Book Image

Learn LLVM 12

By : Kai Nacke
Book Image

Learn LLVM 12

By: Kai Nacke

Overview of this book

LLVM was built to bridge the gap between compiler textbooks and actual compiler development. It provides a modular codebase and advanced tools which help developers to build compilers easily. This book provides a practical introduction to LLVM, gradually helping you navigate through complex scenarios with ease when it comes to building and working with compilers. You’ll start by configuring, building, and installing LLVM libraries, tools, and external projects. Next, the book will introduce you to LLVM design and how it works in practice during each LLVM compiler stage: frontend, optimizer, and backend. Using a subset of a real programming language as an example, you will then learn how to develop a frontend and generate LLVM IR, hand it over to the optimization pipeline, and generate machine code from it. Later chapters will show you how to extend LLVM with a new pass and how instruction selection in LLVM works. You’ll also focus on Just-in-Time compilation issues and the current state of JIT-compilation support that LLVM provides, before finally going on to understand how to develop a new backend for LLVM. By the end of this LLVM book, you will have gained real-world experience in working with the LLVM compiler development framework with the help of hands-on examples and source code snippets.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1 – The Basics of Compiler Construction with LLVM
5
Section 2 – From Source to Machine Code Generation
11
Section 3 –Taking LLVM to the Next Level

Chapter 9: Instruction Selection

The LLVM IR used so far still needs to be turned into machine instructions. This is called instruction selection, often abbreviated to ISel. Instruction selection is an important part of the target backend, and LLVM has three different approaches for selecting instructions: the selection DAG, fast instruction selection, and global instruction selection.

In this chapter, you will learn the following topics:

  • Understanding the LLVM target backend structure, which introduces you to the task performed by the target backend, and you examine the machine passes to run.
  • Using the machine IR (MIR) to test and debug the backend, which helps you to output MIR after a specified pass and run a pass on the MIR file.
  • How instruction selection works, in which you learn about the different ways LLVM performs instruction selection.
  • Supporting new machine instructions, in which you add a new machine instruction and make it available to the instruction...