RFR JDK-8234049: Implementation of Memory Access API (Incubator)

[Raffaello Giulietti]

Hi,

will there be a

MemoryAddress.move(MemoryAddress src, MemoryAddress dst, long bytes)

method with POSIX memmove(3) semantics at some point?

That would be useful, e.g., to "open a hole" into an array by shifting 
existing elements towards higher indices (provided there's room).

MemoryAddress.copy(), with its lower-to-higher semantics, doesn't really 
help here, so without move() one would need to code an explicit loop for 
such a case, I guess. Not a big deal, just a little bit annoying.


Greetings
Raffaello



On 2019-12-07 00:51, Maurizio Cimadamore wrote:
> 
> On 06/12/2019 18:29, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> great job!
>>
>> I think that the doc of MemoryAddress.copy() should be explicit about 
>> the direction of the copying, so it should either:
> 
> Thanks! -  I'll rectify the doc to specify lower-to-higher.
> 
> Maurizio
> 
>>
>> * explicitly specify a direction, e.g., lower-to-higher addresses
>>
>> * or specify that in the case of an overlap the copying is smart 
>> enough to not destroy the src bytes before they have landed in dst
>>
>> * or accept a negative third argument to encode a higher-to-lower 
>> addresses copying direction.
>>
>>
>> Greetings
>> Raffaello
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> as part of the effort to upstream the changes related to JEP 370 
>>> (foreign memory access API) [1], I'd like to ask for a code review 
>>> for the corresponding core-libs and hotspot changes:
>>>
>>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mcimadamore/panama/8234049/
>>>
>>> A javadoc for the memory access API is also available here:
>>>
>>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mcimadamore/panama/memaccess_javadoc/jdk/incubator/foreign/package-summary.html 
>>>
>>>
>>> Note: the patch passes tier1, tier2 and tier3 testing (**)
>>>
>>>
>>> Here is a brief summary of the changes in java.base and hotspot (the 
>>> remaining new files are implementation classes and tests for the new 
>>> API):
>>>
>>> * ciField.cpp - this one is to trust final fields in the foreign 
>>> memory access implementation (otherwise VM doesn't trust memory 
>>> segment bounds)
>>>
>>> * Modules.gmk - these changes are needed to require that the 
>>> incubating module is loaded by the boot loader (otherwise the above 
>>> changes are useless)
>>>
>>> * library_call.cpp - this one is a JIT compiler change to treat 
>>> Thread.currentThread() as a well-known constant - which helps a lot 
>>> in the confinement checks (thanks Vlad!)
>>>
>>> * various Buffer-related changes; these changes are needed because 
>>> the memory access API allows a memory segment to be projected into a 
>>> byte buffer, for interop reasons. As such, we need to insert a 
>>> liveness check in the various get/put methods. Previously we had an 
>>> implementation strategy where a BB was 'decorated' by a subclass 
>>> called ScopedBuffer - but doing so required some changes to the BB 
>>> API (e.g. making certain methods non-final, so that we could decorate 
>>> them). Here I use an approach (which I have discussed with Alan) 
>>> which doesn't require any public API  changes, but needs to add a 
>>> 'segment' field in Buffer - and then have constructors which keep 
>>> track of this extra parameter.
>>>
>>> * FileChannel changes - these changes are required so that we can 
>>> reuse the Unmapper class from the MemorySegment implementation, to 
>>> deterministically deallocate a mapped memory segment. This should be 
>>> a 'straight' refactoring, no change in behavior should occur here. 
>>> Please double check.
>>>
>>> * VarHandles - this class now provides a factory to create memory 
>>> access VarHandle - this is a bit tricky, since VarHandle cannot 
>>> really be implemented outside java.base (e.g. VarForm is not public). 
>>> So we do the usual trick where we define a bunch of proxy interfaces 
>>> (see jdk/internal/access/foreign) have the classes in java.base refer 
>>> to these - and then have the implementation classes of the memory 
>>> access API implement these interfaces.
>>>
>>> * JavaNIOAccess, JavaLangInvokeAccess - because of the above, we need 
>>> to provide access to otherwise hidden functionalities - e.g. creating 
>>> a new scoped buffer, or retrieving the properties of a memory access 
>>> handle (e.g. offset, stride etc.), so that we can implement the 
>>> memory access API in its own separate module
>>>
>>> * GensrcVarHandles.gmk - these changes are needed to enable the 
>>> generation of the new memory address var handle implementations; 
>>> there's an helper class per carrier (e.g. 
>>> VarHandleMemoryAddressAsBytes, ...). At runtime, when a memory access 
>>> var handle is needed, we dynamically spin a new VH implementation 
>>> which makes use of the right carrier. We need to spin because the VH 
>>> can have a variable number of access coordinates (e.g. depending on 
>>> the dimensions of the array to be accessed). But, under the hood, all 
>>> the generated implementation will be using the same helper class.
>>>
>>> * tests - we've tried to add fairly robust tests, often checking all 
>>> possible permutations of carriers/dimensions etc. Because of that, 
>>> the tests might not be the easiest to look at, but they have proven 
>>> to be pretty effective at shaking out issues.
>>>
>>> I think that covers the main aspects of the implementation and where 
>>> it differs from vanilla JDK.
>>>
>>> P.S.
>>>
>>> In the CSR review [2], Joe raised a fair point - which is 
>>> MemoryAddress has both:
>>>
>>> offset(long) --> move address of given offset
>>> offset() --> return the offset of this address in its owning segment
>>>
>>> And this was considered suboptimal, given both methods use the same 
>>> name but do something quite different (one is an accessor, another is 
>>> a 'wither'). one obvious option is to rename the first to 
>>> 'withOffset'. But I think that would lead to verbose code (since that 
>>> is a very common operation). Other options are to:
>>>
>>> * rename offset(long) to move(long), advance(long), or something else
>>> * drop offset() - but then add an overload of MemorySegment::asSlice 
>>> which takes an address instead of a plain long offset
>>>
>>> I'll leave the choice to the reviewers :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Finally, I'd like to thank Mark, Brian, John, Alan, Paul, Vlad, 
>>> Stuart, Roger, Joe and the Panama team for the feedback provided so 
>>> far, which helped to get the API in the shape it is today.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Maurizio
>>>
>>> (**) There is one failure, for "java/util/TimeZone/Bug6329116.java" - 
>>> but that is unrelated to this patch, and it's a known failing test.
>>>
>>> [1] - https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/370
>>> [2] - https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8234050
>>
>>