Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 09:37:22 -0500
From: Vikram S. Adve <vadve@cs.uiuc.edu>
To: Ruchira Sasanka <sasanka@students.uiuc.edu>
Cc: Chris Lattner <lattner@cs.uiuc.edu>
Subject: machine instruction operands
Ruchira,
When generating machine instructions, I have to make several choices about
operands. For cases were a register is required, there are 3 cases:
1. The register is for a Value* that is already in the VM code.
2. The register is for a value that is not in the VM code, usually because 2
machine instructions get generated for a single VM instruction (and the
register holds the result of the first m/c instruction and is used by the
second m/c instruction).
3. The register is a pre-determined machine register.
E.g, for this VM instruction:
ptr = alloca type, numElements
I have to generate 2 machine instructions:
reg = mul constant, numElements
ptr = add %sp, reg
Each machine instruction is of class MachineInstr.
It has a vector of operands. All register operands have type MO_REGISTER.
The 3 types of register operands are marked using this enum:
enum VirtualRegisterType {
MO_VMVirtualReg, // virtual register for *value
MO_MInstrVirtualReg, // virtual register for result of *minstr
MO_MachineReg // pre-assigned machine register `regNum'
} vregType;
Here's how this affects register allocation:
1. MO_VMVirtualReg is the standard case: you just do the register
allocation.
2. MO_MInstrVirtualReg is the case where there is a hidden register being
used. You should decide how you want to handle it, e.g., do you want do
create a Value object during the preprocessing phase to make the value
explicit (like for address register for the RETURN instruction).
3. For case MO_MachineReg, you don't need to do anything, at least for
SPARC. The only machine regs I am using so far are %g0 and %sp.
--Vikram