-specific knowledge. The func
argument must hold a function
bitcast to an i8*
.
Semantics:¶
The block of memory pointed to by tramp
is filled with target
dependent code, turning it into a function. Then tramp
needs to be
passed to llvm.adjust.trampoline to get a pointer which can
be bitcast (to a new function) and called. The new
function’s signature is the same as that of func
with any arguments
marked with the nest
attribute removed. At most one such nest
argument is allowed, and it must be of pointer type. Calling the new
function is equivalent to calling func
with the same argument list,
but with nval
used for the missing nest
argument. If, after
calling llvm.init.trampoline
, the memory pointed to by tramp
is
modified, then the effect of any later call to the returned function
pointer is undefined.
‘llvm.adjust.trampoline
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i8* @llvm.adjust.trampoline(i8* <tramp>)
Overview:¶
This performs any required machine-specific adjustment to the address of
a trampoline (passed as tramp
).
Arguments:¶
tramp
must point to a block of memory which already has trampoline
code filled in by a previous call to
llvm.init.trampoline.
Semantics:¶
On some architectures the address of the code to be executed needs to be
different to the address where the trampoline is actually stored. This
intrinsic returns the executable address corresponding to tramp
after performing the required machine specific adjustments. The pointer
returned can then be bitcast and executed.
Memory Use Markers¶
This class of intrinsics exists to information about the lifetime of memory objects and ranges where variables are immutable.
‘llvm.lifetime.start
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.lifetime.start(i64 <size>, i8* nocapture <ptr>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.lifetime.start
‘ intrinsic specifies the start of a memory
object’s lifetime.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a constant integer representing the size of the object, or -1 if it is variable sized. The second argument is a pointer to the object.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic indicates that before this point in the code, the value
of the memory pointed to by ptr
is dead. This means that it is known
to never be used and has an undefined value. A load from the pointer
that precedes this intrinsic can be replaced with 'undef'
.
‘llvm.lifetime.end
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.lifetime.end(i64 <size>, i8* nocapture <ptr>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.lifetime.end
‘ intrinsic specifies the end of a memory
object’s lifetime.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a constant integer representing the size of the object, or -1 if it is variable sized. The second argument is a pointer to the object.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic indicates that after this point in the code, the value of
the memory pointed to by ptr
is dead. This means that it is known to
never be used and has an undefined value. Any stores into the memory
object following this intrinsic may be removed as dead.
‘llvm.invariant.start
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare {}* @llvm.invariant.start(i64 <size>, i8* nocapture <ptr>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.invariant.start
‘ intrinsic specifies that the contents of
a memory object will not change.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a constant integer representing the size of the object, or -1 if it is variable sized. The second argument is a pointer to the object.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic indicates that until an llvm.invariant.end
that uses
the return value, the referenced memory location is constant and
unchanging.
‘llvm.invariant.end
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.invariant.end({}* <start>, i64 <size>, i8* nocapture <ptr>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.invariant.end
‘ intrinsic specifies that the contents of a
memory object are mutable.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is the matching llvm.invariant.start
intrinsic.
The second argument is a constant integer representing the size of the
object, or -1 if it is variable sized and the third argument is a
pointer to the object.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic indicates that the memory is mutable again.
General Intrinsics¶
This class of intrinsics is designed to be generic and has no specific purpose.
‘llvm.var.annotation
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.var.annotation(i8* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.var.annotation
‘ intrinsic.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to a value, the second is a pointer to a global string, the third is a pointer to a global string which is the source file name, and the last argument is the line number.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic allows annotation of local variables with arbitrary strings. This can be useful for special purpose optimizations that want to look for these annotations. These have no other defined use; they are ignored by code generation and optimization.
‘llvm.ptr.annotation.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use ‘llvm.ptr.annotation
‘ on a
pointer to an integer of any width. NOTE you must specify an address space for
the pointer. The identifier for the default address space is the integer
‘0
‘.
declare i8* @llvm.ptr.annotation.p<address space>i8(i8* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i16* @llvm.ptr.annotation.p<address space>i16(i16* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i32* @llvm.ptr.annotation.p<address space>i32(i32* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i64* @llvm.ptr.annotation.p<address space>i64(i64* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i256* @llvm.ptr.annotation.p<address space>i256(i256* <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.ptr.annotation
‘ intrinsic.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is a pointer to an integer value of arbitrary bitwidth (result of some expression), the second is a pointer to a global string, the third is a pointer to a global string which is the source file name, and the last argument is the line number. It returns the value of the first argument.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic allows annotation of a pointer to an integer with arbitrary strings. This can be useful for special purpose optimizations that want to look for these annotations. These have no other defined use; they are ignored by code generation and optimization.
‘llvm.annotation.*
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
This is an overloaded intrinsic. You can use ‘llvm.annotation
‘ on
any integer bit width.
declare i8 @llvm.annotation.i8(i8 <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i16 @llvm.annotation.i16(i16 <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i32 @llvm.annotation.i32(i32 <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i64 @llvm.annotation.i64(i64 <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
declare i256 @llvm.annotation.i256(i256 <val>, i8* <str>, i8* <str>, i32 <int>)
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.annotation
‘ intrinsic.
Arguments:¶
The first argument is an integer value (result of some expression), the second is a pointer to a global string, the third is a pointer to a global string which is the source file name, and the last argument is the line number. It returns the value of the first argument.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic allows annotations to be put on arbitrary expressions with arbitrary strings. This can be useful for special purpose optimizations that want to look for these annotations. These have no other defined use; they are ignored by code generation and optimization.
‘llvm.trap
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.trap() noreturn nounwind
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.trap
‘ intrinsic.
Arguments:¶
None.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic is lowered to the target dependent trap instruction. If
the target does not have a trap instruction, this intrinsic will be
lowered to a call of the abort()
function.
‘llvm.debugtrap
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.debugtrap() nounwind
Overview:¶
The ‘llvm.debugtrap
‘ intrinsic.
Arguments:¶
None.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic is lowered to code which is intended to cause an execution trap with the intention of requesting the attention of a debugger.
‘llvm.stackprotector
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.stackprotector(i8* <guard>, i8** <slot>)
Overview:¶
The llvm.stackprotector
intrinsic takes the guard
and stores it
onto the stack at slot
. The stack slot is adjusted to ensure that it
is placed on the stack before local variables.
Arguments:¶
The llvm.stackprotector
intrinsic requires two pointer arguments.
The first argument is the value loaded from the stack guard
@__stack_chk_guard
. The second variable is an alloca
that has
enough space to hold the value of the guard.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic causes the prologue/epilogue inserter to force the position of
the AllocaInst
stack slot to be before local variables on the stack. This is
to ensure that if a local variable on the stack is overwritten, it will destroy
the value of the guard. When the function exits, the guard on the stack is
checked against the original guard by llvm.stackprotectorcheck
. If they are
different, then llvm.stackprotectorcheck
causes the program to abort by
calling the __stack_chk_fail()
function.
‘llvm.stackprotectorcheck
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.stackprotectorcheck(i8** <guard>)
Overview:¶
The llvm.stackprotectorcheck
intrinsic compares guard
against an already
created stack protector and if they are not equal calls the
__stack_chk_fail()
function.
Arguments:¶
The llvm.stackprotectorcheck
intrinsic requires one pointer argument, the
the variable @__stack_chk_guard
.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic is provided to perform the stack protector check by comparing
guard
with the stack slot created by llvm.stackprotector
and if the
values do not match call the __stack_chk_fail()
function.
The reason to provide this as an IR level intrinsic instead of implementing it via other IR operations is that in order to perform this operation at the IR level without an intrinsic, one would need to create additional basic blocks to handle the success/failure cases. This makes it difficult to stop the stack protector check from disrupting sibling tail calls in Codegen. With this intrinsic, we are able to generate the stack protector basic blocks late in codegen after the tail call decision has occurred.
‘llvm.objectsize
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i32 @llvm.objectsize.i32(i8* <object>, i1 <min>)
declare i64 @llvm.objectsize.i64(i8* <object>, i1 <min>)
Overview:¶
The llvm.objectsize
intrinsic is designed to provide information to
the optimizers to determine at compile time whether a) an operation
(like memcpy) will overflow a buffer that corresponds to an object, or
b) that a runtime check for overflow isn’t necessary. An object in this
context means an allocation of a specific class, structure, array, or
other object.
Arguments:¶
The llvm.objectsize
intrinsic takes two arguments. The first
argument is a pointer to or into the object
. The second argument is
a boolean and determines whether llvm.objectsize
returns 0 (if true)
or -1 (if false) when the object size is unknown. The second argument
only accepts constants.
Semantics:¶
The llvm.objectsize
intrinsic is lowered to a constant representing
the size of the object concerned. If the size cannot be determined at
compile time, llvm.objectsize
returns i32/i64 -1 or 0
(depending
on the min
argument).
‘llvm.expect
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare i32 @llvm.expect.i32(i32 <val>, i32 <expected_val>)
declare i64 @llvm.expect.i64(i64 <val>, i64 <expected_val>)
Overview:¶
The llvm.expect
intrinsic provides information about expected (the
most probable) value of val
, which can be used by optimizers.
Arguments:¶
The llvm.expect
intrinsic takes two arguments. The first argument is
a value. The second argument is an expected value, this needs to be a
constant value, variables are not allowed.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic is lowered to the val
.
‘llvm.donothing
‘ Intrinsic¶
Syntax:¶
declare void @llvm.donothing() nounwind readnone
Overview:¶
The llvm.donothing
intrinsic doesn’t perform any operation. It’s the
only intrinsic that can be called with an invoke instruction.
Arguments:¶
None.
Semantics:¶
This intrinsic does nothing, and it’s removed by optimizers and ignored by codegen.