[LLVMdev] 2-address and 3-address instructions (original) (raw)

Steve King steve at metrokings.com
Fri Jul 17 14:03:03 PDT 2015

My target had the same circumstance. I found it easiest to stick with 3 operand instructions, which is LLVM's native representation anyway. You can do late conversion of SRC=DST opportunities to the compact two operand form as a post-RA peephole. Deferring conversion like this reduces the variety of instructions you have to contend with in switch statements and so on.

If you also want your assembler to convert SRC=DST opportunities to the compact encoding, you can accomplish that in your AsmParser. Regards, -steve

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 1:34 PM, bagel <bagel99 at gmail.com> wrote:

I am writing a backend for an experimental machine that has both 2-address and 3-address versions of some instructions. The 2-address versions are more compact and thus preferred when applicable. How does one go about generating the most compact version?

1. At instruction selection, is there a predicate that can test whether one of the input sources is dead, thus allowing the selection of the 2-address version? 2. Or do I generate 2-address and have to have a custom pass that peepholes to see if a mov reg-to-reg proceeds or follows a 2-address instruction and turn it into a 3-address version? 3. Or do I generate 3-address and have a custom pass that checks if a source and destination register in a 3-address is the same and turn it into a 2-address? Anybody done this already? Thanks, Bagel

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