[Mesa-dev] [PATCH 10/32] i965/fs: Remove logic to keep track of MRF metadata in lower_load_payload().

Jason Ekstrand jason at jlekstrand.net
Fri Feb 20 11:10:24 PST 2015


On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Francisco Jerez <currojerez at riseup.net>
wrote:

> Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> writes:
>
> > On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 4:11 AM, Francisco Jerez <currojerez at riseup.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> writes:
> >>
> >> > I'm still a little pensive.  But
> >> >
> >> > Reviewed-by: Jason Ekstrand <jason.ekstrand at intel.com>
> >> >
> >> Thanks.
> >>
> >> > Now for a little aside.  I have come to the conclusion that I made a
> >> grave
> >> > mistake when I did the LOAD_PAYLOAD stuff.  In retrospect, I should
> have
> >> > just subclassed fs_inst for load_payload.  The problem is that we
> need to
> >> > snag a bunch of information for the sources when we create the
> >> > load_payload.  In particular, we need to know the width of the source
> so
> >> > that we know how much space it consumes in the payload and we need to
> >> know
> >> > the information required to properly re-create the mov such as
> >> > force_sechalf and force_writemask_all.  Really, in order to do things
> >> > properly, we need to gather this information *before* we do any
> >> > optimizations.  The nasty pile of code that you're editing together
> with
> >> > the "effective_width" parameter is a lame attempt to
> capture/reconstruct
> >> > this information.  Really, we should just subclass, capture the
> >> information
> >> > up-front, and do it properly.
> >> >
> >> Yes, absolutely, this lowering pass is a real mess.  There are four more
> >> unreviewed patches in the mailing list fixing bugs of the metadata
> >> guessing of lower_load_payload() [1][2][3][4], you may want to take a
> >> look at them.  There are more bugs I'm aware of but it didn't seem
> >> practical to fix them.
> >>
> >
> > Yeah, Matt pointed me at those.  I'll give them a look later today.
> >
> >
> >> That said, I don't think it would be worth subclassing fs_inst.
> >>
> >> My suggestion would have been to keep it simple and lower LOAD_PAYLOAD
> >> into a series of MOVs with force_writemask_all enabled in all cases,
> >> simply rely on the optimizer to eliminate those where possible.  Then
> >> get rid of the metadata and effective_width guessing.  Instead agree on
> >> immediates and uniforms being exec_size-wide by convention
> >> (i.e. LOAD_PAYLOAD's exec_size rather than the original instruction's),
> >> then prevent constant propagation from propagating an immediate load
> >> into a LOAD_PAYLOAD if it would lead to a change in the semantics of the
> >> program, and maybe just run constant propagation after lowering so we
> >> can be sure those cases are cleaned up properly where register coalesce
> >> isn't enough.
> >>
> >
> > First off, simply setting force_writemask_all isn't an option.  Consider
> > the following scenario:
> >
> > a = foo;
> > if (bar) {
> >    b = 7;
> > } else {
> >    use(a);
> > }
> > use(b);
> >
> > If "use(a)" is the last use of the variable a, then the live ranges of a
> > and b don't actually over-lap and we can assign a and b to the same
> > register.  However, if force_writemask_all is set on b, it will destroy
> the
> > value in a before its last use.  Right now, we don't actually do this
> > because our liveness analysis pass flattens everything so it will think
> > that b and a over-lap even though they don't.  However, if we ever decide
> > to make the liveness information more accurate, having a pile of
> > force_writemask_all instructions will be a major problem.  So, while it
> is
> > *technically* safe for now, it's a really bad idea in the long-term.
> >
> The thing is we *will* have to deal with that scenario.  Building a
> message payload inherently involves crossing channel boundaries (because
> of headers, unsupported SIMD modes by some shared functions, etc.).  I'd
> say it's a bug in the liveness analysis pass if it wouldn't consider the
> liveness interval of a and b to overlap in your example if the
> assignment of b had force_writemask_all set.
>

Yes, I'm aware of that.  However, the part of that register that has to
squash everything is usually only a couple of registers while the entire
payload may be up to 13 (if I remmeber correctly).  We'd rather not have to
squash everything if we can.  All that being said, our liveness/register
allocation can't handle this and making register allocation handle parts of
registers interfering but not other bits is going to be a real pain.  Maybe
not even worth it.  If you'd rather force_writemask_all everything, I'll
sign off on that for now.  I just wanted to point out that it may not be a
good permanent solution.


> A reasonable compromise might be to leave it up to the caller whether to
> set the force_writemask_all and force_sechalf flags or not.  I.e. just
> copy the same flags set on the LOAD_PAYLOAD instruction to the MOV
> instructions.  That would still allow reducing the liveness intervals in
> cases where we know that the payload respects channel boundaries.
>
> Tracking the flag information per-register in cases where the same
> payload has well- and ill-behaved values seems rather premature and
> rather useless to me because the optimizer is likely to be able to get
> rid of redundant copies with force_writemask_all -- register coalesce
> is doing this already AFAIK, maybe by accident.
>

Sure.  I'm not worried about our ability to optimize.  I'm primarily
worried about register pressure.  Like I said, it's an OK solution in the
temporary.  I think we'll want to give it more thought in the long-run but
that's going to interact a lot with how we do register allocation etc.
--Jason


> > Regarding the other suggestion of just requiring width == exec_size for
> > immediates and uniforms, that seems pretty reasonable to me.  I'd like to
> > know what it will do to optimizations, but it seems ok initially.  I'm
> > still a bigger fan of just subclassing and stashing everything we need to
> > know up-front.  If we do it right, the only things that will actually
> need
> > to know about the subclass are the function for creating a LOAD_PAYLOAD
> and
> > lower_load_payloads.
> >
> > --Jason
> >
> >
> >>
> >> [1]
> >> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-January/074614.html
> >> [2]
> >>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-February/076094.html
> >> [3]
> >>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-February/076097.html
> >> [4]
> >>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-February/076098.html
> >>
> >>
> >> > --Jason
> >> >
> >> > On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net
> >
> >> > wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Francisco Jerez <
> currojerez at riseup.net
> >> >
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>> Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> writes:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> > On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 12:13 PM, Francisco Jerez <
> >> >>> currojerez at riseup.net>
> >> >>> > wrote:
> >> >>> >
> >> >>> >> Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> writes:
> >> >>> >>
> >> >>> >> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Francisco Jerez <
> >> >>> currojerez at riseup.net>
> >> >>> >> > wrote:
> >> >>> >> >
> >> >>> >> >> Hey Matt,
> >> >>> >> >>
> >> >>> >> >> Matt Turner <mattst88 at gmail.com> writes:
> >> >>> >> >>
> >> >>> >> >> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 6:42 AM, Francisco Jerez <
> >> >>> >> currojerez at riseup.net>
> >> >>> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>> >> >> >> MRFs cannot be read from anyway so they cannot possibly be
> a
> >> >>> valid
> >> >>> >> >> >> source of LOAD_PAYLOAD.
> >> >>> >> >> >> ---
> >> >>> >> >> >
> >> >>> >> >> > The function only seems to test inst->dst.file == MRF. I
> don't
> >> >>> see any
> >> >>> >> >> > code for handling MRF sources. What am I missing?
> >> >>> >> >>
> >> >>> >> >> That test is for "handling" MRF sources -- More precisely,
> it's
> >> >>> >> >> collecting the writemask and half flags for MRF writes, which
> can
> >> >>> only
> >> >>> >> >> possibly be useful if we're going to use them later on to read
> >> >>> something
> >> >>> >> >> out of an MRF into a payload, which we shouldn't be doing in
> the
> >> >>> first
> >> >>> >> >> place.
> >> >>> >> >>
> >> >>> >> >> Aside from simplifying the function somewhat, that allows us
> to
> >> >>> drop the
> >> >>> >> >> 16 register gap reserved for MRFs at register offset zero,
> what
> >> will
> >> >>> >> >> allow us to drop the vgrf_to_reg[] offset calculation
> completely
> >> >>> (also
> >> >>> >> >> in split_virtual_grfs()) in a future patch (not sent for
> review
> >> >>> yet).
> >> >>> >> >>
> >> >>> >> >
> >> >>> >> > No, we do read from MRF's sort-of...  Send messages have an
> >> implicit
> >> >>> >> "read"
> >> >>> >> > from an MRF.
> >> >>> >>
> >> >>> >> Heh, and that's pretty much the only way you "read" from it.
> >> >>> >>
> >> >>> >> > This was written precicely so that we could use LOAD_PAYLOAD
> >> >>> >> > to build MRF payloads.  We do on pre-GEN6.
> >> >>> >> >
> >> >>> >> I'm aware, but you don't need any of this meta-data to
> LOAD_PAYLOAD
> >> >>> >> *into* an MRF, and LOAD_PAYLOAD with an MRF as source should be
> >> illegal
> >> >>> >> anyway.
> >> >>> >>
> >> >>> >
> >> >>> > And no one is using it that way.  All of the metadata checks you
> are
> >> >>> > deleting are checks on the *destination*.
> >> >>> >
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Didn't you write this code yourself?  The only use for the collected
> >> >>> metadata is initializing the instruction flags of the MOVs
> subsequent
> >> >>> LOAD_PAYLOAD instructions are lowered to, based on the metadata
> already
> >> >>> collected for its source registers, which can never be MRFs, so the
> >> >>> metadata you collect from MRF writes is never actually used.
> >> >>>
> >> >>
> >> >> Right... I misred something initially.  Yes, we should never be
> tracking
> >> >> MRF's as a source of a LOAD_PAYLOAD.  I'll give it a better look a
> bit
> >> >> later, but it looks better.
> >> >>
> >>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/attachments/20150220/7b2a9a4c/attachment.html>


More information about the mesa-dev mailing list