[Mesa-dev] Case where opt_copy_propagation doesn't do its job

[Eric Anholt]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:44:12 -0500, Bryan Cain <bryancain3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It appears that the copy propagation pass in the GLSL compiler (in
> opt_copy_propagation.cpp) doesn't do copy propagation when the
> components of a variable are initialized separately, like this:
> 
> (declare (temporary ) vec4 vec_ctor)
> (assign  (w) (var_ref vec_ctor)  (constant float (1.000000)) )
> (assign  (xyz) (var_ref vec_ctor)  (var_ref assignment_tmp at 16) )
> (assign  (xyzw) (var_ref gl_FragColor)  (var_ref vec_ctor) )
> 
> In the past, this wasn't visible in the Mesa IR output because Mesa IR
> optimization seems to do the copy propagation.  However, glsl_to_tgsi
> doesn't do copy propagation to output registers - in fact, I believe
> this is the only case left where ir_to_mesa produces better code than
> glsl_to_tgsi.  I'm not very enthusiastic about the idea adding to the
> copy propagation pass in glsl_to_tgsi, since this case is something that
> should really be optimized by the GLSL compiler before it reaches the IR
> backend.
> 
> So, is there a reason why the GLSL copy propagation pass doesn't operate
> per-component?

opt_copy_propagation_elements does that, but it doesn't split up the
assignment into multiple assignments (otherwise, imagine initializing
vec_ctor once and using it many times -- how do you decide whether copy
propagate or not, to avoid pessimizing the code?).

I think the operation you're looking for isn't really copy propagation,
but more like register coalescing where you see that vec_ctor doesn't
get redefined and used after being assigned to gl_FragColor, and just
store the two in the same place.  And yes, I think it would be useful to
have something like that.

Either that or generate new ir_quadop_vector in copy propagation.
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