Ok, let me make it more concrete.
it seems we have 3 possible semantics:

1. volatile accesses never trap, but rather trigger UB when the address is not dereferenceable
2. they trap if the address is not dereferenceable
3. they may trap regardless (i.e., they can never be removed). Alternatively we can state that the load/store address traces are externally observable and can't change

I would say let's write an RFC and see if there are other opinions. Also, @nlopes what does alive2 think of such a proposal?

FYI: I've just run Alive2 (already patched for this new semantics) on the test suite and no regressions reported.

In D86815#2245481, @rsmith wrote:

In D86815#2245467, @arsenm wrote:

In D86815#2245466, @arsenm wrote:

Why would we change this? What's the point of having separate memcpy and memmove intrinsics?

I'm reading this as clang mis-uses llvm.memcpy when it probably should be using llvm.memmove

There is a longstanding assumption made by ~every compiler that memcpy(p, p, n) is safe. That's what we should be encoding here. We should not be removing all overlap restrictions.

The reasoning looks good, though the case when offset + size overflows doesn't seem to be considered.

FYI InstSimplify doing distribution of undef is a known bug: https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33165

In D83440#2143450, @brooksmoses wrote:

A question about this: We got a couple of dozen MSAN warnings in the Google codebase from the revision that removed these -- I'm guessing that perhaps what happened was that the undef in question was a use-of-uninitialized-value, and this optimization was hiding the use so the MSAN checks didn't trigger. Is re-enabling this going to make those MSAN warnings go away again, re-hiding this undefined behavior?

In D83360#2142457, @efriedma wrote:

that's fine but I still don't understand why the counterexample to my version says %x2 in @src can be undef

If I'm understanding correctly, this reduces to something like the following:

define i32 @src() {

%x2 = freeze i32 undef
ret i32 %x2

}

define i32 @tgt() {

ret i32 undef

}

This seems a little suspect, yes.

In D83360#2140241, @craig.topper wrote:

Alive does like this https://alive2.llvm.org/ce/z/yhibbe which is what I was going to implement.

Here's an end-to-end miscompilation: https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31633

I'm a bit concerned with this patch as it increases the amount of UB that LLVM exploits without any study of the impact.
For example, right now it's ok do this with clang (not with constants; make it less trivial so clang doesn't fold it right away):

int f() { return INT_MAX + 1; }

The passes we are aware that introduce branch on poison are: IndVarSimplify, LoopUnswitch, SimpleLoopUnswitch, and SimpifyCFG.
(https://web.ist.utl.pt/nuno.lopes/alive2/index.php?hash=4beb2b117e2fdd2c)

In D78631#1996721, @spatel wrote:

Side note - Alive2 does not seem to recognize the keyword 'fast' currently (or we would have seen more tests flagged as incorrect).

In D77868#1977808, @spatel wrote:

// select Cond, T, false --> Cond & T
if (match(F, m_ZeroInt()))
  return SimplifyAndInst(Cond, T, Q);

I still do not see how this can go wrong in practice. If InstSimplify can prove that T is poison, then doesn't it always manifest that knowledge by saying T is undef?
Looking at it another way (see if you can spot a logic flaw):

1. Assume T is poison.
2. Assume InstSimplify fails to simplify T to undef or constant.
3. For poison T' (either T or some other poisoned value) to leak through as the result, InstSimplify must prove that Cond & T' == T'.
4. So InstSimplify must prove that Cond == true or Cond == T'.
5. If Cond == T', there's no problem (if Cond is poison, the select is poison).
6. Therefore -- for there to be a problem -- we must prove that Cond is true.
7. If we can prove that Cond is true, then that guarantees that value T' can't depend on Cond (nothing depends on Cond - it simplifies to constant true).

Yes, introducing branches on a variable that may be undef/poison is not legal. However, you can use freeze to make it safe.
I think @aqjune fixed loop unswitching already. (don't recall if that was the reverted patch). It's true there a couple more places left to fix.

In D76973#1948751, @spatel wrote:

In D76973#1948172, @fhahn wrote:

We should probably also think about what to do with all the tests that contain branches on undef. Also, bugpoint should probably stop creating branches on undef with this spelled out as is?

When I've updated other tests that would break with changed/improved undef semantics, I usually replace the 'undef' with a parameter like this:
rGfebcb24f1490
Maybe we can script that to fix most of the tests?

LGTM

LGTM (modulo the style fix).
assume poison is UB.

I agree with @aqjune that stating clearly the definition of object in this context.
See this example in the C spec:

For example, the second call of f in g has undefined behavior because each of d[1] through d[49] is accessed through both p and q.

LGTM overall, just some nitpicks.
Something I would add is a link to the list of attributes (is this function-attributes?).

I'm not familiar with the code of this pass, but is there a cheap way of identifying that the two operations are in the same basic block?
If so, you could take the intersection of the aliasing information rather than the union. Because if both ops are guaranteed to execute then the tightest aliasing still has to hold.
(being in the same BB doesn't imply that both instructions are executed, but there's code in ValueTracking perhaps that can check that)

The patch & semantics look good to me, but I'm not a backend expert. I'll leave the final LGTM to someone else.
It would be awesome if we could get this in for 10.0 so that we have complete support for freeze.

@lebedev.ri I agree with you that the semantics of these alignment builtins should only return a pointer that is of the same object as the one given as input.
Otherwise, these builtins would be even worst that ptr2int/int2ptr, since their result could alias with any other pointer in the program, not just the escaped pointers.

LGTM, thanks!

LGTM. The table you provided was very interesting to see, thanks!

In D70749#1767639, @jdoerfert wrote:

You said "Changing the semantics on non-respecting the tags from UB to poison doesn't help either.", could you elaborate why?
If there are no uses of a violating instantiation (undef/null passed to a non-null) we would not get UB but an unused poison value.

I think it's clear that dead arg elimination is incorrect in replacing a valid pointer with null in an attributed with non-null tag. Changing the semantics on non-respecting the tags from UB to poison doesn't help either.
The problem with dropping attributes is that a given function call site, the attributes to be considered are the union of the attributes in the function call and in the callee declaration. We can't rely drop attributes from the callee since some linking later may add them back.

LGTM
Reference to the discussion: http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2019-November/137243.html

The first bit looks ok to me, thanks!

Interesting question :)

Let me give my 2c: eliminating this transformation is a good thing, since it's incorrect (end-to-end miscompilation testcase in the cited bug report).
It can be re-instated if/when we switch from initializing vectors with undef with poison, but I don't know when that will happen. We'll try to push for the poison patches soonish, but it will take time.
Anyway, thanks Sanjay for handling this :)

In D29121#1739974, @RKSimon wrote:

@nlopes This is failing on the llvm-sphinx-docs buildbot, please can you take a look? http://lab.llvm.org:8011/builders/llvm-sphinx-docs/builds/37793/steps/docs-llvm-html/logs/stdio

Warning, treated as error:
/home/buildbot/llvm-build-dir/llvm-sphinx-docs/llvm/src/llvm/docs/LangRef.rst:10243: WARNING: Could not lex literal_block as "llvm". Highlighting skipped.

In D29011#1735007, @craig.topper wrote:

Does a ConstantExpr freeze really make sense? ConstantExprs are uniqued by the LLVMContext. So every constantexpr that has the same input ends up being the same object. Do we want that behavior do we need each freeze to be distinct?

LGTM!

In D29121#1725727, @reames wrote:

In D29121#1724593, @nlopes wrote:

In D29121#1723978, @jdoerfert wrote:

So this is not committed till we reviewed all of them?

I'm just waiting on SelDAG->MIR patch to be done (https://reviews.llvm.org/D29014).
Then we have docs, SelDAG & MIR support. That seems the minimal to me (so the compiler won't crash when freeze is used). I agree the optimizer patches can land later.

Can I suggest that we add a stub* ISEL implementation, land this, and then build on top of it?

• By which I mean a knowingly incorrect lowering to a simple COPY. It wouldn't fix *all* of our poison/undef problems, but it would allow us to make progress on some of the most painful IR ones while waiting for that patch to land.

In D29121#1723978, @jdoerfert wrote:

So this is not committed till we reviewed all of them?

LGTM

LGTM
(there's only a typo in the comment "singned")

The patch looks good to me. Actually I had reported this bug a while back as well: https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42699
I agree we can't have objects larger than half of the address space.

Clarify semantics for pointers.

In D29121#1696095, @lebedev.ri wrote:

@nlopes anything holding this patch? do you intend to land them all at once?
@aqjune I suppose D29011 should be the next one up for review..

Made it explicit re one vs multiple calls to freeze.

Updated with an example with vectors and add more references to freeze section.

Reflect comments & clarify immediate UB when branching on poison.

In D64215#1577194, @reames wrote:

In D64215#1572285, @nlopes wrote:

In D64215#1572070, @reames wrote:

In D64215#1571424, @nlopes wrote:

Just a shameless plug :)
We've been half secretly working on Alive2 (https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2), which includes a plugin for opt that can check if an optimization is correct or not. Alive2 also has a standalone tool that accepts 2 IR files instead.

I'd tried playing with Alive2 a while ago, and had trouble getting it to work. Could you maybe update the readme (or other docs) with some instructions on how to use the standalone tool you mentioned? I'd very much like to play with this.

I've just added a short description to the README file: https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2#running-standalone-translation-validation-tool-alive-tv
It's fairly simple: it just takes 2 LLVM IR files. Let me know if you have questions or if you find bugs :)

This tool implements the semantics of poison for many LLVM instructions, and already has some support for memory (which is quite hard to handle).
Of course, what this patch does is not the same. This patch is more executable, while Alive2 requires Z3 to reason about the semantics (though it can also execute code very slowly).

I'd love to explore options for sharing the semantics here. What form does Alive2 express them in?

That's still a unsolved research problem. No one really knows how to share semantics still.
The semantics in Alive2 are written in C++, using an embedded expression language. While it is potentially possible to reuse that somewhere else, it isn't trivial. See e.g. the ir/instr.cpp file.

One thought on sharing.

From what I can tell from a quick look at the code you mentioned, it looks like you're parsing IR into an expression language, then rewriting the expressions to propagate poison - in a fairly similar manner to this code, but over your expression language - and then translating that expression language to SMT. Is that a good high level summary?

In D64215#1574483, @reames wrote:

In D64215#1572285, @nlopes wrote:

In D64215#1572070, @reames wrote:

In D64215#1571424, @nlopes wrote:

Just a shameless plug :)
We've been half secretly working on Alive2 (https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2), which includes a plugin for opt that can check if an optimization is correct or not. Alive2 also has a standalone tool that accepts 2 IR files instead.

I'd tried playing with Alive2 a while ago, and had trouble getting it to work. Could you maybe update the readme (or other docs) with some instructions on how to use the standalone tool you mentioned? I'd very much like to play with this.

I've just added a short description to the README file: https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2#running-standalone-translation-validation-tool-alive-tv
It's fairly simple: it just takes 2 LLVM IR files. Let me know if you have questions or if you find bugs :)

I finally got it working, required a couple changes to the CMakeFiles and an LD_PRELOAD (for unclear reasons). However, it doesn't look like the scope of the alive-tv tool is anywhere near wide enough for my purposes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it can't handle loops at all right? And use of any memory seams to trigger timeouts? (Even for trivially identical IR?) Just making sure there's no error between keyboard and chair. :)

In D64215#1572070, @reames wrote:

In D64215#1571424, @nlopes wrote:

Just a shameless plug :)
We've been half secretly working on Alive2 (https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2), which includes a plugin for opt that can check if an optimization is correct or not. Alive2 also has a standalone tool that accepts 2 IR files instead.

I'd tried playing with Alive2 a while ago, and had trouble getting it to work. Could you maybe update the readme (or other docs) with some instructions on how to use the standalone tool you mentioned? I'd very much like to play with this.

Just a shameless plug :)
We've been half secretly working on Alive2 (https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2), which includes a plugin for opt that can check if an optimization is correct or not. Alive2 also has a standalone tool that accepts 2 IR files instead.
This tool implements the semantics of poison for many LLVM instructions, and already has some support for memory (which is quite hard to handle).
Of course, what this patch does is not the same. This patch is more executable, while Alive2 requires Z3 to reason about the semantics (though it can also execute code very slowly).

LGTM, thank you!

Sounds great! Just 1 comment inline.

LGTM.
Minor: you have a typo in the comment: "return return"

I believe the contains function I wrote is correct. It says that an integer n belongs to interval I iff n >= lower(I) and n < upper(I) is there's no wrapping.
BTW, function isWrappedSet() just changed recently, so that needs tweaking in the Z3 model I sent (https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/blob/master/lib/IR/ConstantRange.cpp#L347)

This patch is not correct for this input:
lhs = FullSet
rhs = [0, 1)

In D56155#1342651, @nikic wrote:

Based on the current documentation of poison values, selecting over poison is still poison by the first rule. I'm assuming that this is an inaccuracy in the documentation and selects are treated the same ways as phis? Otherwise the cited clang code would be affected.

As a justification why it doesn't matter whether it's undef or poison, clang emits__builtin_ffs as:
ffs(x) -> x ? cttz(x) + 1 : 0

In D54237#1291405, @nikic wrote:

Regarding

// X + undef -> undef
// undef + X -> undef
if (match(Op1, m_Undef()) || match(Op0, m_Undef()))
  return UndefValue::get(ReturnType);

I was initially planning to include these simplifications, but ultimately was not certain regarding their legality. In particular, if we have uadd.sat(MaxValue, Y), then the result is fully determined to be MaxValue, regardless of the value of Y. If we have something like sadd.sat(SignedMinValue, Y) then the result is known to be negative. In either case the intrinsic cannot have the full range of results of the result type, regardless of the value of Y. As such, I think folding operations on undef to undef would not be legal in this case.

It should be possible to fold uadd.sat(X, undef) to MaxValue. Not sure how useful that is though.

Sure, adding nsw/nuw brings in poison. I didn't study all the MI transformations going on, so I can't comment on whether this is a big burden or not, but without such a study introducing poison is dangerous.
SDAG already has nsw/nuw IIRC, though. But I don't think there was a thorough study of the implications at the time either.

In D49042#1155256, @sanjoy wrote:

Does this mean we can "construct" undef as:

x = alloca 0
y = alloca 0
undef = x == y  // Non-deterministically 0 or 1

? If so, this is a problem since it means even if we spec un-initialized memory as poison we still have undef in the IR (with all the problems it brings).

BTW, I couldn't figure if this case is possible, but mentioning it just in case: it's also not legal to introduce 'sdiv undef, ..', since 'sdiv INT_MIN, -1' is UB. Same for srem. So we need to be careful when folding the shuffle on LHS as well.

In D48893#1152112, @spatel wrote:

In D48893#1151840, @nlopes wrote:

shl %x, undef is poison; we don't want more undefs :)
So this transformation for shifts is not correct. The way to make it correct would be to introduce a poison value and use it in the shuffle instructions instead of undef. I suggest we finally go ahead and do that.

1. Does the 'undef' in the shuffle mask represent something different than the 'undef' in the shift amount?

shl %x, undef is poison; we don't want more undefs :)
So this transformation for shifts is not correct. The way to make it correct would be to introduce a poison value and use it in the shuffle instructions instead of undef. I suggest we finally go ahead and do that.