From: Richard Sandiford <richard.sandiford@arm.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 5:36 PM
To: Tejas Belagod <Tejas.Belagod@arm.com>
Cc: gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [PR96339] AArch64: Optimise svlast[ab]
Tejas Belagod <Tejas.Belagod@arm.com> writes:
>>> +       {
>>> +         b = build3 (BIT_FIELD_REF, TREE_TYPE (f.lhs), val,
>>> +                     bitsize_int (step * BITS_PER_UNIT),
>>> +                     bitsize_int ((16 - step) * BITS_PER_UNIT));
>>> +
>>> +         return gimple_build_assign (f.lhs, b);
>>> +       }
>>> +
>>> +     /* If VECTOR_CST_NELTS_PER_PATTERN (pred) == 2 and every multiple of
>>> +        'step_1' in
>>> +        [VECTOR_CST_NPATTERNS .. VECTOR_CST_ENCODED_NELTS - 1]
>>> +        is zero, then we can treat the vector as VECTOR_CST_NPATTERNS
>>> +        elements followed by all inactive elements.  */
>>> +     if (!const_vl && VECTOR_CST_NELTS_PER_PATTERN (pred) == 2)
>>
>> Following on from the above, maybe use:
>>
>>   !VECTOR_CST_NELTS (pred).is_constant ()
>>
>> instead of !const_vl here.
>>
>> I have a horrible suspicion that I'm contradicting our earlier discussion
>> here, sorry, but: I think we have to return null if NELTS_PER_PATTERN != 2.
>>
>>
>>
>> IIUC, the NPATTERNS .. ENCODED_ELTS represent the repeated part of the
> encoded
>> constant. This means the repetition occurs if NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 2, IOW the
>> base1 repeats in the encoding. This loop is checking this condition and looks
>> for a 1 in the repeated part of the NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 2 in a VL vector.
>> Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding here.
>
> NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 1 is also a repeating pattern: it means that the
> entire sequence is repeated to fill a vector.  So if an NELTS_PER_PATTERN
> == 1 constant has elements {0, 1, 0, 0}, the vector is:
>
>    {0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, ...}
>
>
> Wouldn’t the vect_all_same(pred, step) cover this case for a given value of
> step?
>
>
> and the optimisation can't handle that.  NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 3 isn't
> likely to occur for predicates, but in principle it has the same problem.
>
>
>
> OK, I had misunderstood the encoding to always make base1 the repeating value
> by adjusting the NPATTERNS accordingly – I didn’t know you could also have the
> base2 value and beyond encoding the repeat value. In this case could I just
> remove NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 2 condition and the enclosed loop would check for a
> repeating ‘1’ in the repeated part of the encoded pattern?

But for NELTS_PER_PATTERN==1, the whole encoded sequence repeats.
So you would have to start the check at element 0 rather than
NPATTERNS.  And then (for NELTS_PER_PATTERN==1) the loop would reject
any constant that has a nonzero element.  But all valid zero-vector
cases have been handled by this point, so the effect wouldn't be useful.

It should never be the case that all elements from NPATTERNS
onwards are zero for NELTS_PER_PATTERN==3; that case should be
canonicalised to NELTS_PER_PATTERN==2 instead.

So in practice it's simpler and more obviously correct to punt
when NELTS_PER_PATTERN != 2.

Thanks for the clarification.
I understand all points about punting when NELTS_PER_PATTERN !=2, but one.

Am I correct to understand that we still need to check for the case when there's a repeating non-zero elements in the case of NELTS_PER_PATTERN == 2? eg. { 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1,....} which should be encoded as {0, 0, 1, 1} with NPATTERNS = 2 ?

Thanks,
Tejas.


Thanks,
Richard