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[IR] LangRef: state explicitly that floats generally behave according…
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… to IEEE-754 (#102140)

Fixes #60942: IEEE semantics
is likely what many frontends want (it definitely is what Rust wants),
and it is what LLVM passes already assume when they use APFloat to
propagate float operations.

This does not reflect what happens on x87, but what happens there is
just plain unsound (#89885,
#44218); there is no coherent
specification that will describe this behavior correctly -- the backend
in combination with standard LLVM passes is just fundamentally buggy in
a hard-to-fix-way.

There's also the questions around flushing subnormals to zero, but [this
discussion](https://discourse.llvm.org/t/questions-about-llvm-canonicalize/79378)
seems to indicate a general stance of: this is specific non-standard
hardware behavior, and generally needs LLVM to be told that basic float
ops do not return the standard result. Just naively running
LLVM-compiled code on hardware configured to flush subnormals will lead
to #89885-like issues.

AFAIK this is also what Alive2 implements (@nunoplopes please correct me
if I am wrong).
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RalfJung authored Oct 11, 2024
1 parent 4b3f251 commit a8a6624
Showing 1 changed file with 53 additions and 17 deletions.
70 changes: 53 additions & 17 deletions llvm/docs/LangRef.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2427,6 +2427,8 @@ example:
function which has an ``ssp`` or ``sspstrong`` attribute, the calling
function's attribute will be upgraded to ``sspreq``.

.. _strictfp:

``strictfp``
This attribute indicates that the function was called from a scope that
requires strict floating-point semantics. LLVM will not attempt any
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -3604,11 +3606,12 @@ status flags are not observable. Therefore, floating-point math operations do
not have side effects and may be speculated freely. Results assume the
round-to-nearest rounding mode, and subnormals are assumed to be preserved.

Running LLVM code in an environment where these assumptions are not met can lead
to undefined behavior. The ``strictfp`` and ``denormal-fp-math`` attributes as
well as :ref:`Constrained Floating-Point Intrinsics <constrainedfp>` can be used
to weaken LLVM's assumptions and ensure defined behavior in non-default
floating-point environments; see their respective documentation for details.
Running LLVM code in an environment where these assumptions are not met
typically leads to undefined behavior. The ``strictfp`` and ``denormal-fp-math``
attributes as well as :ref:`Constrained Floating-Point Intrinsics
<constrainedfp>` can be used to weaken LLVM's assumptions and ensure defined
behavior in non-default floating-point environments; see their respective
documentation for details.

.. _floatnan:

Expand All @@ -3630,10 +3633,11 @@ are not "floating-point math operations": ``fneg``, ``llvm.fabs``, and
``llvm.copysign``. These operations act directly on the underlying bit
representation and never change anything except possibly for the sign bit.

For floating-point math operations, unless specified otherwise, the following
rules apply when a NaN value is returned: the result has a non-deterministic
sign; the quiet bit and payload are non-deterministically chosen from the
following set of options:
Floating-point math operations that return a NaN are an exception from the
general principle that LLVM implements IEEE-754 semantics. Unless specified
otherwise, the following rules apply whenever the IEEE-754 semantics say that a
NaN value is returned: the result has a non-deterministic sign; the quiet bit
and payload are non-deterministically chosen from the following set of options:

- The quiet bit is set and the payload is all-zero. ("Preferred NaN" case)
- The quiet bit is set and the payload is copied from any input operand that is
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -3679,6 +3683,40 @@ specification on some architectures:
LLVM does not correctly represent this. See `issue #60796
<https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/60796>`_.

.. _floatsem:

Floating-Point Semantics
------------------------

This section defines the semantics for core floating-point operations on types
that use a format specified by IEEE-745. These types are: ``half``, ``float``,
``double``, and ``fp128``, which correspond to the binary16, binary32, binary64,
and binary128 formats, respectively. The "core" operations are those defined in
section 5 of IEEE-745, which all have corresponding LLVM operations.

The value returned by those operations matches that of the corresponding
IEEE-754 operation executed in the :ref:`default LLVM floating-point environment
<floatenv>`, except that the behavior of NaN results is instead :ref:`as
specified here <floatnan>`. In particular, such a floating-point instruction
returning a non-NaN value is guaranteed to always return the same bit-identical
result on all machines and optimization levels.

This means that optimizations and backends may not change the observed bitwise
result of these operations in any way (unless NaNs are returned), and frontends
can rely on these operations providing correctly rounded results as described in
the standard.

(Note that this is only about the value returned by these operations; see the
:ref:`floating-point environment section <floatenv>` regarding flags and
exceptions.)

Various flags, attributes, and metadata can alter the behavior of these
operations and thus make them not bit-identical across machines and optimization
levels any more: most notably, the :ref:`fast-math flags <fastmath>` as well as
the :ref:`strictfp <strictfp>` and :ref:`denormal-fp-math <denormal_fp_math>`
attributes and :ref:`!fpmath metadata <fpmath-metadata>`. See their
corresponding documentation for details.

.. _fastmath:

Fast-Math Flags
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -3975,7 +4013,7 @@ Floating-Point Types
- Description

* - ``half``
- 16-bit floating-point value
- 16-bit floating-point value (IEEE-754 binary16)

* - ``bfloat``
- 16-bit "brain" floating-point value (7-bit significand). Provides the
Expand All @@ -3984,24 +4022,20 @@ Floating-Point Types
extensions and Arm's ARMv8.6-A extensions, among others.

* - ``float``
- 32-bit floating-point value
- 32-bit floating-point value (IEEE-754 binary32)

* - ``double``
- 64-bit floating-point value
- 64-bit floating-point value (IEEE-754 binary64)

* - ``fp128``
- 128-bit floating-point value (113-bit significand)
- 128-bit floating-point value (IEEE-754 binary128)

* - ``x86_fp80``
- 80-bit floating-point value (X87)

* - ``ppc_fp128``
- 128-bit floating-point value (two 64-bits)

The binary format of half, float, double, and fp128 correspond to the
IEEE-754-2008 specifications for binary16, binary32, binary64, and binary128
respectively.

X86_amx Type
""""""""""""

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -6957,6 +6991,8 @@ For example,
%2 = load float, ptr %c, align 4, !alias.scope !6
store float %0, ptr %arrayidx.i, align 4, !noalias !7

.. _fpmath-metadata:

'``fpmath``' Metadata
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Expand Down

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