Add FAQ about why varying values can't be passed to exported functions.

This commit is contained in:
Matt Pharr
2012-03-25 11:35:28 -07:00
parent 117f48a331
commit ca3100874f

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@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ distribution.
+ `How can I generate a single binary executable with support for multiple instruction sets?`_
+ `How can I determine at run-time which vector instruction set's instructions were selected to execute?`_
+ `Is it possible to inline ispc functions in C/C++ code?`_
+ `Why is it illegal to pass "varying" values from C/C++ to ispc functions?`_
* Programming Techniques
@@ -391,6 +392,48 @@ linking your applicaiton.
``-mattr=+avx`` flag to ``llc``.)
Why is it illegal to pass "varying" values from C/C++ to ispc functions?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If any of the types in the parameter list to an exported function is
"varying" (including recursively, and members of structure types, etc.),
then ``ispc`` will issue an error and refuse to compile the function:
::
% echo "export int add(int x) { return ++x; }" | ispc
<stdin>:1:12: Error: Illegal to return a "varying" type from exported function "foo"
<stdin>:1:20: Error: Varying parameter "x" is illegal in an exported function.
While there's no fundamental reason why this isn't possible, recall the
definition of "varying" variables: they have one value for each program
instance in the gang. As such, the number of values and amount of storage
required to represent a varying variable depends on the gang size
(i.e. ``programCount``), which can have different values depending on the
compilation target.
``ispc`` therefore prohibits passing "varying" values between the
application and the ``ispc`` program in order to prevent the
application-side code from depending on a particular gang size, in order to
encourage portability to different gang sizes. (A generally desirable
programming practice.)
For cases where the size of data is actually fixed from the application
side, the value can be passed via a pointer to a short ``uniform`` array,
as follows:
::
export void add4(uniform int ptr[4]) {
foreach (i = 0 ... 4)
ptr[i]++;
}
On the 4-wide SSE instruction set, this compiles to a single vector add
instruction (and associated move instructions), while it still also
efficiently computes the correct result on 8-wide AVX targets.
Programming Techniques
======================