GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 4.2 Internals

8.4 Tree-SSA passes

The following briefly describes the tree optimization passes that are run after gimplification and what source files they are located in.

• Remove useless statements

  This pass is an extremely simple sweep across the gimple code in which we identify obviously dead code and remove it. Here we do things like simplify if statements with constant conditions, remove exception handling constructs surrounding code that obviously cannot throw, remove lexical bindings that contain no variables, and other assorted simplistic cleanups. The idea is to get rid of the obvious stuff quickly rather than wait until later when it's more work to get rid of it. This pass is located in tree-cfg.c and described by pass_remove_useless_stmts.

• Mudflap declaration registration

  If mudflap (see -fmudflap -fmudflapth -fmudflapir) is enabled, we generate code to register some variable declarations with the mudflap runtime. Specifically, the runtime tracks the lifetimes of those variable declarations that have their addresses taken, or whose bounds are unknown at compile time (extern). This pass generates new exception handling constructs (try/finally), and so must run before those are lowered. In addition, the pass enqueues declarations of static variables whose lifetimes extend to the entire program. The pass is located in tree-mudflap.c and is described by pass_mudflap_1.

• OpenMP lowering

  If OpenMP generation (-fopenmp) is enabled, this pass lowers OpenMP constructs into GIMPLE.

  Lowering of OpenMP constructs involves creating replacement expressions for local variables that have been mapped using data sharing clauses, exposing the control flow of most synchronization directives and adding region markers to facilitate the creation of the control flow graph. The pass is located in omp-low.c and is described by pass_lower_omp.

• OpenMP expansion

  If OpenMP generation (-fopenmp) is enabled, this pass expands parallel regions into their own functions to be invoked by the thread library. The pass is located in omp-low.c and is described by pass_expand_omp.

• Lower control flow

  This pass flattens if statements (COND_EXPR) and moves lexical bindings (BIND_EXPR) out of line. After this pass, all if statements will have exactly two goto statements in its then and else arms. Lexical binding information for each statement will be found in TREE_BLOCK rather than being inferred from its position under a BIND_EXPR. This pass is found in gimple-low.c and is described by pass_lower_cf.

• Lower exception handling control flow

  This pass decomposes high-level exception handling constructs (TRY_FINALLY_EXPR and TRY_CATCH_EXPR) into a form that explicitly represents the control flow involved. After this pass, lookup_stmt_eh_region will return a non-negative number for any statement that may have EH control flow semantics; examine tree_can_throw_internal or tree_can_throw_external for exact semantics. Exact control flow may be extracted from foreach_reachable_handler. The EH region nesting tree is defined in except.h and built in except.c. The lowering pass itself is in tree-eh.c and is described by pass_lower_eh.

• Build the control flow graph

  This pass decomposes a function into basic blocks and creates all of the edges that connect them. It is located in tree-cfg.c and is described by pass_build_cfg.

• Find all referenced variables

  This pass walks the entire function and collects an array of all variables referenced in the function, referenced_vars. The index at which a variable is found in the array is used as a UID for the variable within this function. This data is needed by the SSA rewriting routines. The pass is located in tree-dfa.c and is described by pass_referenced_vars.

• Enter static single assignment form

  This pass rewrites the function such that it is in SSA form. After this pass, all is_gimple_reg variables will be referenced by SSA_NAME, and all occurrences of other variables will be annotated with VDEFS and VUSES; PHI nodes will have been inserted as necessary for each basic block. This pass is located in tree-ssa.c and is described by pass_build_ssa.

• Warn for uninitialized variables

  This pass scans the function for uses of SSA_NAMEs that are fed by default definition. For non-parameter variables, such uses are uninitialized. The pass is run twice, before and after optimization. In the first pass we only warn for uses that are positively uninitialized; in the second pass we warn for uses that are possibly uninitialized. The pass is located in tree-ssa.c and is defined by pass_early_warn_uninitialized and pass_late_warn_uninitialized.

• Dead code elimination

  This pass scans the function for statements without side effects whose result is unused. It does not do memory life analysis, so any value that is stored in memory is considered used. The pass is run multiple times throughout the optimization process. It is located in tree-ssa-dce.c and is described by pass_dce.

• Dominator optimizations

  This pass performs trivial dominator-based copy and constant propagation, expression simplification, and jump threading. It is run multiple times throughout the optimization process. It it located in tree-ssa-dom.c and is described by pass_dominator.

• Redundant PHI elimination

  This pass removes PHI nodes for which all of the arguments are the same value, excluding feedback. Such degenerate forms are typically created by removing unreachable code. The pass is run multiple times throughout the optimization process. It is located in tree-ssa.c and is described by pass_redundant_phi.o

• Forward propagation of single-use variables

  This pass attempts to remove redundant computation by substituting variables that are used once into the expression that uses them and seeing if the result can be simplified. It is located in tree-ssa-forwprop.c and is described by pass_forwprop.

• Copy Renaming

  This pass attempts to change the name of compiler temporaries involved in copy operations such that SSA->normal can coalesce the copy away. When compiler temporaries are copies of user variables, it also renames the compiler temporary to the user variable resulting in better use of user symbols. It is located in tree-ssa-copyrename.c and is described by pass_copyrename.

• PHI node optimizations

  This pass recognizes forms of PHI inputs that can be represented as conditional expressions and rewrites them into straight line code. It is located in tree-ssa-phiopt.c and is described by pass_phiopt.

• May-alias optimization

  This pass performs a flow sensitive SSA-based points-to analysis. The resulting may-alias, must-alias, and escape analysis information is used to promote variables from in-memory addressable objects to non-aliased variables that can be renamed into SSA form. We also update the VDEF/VUSE memory tags for non-renameable aggregates so that we get fewer false kills. The pass is located in tree-ssa-alias.c and is described by pass_may_alias.

  Interprocedural points-to information is located in tree-ssa-structalias.c and described by pass_ipa_pta.

• Profiling

  This pass rewrites the function in order to collect runtime block and value profiling data. Such data may be fed back into the compiler on a subsequent run so as to allow optimization based on expected execution frequencies. The pass is located in predict.c and is described by pass_profile.

• Lower complex arithmetic

  This pass rewrites complex arithmetic operations into their component scalar arithmetic operations. The pass is located in tree-complex.c and is described by pass_lower_complex.

• Scalar replacement of aggregates

  This pass rewrites suitable non-aliased local aggregate variables into a set of scalar variables. The resulting scalar variables are rewritten into SSA form, which allows subsequent optimization passes to do a significantly better job with them. The pass is located in tree-sra.c and is described by pass_sra.

• Dead store elimination

  This pass eliminates stores to memory that are subsequently overwritten by another store, without any intervening loads. The pass is located in tree-ssa-dse.c and is described by pass_dse.

• Tail recursion elimination

  This pass transforms tail recursion into a loop. It is located in tree-tailcall.c and is described by pass_tail_recursion.

• Forward store motion

  This pass sinks stores and assignments down the flowgraph closer to it's use point. The pass is located in tree-ssa-sink.c and is described by pass_sink_code.

• Partial redundancy elimination

  This pass eliminates partially redundant computations, as well as performing load motion. The pass is located in tree-ssa-pre.c and is described by pass_pre.

  Just before partial redundancy elimination, if -funsafe-math-optimizations is on, GCC tries to convert divisions to multiplications by the reciprocal. The pass is located in tree-ssa-math-opts.c and is described by pass_cse_reciprocal.

• Full redundancy elimination

  This is a simpler form of PRE that only eliminate redundancies that occur an all paths. It is located in tree-ssa-pre.c and described by pass_fre.

• Loop optimization

  The main driver of the pass is placed in tree-ssa-loop.c and described by pass_loop.

  The optimizations performed by this pass are:

  Loop invariant motion. This pass moves only invariants that would be hard to handle on rtl level (function calls, operations that expand to nontrivial sequences of insns). With -funswitch-loops it also moves operands of conditions that are invariant out of the loop, so that we can use just trivial invariantness analysis in loop unswitching. The pass also includes store motion. The pass is implemented in tree-ssa-loop-im.c.

  Canonical induction variable creation. This pass creates a simple counter for number of iterations of the loop and replaces the exit condition of the loop using it, in case when a complicated analysis is necessary to determine the number of iterations. Later optimizations then may determine the number easily. The pass is implemented in tree-ssa-loop-ivcanon.c.

  Induction variable optimizations. This pass performs standard induction variable optimizations, including strength reduction, induction variable merging and induction variable elimination. The pass is implemented in tree-ssa-loop-ivopts.c.

  Loop unswitching. This pass moves the conditional jumps that are invariant out of the loops. To achieve this, a duplicate of the loop is created for each possible outcome of conditional jump(s). The pass is implemented in tree-ssa-loop-unswitch.c. This pass should eventually replace the rtl-level loop unswitching in loop-unswitch.c, but currently the rtl-level pass is not completely redundant yet due to deficiencies in tree level alias analysis.

  The optimizations also use various utility functions contained in tree-ssa-loop-manip.c, cfgloop.c, cfgloopanal.c and cfgloopmanip.c.

  Vectorization. This pass transforms loops to operate on vector types instead of scalar types. Data parallelism across loop iterations is exploited to group data elements from consecutive iterations into a vector and operate on them in parallel. Depending on available target support the loop is conceptually unrolled by a factor VF (vectorization factor), which is the number of elements operated upon in parallel in each iteration, and the VF copies of each scalar operation are fused to form a vector operation. Additional loop transformations such as peeling and versioning may take place to align the number of iterations, and to align the memory accesses in the loop. The pass is implemented in tree-vectorizer.c (the main driver and general utilities), tree-vect-analyze.c and tree-vect-transform.c. Analysis of data references is in tree-data-ref.c.

• Tree level if-conversion for vectorizer

  This pass applies if-conversion to simple loops to help vectorizer. We identify if convertible loops, if-convert statements and merge basic blocks in one big block. The idea is to present loop in such form so that vectorizer can have one to one mapping between statements and available vector operations. This patch re-introduces COND_EXPR at GIMPLE level. This pass is located in tree-if-conv.c and is described by pass_if_conversion.

• Conditional constant propagation

  This pass relaxes a lattice of values in order to identify those that must be constant even in the presence of conditional branches. The pass is located in tree-ssa-ccp.c and is described by pass_ccp.

  A related pass that works on memory loads and stores, and not just register values, is located in tree-ssa-ccp.c and described by pass_store_ccp.

• Conditional copy propagation

  This is similar to constant propagation but the lattice of values is the “copy-of” relation. It eliminates redundant copies from the code. The pass is located in tree-ssa-copy.c and described by pass_copy_prop.

  A related pass that works on memory copies, and not just register copies, is located in tree-ssa-copy.c and described by pass_store_copy_prop.

• Value range propagation

  This transformation is similar to constant propagation but instead of propagating single constant values, it propagates known value ranges. The implementation is based on Patterson's range propagation algorithm (Accurate Static Branch Prediction by Value Range Propagation, J. R. C. Patterson, PLDI '95). In contrast to Patterson's algorithm, this implementation does not propagate branch probabilities nor it uses more than a single range per SSA name. This means that the current implementation cannot be used for branch prediction (though adapting it would not be difficult). The pass is located in tree-vrp.c and is described by pass_vrp.

• Folding built-in functions

  This pass simplifies built-in functions, as applicable, with constant arguments or with inferrable string lengths. It is located in tree-ssa-ccp.c and is described by pass_fold_builtins.

• Split critical edges

  This pass identifies critical edges and inserts empty basic blocks such that the edge is no longer critical. The pass is located in tree-cfg.c and is described by pass_split_crit_edges.

• Control dependence dead code elimination

  This pass is a stronger form of dead code elimination that can eliminate unnecessary control flow statements. It is located in tree-ssa-dce.c and is described by pass_cd_dce.

• Tail call elimination

  This pass identifies function calls that may be rewritten into jumps. No code transformation is actually applied here, but the data and control flow problem is solved. The code transformation requires target support, and so is delayed until RTL. In the meantime CALL_EXPR_TAILCALL is set indicating the possibility. The pass is located in tree-tailcall.c and is described by pass_tail_calls. The RTL transformation is handled by fixup_tail_calls in calls.c.

• Warn for function return without value

  For non-void functions, this pass locates return statements that do not specify a value and issues a warning. Such a statement may have been injected by falling off the end of the function. This pass is run last so that we have as much time as possible to prove that the statement is not reachable. It is located in tree-cfg.c and is described by pass_warn_function_return.

• Mudflap statement annotation

  If mudflap is enabled, we rewrite some memory accesses with code to validate that the memory access is correct. In particular, expressions involving pointer dereferences (INDIRECT_REF, ARRAY_REF, etc.) are replaced by code that checks the selected address range against the mudflap runtime's database of valid regions. This check includes an inline lookup into a direct-mapped cache, based on shift/mask operations of the pointer value, with a fallback function call into the runtime. The pass is located in tree-mudflap.c and is described by pass_mudflap_2.

• Leave static single assignment form

  This pass rewrites the function such that it is in normal form. At the same time, we eliminate as many single-use temporaries as possible, so the intermediate language is no longer GIMPLE, but GENERIC. The pass is located in tree-outof-ssa.c and is described by pass_del_ssa.

• Merge PHI nodes that feed into one another

  This is part of the CFG cleanup passes. It attempts to join PHI nodes from a forwarder CFG block into another block with PHI nodes. The pass is located in tree-cfgcleanup.c and is described by pass_merge_phi.

• Return value optimization

  If a function always returns the same local variable, and that local variable is an aggregate type, then the variable is replaced with the return value for the function (i.e., the function's DECL_RESULT). This is equivalent to the C++ named return value optimization applied to GIMPLE. The pass is located in tree-nrv.c and is described by pass_nrv.

• Return slot optimization

  If a function returns a memory object and is called as var = foo(), this pass tries to change the call so that the address of var is sent to the caller to avoid an extra memory copy. This pass is located in tree-nrv.c and is described by pass_return_slot.

• Optimize calls to __builtin_object_size

  This is a propagation pass similar to CCP that tries to remove calls to __builtin_object_size when the size of the object can be computed at compile-time. This pass is located in tree-object-size.c and is described by pass_object_sizes.

• Loop invariant motion

  This pass removes expensive loop-invariant computations out of loops. The pass is located in tree-ssa-loop.c and described by pass_lim.

• Loop nest optimizations

  This is a family of loop transformations that works on loop nests. It includes loop interchange, scaling, skewing and reversal and they are all geared to the optimization of data locality in array traversals and the removal of dependencies that hamper optimizations such as loop parallelization and vectorization. The pass is located in tree-loop-linear.c and described by pass_linear_transform.

• Removal of empty loops

  This pass removes loops with no code in them. The pass is located in tree-ssa-loop-ivcanon.c and described by pass_empty_loop.

• Unrolling of small loops

  This pass completely unrolls loops with few iterations. The pass is located in tree-ssa-loop-ivcanon.c and described by pass_complete_unroll.

• Array prefetching

  This pass issues prefetch instructions for array references inside loops. The pass is located in tree-ssa-loop-prefetch.c and described by pass_loop_prefetch.

• Reassociation

  This pass rewrites arithmetic expressions to enable optimizations that operate on them, like redundancy elimination and vectorization. The pass is located in tree-ssa-reassoc.c and described by pass_reassoc.

• Optimization of stdarg functions

  This pass tries to avoid the saving of register arguments into the stack on entry to stdarg functions. If the function doesn't use any va_start macros, no registers need to be saved. If va_start macros are used, the va_list variables don't escape the function, it is only necessary to save registers that will be used in va_arg macros. For instance, if va_arg is only used with integral types in the function, floating point registers don't need to be saved. This pass is located in tree-stdarg.c and described by pass_stdarg.