[llvm-dev] [GSoC 2021] Some ideas & questions about the Enzyme GSoC project (original) (raw)

Chuyang Chen via llvm-dev llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Tue Mar 30 08:44:06 PDT 2021

Hello, I'm working on the GSoC project "Integrate Enzyme into Rust to provide high-performance differentiation in Rust". I have skimmed over the codebase and now I have some preliminary ideas about the project.

As you have said, the project can be divided to two main parts:

  1.  passing and parsing Rust type metadata into LLVM / Enzyme type

analysis, and

  1.  integrating the Enzyme API/pass into rust.

Integrating Enzyme API to rust is trivial by using proc_macros in Rust. However, passing Rust type metadata to LLVM and integrating the Enzyme pass into rust is difficult if we don't modify the Rust compiler. The Rust compiler seems to lack ability to emit metadata to LLVM, and if we want to add the Enzyme pass without modifying the compiler, the only way is, I think, using a command like

which is not user-friendly. I sought hard for a nonintrusive way to implement them but got nothing, so it seems that the only option is modifying the Rust compiler to let it

  1.  emit extra debuginfo to the generated IR code, and
  2.  use lld as its linker and add the Enzyme pass to lld

with a specific option, say "--enzyme"

However, is it appropriate to modify the compiler to just port a plugin to it, though the modification won't be big or impact the rest of the compiler?

PS: Another question is about differentiating closures in Rust, but that can be postponed to the following discussions.

Chuyang Chen

MSc Student

At Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University

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