If we only turn on ymm and zmm for passing explicit 256bit and 512bit vector types then changing the ABI would have basically zero effect on any code anybody is actually using today. Everything would remain abi compatible unless it involves the new types that nobody is using. 

This also has the benefit that turning on avx2 or avx512 wouldn't change the calling convention of any code, making it much safer to link code compiled with it on with code compiled with it off. That seems like a big deal.

Moreover, if we start passing normal floats, etc. through them then our lack of shuffles and ways to get data in/out of them becomes quite a pain point.

As for passing int/word data, passing the vectors of them through the ymm and zmm registers should be sufficient for the same reasons.

-Edward

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Carter Schonwald <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:
zooming out: 

what *should* the new ABI be?

Ed was suggesting we make all 16 xmm/ymm/ lower 16 zmm registers (depending on how they're being used) caller save, 

(what about all 32 zmm registers? would they be float only, or also for ints/words? simd has lots of nice int support!)

a) if this doesn't cause any perf regressions i've no objections

b) currently we only support passing floats/doubles and simd vectors of , do we wanna support int/word data there too? (or are the GPR / general purpose registers enough for those? )

c) other stuff i'm probably overlooking

d) lets do this!

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:31 PM, Carter Schonwald <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:
the patch is still on TRAC,


we need to do changes to both the 32bit and 64bit ABIs, and I think thats where I got stalled from lack of feedback

that aside:

heres the original email thread on the llvm commits thread 

and theres links from there to the iterating on the test suite plus the original patch

i'm more than happy to take a weekend to do the leg work, it was pretty fun last time.

BUT, we need to agree on what ABI to do, and make sure that those ABI changes dont create a performance regression for some unexpected reason.

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Geoffrey Mainland <mainland@apeiron.net> wrote:
We would need to get a patch to LLVM accepted to change the GHC calling
convention.

Now that we commit to a particular version of LLVM, this might be less
of an issue than it once was since we wouldn't have to support versions
of LLVM that didn't support the new calling convention.

So...how do we get a patch into LLVM? I believe I once had such a patch
ready to go...I will dig around for it, but the change is very small and
easily recreated.

It would be even better if we could *also* teach the native back end
about SSE instructions. Is there anyone who might be willing to work on
that?

Geoff

On 3/9/17 2:30 PM, Edward Kmett wrote:
> Back around 2013, Geoff raised a discussion about fixing up the GHC
> ABI so that the LLVM calling convention could pass 256 bit vector
> types in YMM (and, i suppose now 512 bit vector types in ZMM).
>
> As I recall, this was blocked by some short term concerns about which
> LLVM release was imminent or what have you. Four years on, the exact
> same sort of arguments could be dredged up, but yet in the meantime
> nobody is really using those types for anything.
>
> This still creates a pain point around trying to use these wide types
> today. Spilling rather than passing them in registers adds a LOT of
> overhead to any attempt to use them that virtually erases any benefit
> to having them in the first place.
>
> I started experimenting with writing some custom primops directly in
> llvm so I could do meaningful amounts of work with our SIMD vector
> types by just banging out the code that we can't write in haskell
> directly using llvm assembly, and hoping I could trick LLVM to do link
> time optimization to perhaps inline it, but I'm basically dead in the
> water over the overhead of our current calling convention, before I
> even start, it seems, as if we're spilling them there is no way that
> inlining / LTO could hope to figure out what we're doing out as part
> of the spill to erase that call entirely.
>
> It is rather frustrating that I can't even cheat. =/
>
> What do we need to do to finally fix this?
>
> -Edward