diff --git a/mlir/include/mlir/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.td b/mlir/include/mlir/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.td
--- a/mlir/include/mlir/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.td
+++ b/mlir/include/mlir/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.td
@@ -95,6 +95,7 @@
      PredOpTrait<"input and output have same element type", TCopVTEtIsSameAs<0, 1>>,
      DeclareOpInterfaceMethods<ReifyRankedShapedTypeOpInterface>,
      DeclareOpInterfaceMethods<AggregatedOpInterface, ["decomposeOperation"]>,
+     DeclareOpInterfaceMethods<MemoryEffectsOpInterface>,
      DeclareOpInterfaceMethods<TilingInterface,
       ["getIterationDomain",
        "getLoopIteratorTypes",
diff --git a/mlir/lib/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.cpp b/mlir/lib/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.cpp
--- a/mlir/lib/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.cpp
+++ b/mlir/lib/Dialect/Linalg/IR/LinalgOps.cpp
@@ -2345,6 +2345,13 @@
       .reifyResultShapes(b, reifiedReturnShapes);
 }
 
+void SoftmaxOp::getEffects(
+    SmallVectorImpl<SideEffects::EffectInstance<MemoryEffects::Effect>>
+        &effects) {
+  getGenericEffectsImpl(effects, getOperation()->getResults(),
+                        getDpsInputOperands(), getDpsInitOperands());
+}
+
 // Helper functions for softmax decomposition.
 // @{
 
diff --git a/mlir/test/Dialect/Linalg/canonicalize.mlir b/mlir/test/Dialect/Linalg/canonicalize.mlir
--- a/mlir/test/Dialect/Linalg/canonicalize.mlir
+++ b/mlir/test/Dialect/Linalg/canonicalize.mlir
@@ -897,3 +897,14 @@
 //  CHECK-SAME:    iterator_types = ["parallel"]
 //  CHECK-SAME:  } ins(%[[ARG1]] : tensor<5xf32>)
 //  CHECK-SAME:    outs(%[[ARG2]] : memref<?xf32>) {
+
+// -----
+
+// CHECK-LABEL: dead_softmax
+func.func @dead_softmax(%arg0: tensor<16x64x256xf32>) -> tensor<16x64x256xf32> {
+  %0 = tensor.empty() : tensor<16x64x256xf32>
+  // CHECK-NOT: linalg.softmax
+  %1 = linalg.softmax dimension(1)
+    ins(%arg0 : tensor<16x64x256xf32>) outs(%0 : tensor<16x64x256xf32>) -> tensor<16x64x256xf32>
+  return %arg0 : tensor<16x64x256xf32>
+}