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97 lines
2.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
97 lines
2.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
==============================
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FaultMaps and implicit checks
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==============================
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.. contents::
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:local:
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:depth: 2
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Motivation
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==========
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Code generated by managed language runtimes tend to have checks that
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are required for safety but never fail in practice. In such cases, it
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is profitable to make the non-failing case cheaper even if it makes
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the failing case significantly more expensive. This asymmetry can be
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exploited by folding such safety checks into operations that can be
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made to fault reliably if the check would have failed, and recovering
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from such a fault by using a signal handler.
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For example, Java requires null checks on objects before they are read
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from or written to. If the object is ``null`` then a
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``NullPointerException`` has to be thrown, interrupting normal
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execution. In practice, however, dereferencing a ``null`` pointer is
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extremely rare in well-behaved Java programs, and typically the null
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check can be folded into a nearby memory operation that operates on
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the same memory location.
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The Fault Map Section
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=====================
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Information about implicit checks generated by LLVM are put in a
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special "fault map" section. On Darwin this section is named
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``__llvm_faultmaps``.
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The format of this section is
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.. code-block:: none
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Header {
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uint8 : Fault Map Version (current version is 1)
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uint8 : Reserved (expected to be 0)
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uint16 : Reserved (expected to be 0)
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}
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uint32 : NumFunctions
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FunctionInfo[NumFunctions] {
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uint64 : FunctionAddress
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uint32 : NumFaultingPCs
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uint32 : Reserved (expected to be 0)
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FunctionFaultInfo[NumFaultingPCs] {
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uint32 : FaultKind = FaultMaps::FaultingLoad (only legal value currently)
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uint32 : FaultingPCOffset
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uint32 : HandlerPCOffset
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}
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}
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The ``ImplicitNullChecks`` pass
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===============================
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The ``ImplicitNullChecks`` pass transforms explicit control flow for
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checking if a pointer is ``null``, like:
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.. code-block:: llvm
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%ptr = call i32* @get_ptr()
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%ptr_is_null = icmp i32* %ptr, null
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br i1 %ptr_is_null, label %is_null, label %not_null
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not_null:
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%t = load i32, i32* %ptr
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br label %do_something_with_t
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is_null:
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call void @HFC()
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unreachable
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to control flow implicit in the instruction loading or storing through
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the pointer being null checked:
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.. code-block:: llvm
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%ptr = call i32* @get_ptr()
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%t = load i32, i32* %ptr ;; handler-pc = label %is_null
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br label %do_something_with_t
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is_null:
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call void @HFC()
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unreachable
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This transform happens at the ``MachineInstr`` level, not the LLVM IR
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level (so the above example is only representative, not literal). The
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``ImplicitNullChecks`` pass runs during codegen, if
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``-enable-implicit-null-checks`` is passed to ``llc``.
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The ``ImplicitNullChecks`` pass adds entries to the
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``__llvm_faultmaps`` section described above as needed.
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