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

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

Hi again,
after some offline discussions with the hotspot team, it became clear 
that the recently added restriction on source/destination segments being 
disjoint is redundant and that Unsafe::copyMemory can cope with overlap. 
For now I'l keep the API as is, but I will file a followup issue to 
remove the restriction from the API - which, I think, will also address 
your issue around lack of memmove ability.

Thanks
Maurizio

On 09/12/2019 11:10, Maurizio Cimadamore wrote:
> Hi Raffaello,
> I think there is room to add more copy-related features in the future. 
> One thing to note, however: the rationale behind having a 'copy' 
> method is to expose a (safe) interface to the underlying 
> Unsafe::copyMemory method - which is an hotspot intrinsic, hence 
> understood and optimized by the JIT compiler. I'd say that, if we were 
> to add another method like 'memmove' we'd have to work out the VM 
> plumbing first - and then add the MemoryAddress API method. This has 
> been the informal guiding principle for the operations exposed by this 
> API.
>
> That said - I'll keep a note of the suggestion, and add it to the list.
>
> Cheers
> Maurizio
>
> On 09/12/2019 10:11, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>