Given that we're not actually deleting any instructions in the included regression tests, I think we would call this a canonicalization step.
The motivation comes from the example in PR26702:
https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26702
If we hoist the bitwise logic ahead of the bitcast, the previously unoptimizable example of:
define <4 x i32> @is_negative(<4 x i32> %x) { %lobit = ashr <4 x i32> %x, <i32 31, i32 31, i32 31, i32 31> %not = xor <4 x i32> %lobit, <i32 -1, i32 -1, i32 -1, i32 -1> %bc = bitcast <4 x i32> %not to <2 x i64> %notnot = xor <2 x i64> %bc, <i64 -1, i64 -1> %bc2 = bitcast <2 x i64> %notnot to <4 x i32> ret <4 x i32> %bc2 }
Simplifies to the expected:
define <4 x i32> @is_negative(<4 x i32> %x) { %lobit = ashr <4 x i32> %x, <i32 31, i32 31, i32 31, i32 31> ret <4 x i32> %lobit }