RFR(L): 8203197: C2: consider all paths in loop body for loop predication
Roland Westrelin
rwestrel at redhat.com
Wed May 16 08:21:02 UTC 2018
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~roland/8203197/webrev.00/
Loop predication is only applied to always executed predicates in a loop
body. However, hoisting predicates in frequently executed branches can
also help performance. That patch extends loop predication so it
considers predicates in all paths in a loop.
Applying loop predication to a very rarely executed predicate could be
detrimental as it could increase the execution frequency of the
predicate. To mitigate that problem, profile data is used to evaluate
the frequency of the predicates in the loop and the number of iterations
of the loop. The predicates is, then, hoisted only if moving it out of
the loop doesn't increase its execution frequency.
A pathological case is a predicate that is never executed but would
always fail in some method and is moved out of loop anyway due to
profile pollution. That predicate would cause a recompilation with all
predicates disabled. To make sure this never happens, traps for
predicates that are not always executed are recorded under a new reason:
Reason_profile_predicate. We're short of per bci traps. Changing the
MethodData layout so it can accomodate more per bci traps was discussed
in the past and I used this opportunity to implement it.
There are now 2 blocks of predicates: Reason_predicate ones first and
then Reason_profile_predicate. Many C2 changes are there to correctly
recognize that new layout.
The extended loop predication is only applied to the 2 inner most loops
of a loop nest. That's where I found it to pay off in practice and is a
bit arbitrary.
I see a ~20 % improvement on ScimarkSparse.small with this.
This change comes from the Shenandoah project: Shenandoah's barriers
read a field from the object's header so depend on null checks. Failure
to hoist a frequently executed null check hurts performance
significantly.
Roland.
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