Arm MVE has multiple instructions such as VMLAVA.s8, which (in this case) can take two 128bit vectors, sign extend the inputs to i32, multiplying them together and sum the result into a 32bit general purpose register. So taking 16 i8's as inputs, they can multiply and accumulate the result into a single i32 without any rounding/truncating along the way. There are also reduction instructions for plain integer add and min/max, and operations that sum into a pair of 32bit registers together treated as a 64bit integer (even though MVE does not have a plain 64bit addition instruction). So giving the vectorizer the ability to use these instructions both enables us to vectorize at higher bitwidths, and to vectorize things we previously could not.
In order to do that we need a way to represent that the "reduction" operation, specified with a llvm.experimental.vector.reduce when vectorizing for Arm, occurs inside the loop not after it like most reductions. This patch attempts to do that, teaching the vectorizer about in-loop reductions. It does this through a vplan recipe representing the reductions that the original chain of reduction operations is replaced by. Cost modelling is currently just done through a "prefersInloopReduction" TTI hook (which follows in a later patch).
Perhaps the above "better way" would also help recognize and record horizontal reductions?