Book Image

Learn LLVM 17 - Second Edition

By : Kai Nacke, Amy Kwan
Book Image

Learn LLVM 17 - Second Edition

By: Kai Nacke, Amy Kwan

Overview of this book

LLVM was built to bridge the gap between the theoretical knowledge found in compiler textbooks and the practical demands of compiler development. With a modular codebase and advanced tools, LLVM empowers developers to build compilers with ease. This book serves as a practical introduction to LLVM, guiding you progressively through complex scenarios and ensuring that you navigate the challenges of building and working with compilers like a pro. The book starts by showing you how to configure, build, and install LLVM libraries, tools, and external projects. You’ll then be introduced to LLVM's design, unraveling its applications in each compiler stage: frontend, optimizer, and backend. Using a real programming language subset, you'll build a frontend, generate LLVM IR, optimize it through the pipeline, and generate machine code. Advanced chapters extend your expertise, covering topics such as extending LLVM with a new pass, using LLVM tools for debugging, and enhancing the quality of your code. You'll also focus on just-in-time compilation issues and the current state of JIT-compilation support with LLVM. Finally, you’ll develop a new backend for LLVM, gaining insights into target description and how instruction selection works. By the end of this book, you'll have hands-on experience with the LLVM compiler development framework through real-world examples and source code snippets.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Basics of Compiler Construction with LLVM
4
Part 2: From Source to Machine Code Generation
10
Part 3: Taking LLVM to the Next Level
14
Part 4: Roll Your Own Backend

Creating the target machine and the sub-target

So far, we’ve implemented the instruction selection classes and a couple of other classes. Now, we need to set up how our backend will work. Like the optimization pipeline, a backend is divided into passes. Configuring those passes is the main task of the M88kTargetMachine class. In addition, we need to specify which features are available for instruction selection. Usually, a platform is a family of CPUs, which all have a common set of instructions but differ by specific extensions. For example, some CPUs have vector instructions, while others do not. In LLVM IR, a function can have attributes attached that specify for which CPU this function should be compiled, or what features are available. In other words, each function could have a different configuration, which is captured in the M88kSubTarget class.

Implementing M88kSubtarget

Let’s implement the M88kSubtarget class first. The declaration is stored in the M88kSubtarget...