Pass Infrastructure

[TOC]

Passes represent the basic infrastructure for transformation and optimization. This document provides a quickstart to the pass infrastructure in MLIR and how to use it.

See MLIR specification for more information about MLIR and its core aspects, such as the IR structure and operations.

See MLIR Rewrites for a quick start on graph rewriting in MLIR. If your transformation involves pattern matching operation DAGs, this is a great place to start.

Operation Pass

In MLIR, the main unit of abstraction and transformation is an operation. As such, the pass manager is designed to work on instances of operations at different levels of nesting. The structure of the pass manager, and the concept of nesting, is detailed further below. All passes in MLIR derive from OperationPass and adhere to the following restrictions; any noncompliance will lead to problematic behavior in multithreaded and other advanced scenarios:

• Modify anything within the parent block/region/operation/etc, outside of the current operation being operated on. This includes adding or removing operations from the parent block.
• Maintain pass state across invocations of runOnOperation. A pass may be run on several different operations with no guarantee of execution order.
  • When multithreading, a specific pass instance may not even execute on all operations within the module. As such, a pass should not rely on running on all operations.
• Modify the state of another operation not nested within the current operation being operated on.
  • Other threads may be operating on different operations within the module simultaneously.
• Maintain any global mutable state, e.g. static variables within the source file. All mutable state should be maintained by an instance of the pass.
• Must be copy-constructible, multiple instances of the pass may be created by the pass manager to process operations in parallel.
• Inspect the IR of sibling operations. Other threads may be modifying these operations in parallel.

When creating an operation pass, there are two different types to choose from depending on the usage scenario:

OperationPass : Op-Specific

An op-specific operation pass operates explicitly on a given operation type. This operation type must adhere to the restrictions set by the pass manager for pass execution.

To define an op-specific operation pass, a derived class must adhere to the following:

• Inherit from the CRTP class OperationPass and provide the operation type as an additional template parameter.
• Override the virtual void runOnOperation() method.

A simple pass may look like:

namespace {
struct MyFunctionPass : public OperationPass<MyFunctionPass, FuncOp> {
  void runOnOperation() override {
    // Get the current FuncOp operation being operated on.
    FuncOp f = getOperation();

    // Walk the operations within the function.
    f.walk([](Operation *inst) {
      ....
    });
  }
};
} // end anonymous namespace

// Register this pass to make it accessible to utilities like mlir-opt.
// (Pass registration is discussed more below)
static PassRegistration<MyFunctionPass> pass(
    "flag-name-to-invoke-pass-via-mlir-opt", "Pass description here");

OperationPass : Op-Agnostic

An op-agnostic pass operates on the operation type of the pass manager that it is added to. This means that a pass that operates on several different operation types in the same way only needs one implementation.

To create an operation pass, a derived class must adhere to the following:

• Inherit from the CRTP class OperationPass.
• Override the virtual void runOnOperation() method.

A simple pass may look like:

struct MyOperationPass : public OperationPass<MyOperationPass> {
  void runOnOperation() override {
    // Get the current operation being operated on.
    Operation *op = getOperation();
    ...
  }
};

Dependent Dialects

Dialects must be loaded in the MLIRContext before entities from these dialects (operations, types, attributes, ...) can be created. Dialects must be loaded before starting the multi-threaded pass pipeline execution. To this end, a pass that can create an entity from a dialect that isn't already loaded must express this by overriding the getDependentDialects() method and declare this list of Dialects explicitly.

Analysis Management

An important concept, along with transformation passes, are analyses. These are conceptually similar to transformation passes, except that they compute information on a specific operation without modifying it. In MLIR, analyses are not passes but free-standing classes that are computed lazily on-demand and cached to avoid unnecessary recomputation. An analysis in MLIR must adhere to the following:

• Provide a valid constructor taking an Operation*.
• Must not modify the given operation.

An analysis may provide additional hooks to control various behavior:

• bool isInvalidated(const AnalysisManager::PreservedAnalyses &)

Given a preserved analysis set, the analysis returns true if it should truly be invalidated. This allows for more fine-tuned invalidation in cases where an analysis wasn't explicitly marked preserved, but may be preserved (or invalidated) based upon other properties such as analyses sets.

Querying Analyses

The base OperationPass class provides utilities for querying and preserving analyses for the current operation being processed.

• OperationPass automatically provides the following utilities for querying analyses:
  • getAnalysis<>
    • Get an analysis for the current operation, constructing it if necessary.
  • getCachedAnalysis<>
    • Get an analysis for the current operation, if it already exists.
  • getCachedParentAnalysis<>
    • Get an analysis for a given parent operation, if it exists.
  • getCachedChildAnalysis<>
    • Get an analysis for a given child operation, if it exists.
  • getChildAnalysis<>
    • Get an analysis for a given child operation, constructing it if necessary.

Using the example passes defined above, let's see some examples:

/// An interesting analysis.
struct MyOperationAnalysis {
  // Compute this analysis with the provided operation.
  MyOperationAnalysis(Operation *op);
};

void MyOperationPass::runOnOperation() {
  // Query MyOperationAnalysis for the current operation.
  MyOperationAnalysis &myAnalysis = getAnalysis<MyOperationAnalysis>();

  // Query a cached instance of MyOperationAnalysis for the current operation.
  // It will not be computed if it doesn't exist.
  auto optionalAnalysis = getCachedAnalysis<MyOperationAnalysis>();
  if (optionalAnalysis)
    ...

  // Query a cached instance of MyOperationAnalysis for the parent operation of
  // the current operation. It will not be computed if it doesn't exist.
  auto optionalAnalysis = getCachedParentAnalysis<MyOperationAnalysis>();
  if (optionalAnalysis)
    ...
}

Preserving Analyses

Analyses that are constructed after being queried by a pass are cached to avoid unnecessary computation if they are requested again later. To avoid stale analyses, all analyses are assumed to be invalidated by a pass. To avoid invalidation, a pass must specifically mark analyses that are known to be preserved.

• All Pass classes automatically provide the following utilities for preserving analyses:
  • markAllAnalysesPreserved
  • markAnalysesPreserved<>

void MyOperationPass::runOnOperation() {
  // Mark all analyses as preserved. This is useful if a pass can guarantee
  // that no transformation was performed.
  markAllAnalysesPreserved();

  // Mark specific analyses as preserved. This is used if some transformation
  // was performed, but some analyses were either unaffected or explicitly
  // preserved.
  markAnalysesPreserved<MyAnalysis, MyAnalyses...>();
}

Pass Failure

Passes in MLIR are allowed to gracefully fail. This may happen if some invariant of the pass was broken, potentially leaving the IR in some invalid state. If such a situation occurs, the pass can directly signal a failure to the pass manager. If a pass signaled a failure when executing, no other passes in the pipeline will execute and the PassManager::run will return failure. Failure signaling is provided in the form of a signalPassFailure method.

void MyPass::runOnOperation() {
  // Signal failure on a broken invariant.
  if (some_broken_invariant) {
    signalPassFailure();
    return;
  }
}

Pass Manager

Above we introduced the different types of passes and their constraints. Now that we have our pass we need to be able to run it over a specific module. This is where the pass manager comes into play. The PassManager class is used to configure and run a pipeline. The OpPassManager class is used to schedule passes to run at a specific level of nesting.

OpPassManager

An OpPassManager is essentially a collection of passes to execute on an operation of a given type. This operation type must adhere to the following requirement:

• Must be registered and marked IsolatedFromAbove.

  • Passes are expected to not modify operations at or above the current operation being processed. If the operation is not isolated, it may inadvertently modify the use-list of an operation it is not supposed to modify.

Passes can be added to a pass manager via addPass. The pass must either be an op-specific pass operating on the same operation type as OpPassManager, or an op-agnostic pass.

An OpPassManager cannot be created directly, but must be explicitly nested within another OpPassManager via the nest<> method. This method takes the operation type that the nested pass manager will operate on. At the top-level, a PassManager acts as an OpPassManager that operates on the module operation. Nesting in this sense, corresponds to the structural nesting within Regions of the IR.

For example, the following .mlir:

module {
  spv.module "Logical" "GLSL450" {
    func @foo() {
      ...
    }
  }
}

Has the nesting structure of:

`module`
  `spv.module`
    `function`

Below is an example of constructing a pipeline that operates on the above structure:

PassManager pm(ctx);

// Add a pass on the top-level module operation.
pm.addPass(std::make_unique<MyModulePass>());

// Nest a pass manager that operates on spirv module operations nested directly
// under the top-level module.
OpPassManager &nestedModulePM = pm.nest<spirv::ModuleOp>();
nestedModulePM.addPass(std::make_unique<MySPIRVModulePass>());

// Nest a pass manager that operates on functions within the nested SPIRV
// module.
OpPassManager &nestedFunctionPM = nestedModulePM.nest<FuncOp>();
nestedFunctionPM.addPass(std::make_unique<MyFunctionPass>());

// Run the pass manager on the top-level module.
Module m = ...;
if (failed(pm.run(m)))
    ... // One of the passes signaled a failure.

The above pass manager would contain the following pipeline structure:

OpPassManager<ModuleOp>
  MyModulePass
  OpPassManager<spirv::ModuleOp>
    MySPIRVModulePass
    OpPassManager<FuncOp>
      MyFunctionPass

These pipelines are then run over a single operation at a time. This means that, for example, given a series of consecutive passes on FuncOp, it will execute all on the first function, then all on the second function, etc. until the entire program has been run through the passes. This provides several benefits:

• This improves the cache behavior of the compiler, because it is only touching a single function at a time, instead of traversing the entire program.
• This improves multi-threading performance by reducing the number of jobs that need to be scheduled, as well as increasing the efficiency of each job. An entire function pipeline can be run on each function asynchronously.

Pass Registration

Briefly shown in the example definitions of the various pass types is the PassRegistration class. This is a utility to register derived pass classes so that they may be created, and inspected, by utilities like mlir-opt. Registering a pass class takes the form:

static PassRegistration<MyPass> pass("command-line-arg", "description");

• MyPass is the name of the derived pass class.
• "command-line-arg" is the argument to use on the command line to invoke the pass from mlir-opt.
• "description" is a description of the pass.

For passes that cannot be default-constructed, PassRegistration accepts an optional third argument that takes a callback to create the pass:

static PassRegistration<MyParametricPass> pass(
    "command-line-arg", "description",
    []() -> std::unique_ptr<Pass> {
      std::unique_ptr<Pass> p = std::make_unique<MyParametricPass>(/*options*/);
      /*... non-trivial-logic to configure the pass ...*/;
      return p;
    });

This variant of registration can be used, for example, to accept the configuration of a pass from command-line arguments and pass it over to the pass constructor. Make sure that the pass is copy-constructible in a way that does not share data as the pass manager may create copies of the pass to run in parallel.

Pass Pipeline Registration

Described above is the mechanism used for registering a specific derived pass class. On top of that, MLIR allows for registering custom pass pipelines in a similar fashion. This allows for custom pipelines to be available to tools like mlir-opt in the same way that passes are, which is useful for encapsulating common pipelines like the "-O1" series of passes. Pipelines are registered via a similar mechanism to passes in the form of PassPipelineRegistration. Compared to PassRegistration, this class takes an additional parameter in the form of a pipeline builder that modifies a provided OpPassManager.

void pipelineBuilder(OpPassManager &pm) {
  pm.addPass(std::make_unique<MyPass>());
  pm.addPass(std::make_unique<MyOtherPass>());
}

// Register an existing pipeline builder function.
static PassPipelineRegistration<> pipeline(
  "command-line-arg", "description", pipelineBuilder);

// Register an inline pipeline builder.
static PassPipelineRegistration<> pipeline(
  "command-line-arg", "description", [](OpPassManager &pm) {
    pm.addPass(std::make_unique<MyPass>());
    pm.addPass(std::make_unique<MyOtherPass>());
  });

Pipeline registration also allows for simplified registration of specializations for existing passes:

static PassPipelineRegistration<> foo10(
    "foo-10", "Foo Pass 10", [] { return std::make_unique<FooPass>(10); } );

Textual Pass Pipeline Specification

In the previous sections, we showed how to register passes and pass pipelines with a specific argument and description. Once registered, these can be used on the command line to configure a pass manager. The limitation of using these arguments directly is that they cannot build a nested pipeline. For example, if our module has another module nested underneath, with just -my-module-pass there is no way to specify that this pass should run on the nested module and not the top-level module. This is due to the flattened nature of the command line.

To circumvent this limitation, MLIR also supports a textual description of a pass pipeline. This allows for explicitly specifying the structure of the pipeline to add to the pass manager. This includes the nesting structure, as well as the passes and pass pipelines to run. A textual pipeline is defined as a series of names, each of which may in itself recursively contain a nested pipeline description. The syntax for this specification is as follows:

pipeline          ::= op-name `(` pipeline-element (`,` pipeline-element)* `)`
pipeline-element  ::= pipeline | (pass-name | pass-pipeline-name) options?
options           ::= '{' (key ('=' value)?)+ '}'

• op-name
  • This corresponds to the mnemonic name of an operation to run passes on, e.g. func or module.
• pass-name | pass-pipeline-name
  • This corresponds to the command-line argument of a registered pass or pass pipeline, e.g. cse or canonicalize.
• options
  • Options are pass specific key value pairs that are handled as described in the instance specific pass options section.

For example, the following pipeline:

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -cse -canonicalize -convert-std-to-llvm

Can also be specified as (via the -pass-pipeline flag):

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -pass-pipeline='func(cse, canonicalize), convert-std-to-llvm'

In order to support round-tripping your pass to the textual representation using OpPassManager::printAsTextualPipeline(raw_ostream&), override Pass::printAsTextualPipeline(raw_ostream&) to format your pass-name and options in the format described above.

Instance Specific Pass Options

Options may be specified for a parametric pass. Individual options are defined using the LLVM command line flag definition rules. These options will then be parsed at pass construction time independently for each instance of the pass. To provide options for passes, the Option<> and OptionList<> classes may be used:

struct MyPass ... {
  /// Make sure that we have a valid default constructor and copy constructor to
  /// make sure that the options are initialized properly.
  MyPass() = default;
  MyPass(const MyPass& pass) {}

  // These just forward onto llvm::cl::list and llvm::cl::opt respectively.
  Option<int> exampleOption{*this, "flag-name", llvm::cl::desc("...")};
  ListOption<int> exampleListOption{*this, "list-flag-name",
                                    llvm::cl::desc("...")};
};

For pass pipelines, the PassPipelineRegistration templates take an additional optional template parameter that is the Option struct definition to be used for that pipeline. To use pipeline specific options, create a class that inherits from mlir::PassPipelineOptions that contains the desired options. When using PassPipelineRegistration, the constructor now takes a function with the signature void (OpPassManager &pm, const MyPipelineOptions&) which should construct the passes from the options and pass them to the pm:

struct MyPipelineOptions : public PassPipelineOptions {
  // These just forward onto llvm::cl::list and llvm::cl::opt respectively.
  Option<int> exampleOption{*this, "flag-name", llvm::cl::desc("...")};
  ListOption<int> exampleListOption{*this, "list-flag-name",
                                    llvm::cl::desc("...")};
};


static mlir::PassPipelineRegistration<MyPipelineOptions> pipeline(
    "example-pipeline", "Run an example pipeline.",
    [](OpPassManager &pm, const MyPipelineOptions &pipelineOptions) {
      // Initialize the pass manager.
    });

Pass Statistics

Statistics are a way to keep track of what the compiler is doing and how effective various transformations are. It is often useful to see what effect specific transformations have on a particular program, and how often they trigger. Pass statistics are instance specific which allow for taking this a step further as you are able to see the effect of placing a particular transformation at specific places within the pass pipeline. For example, they help answer questions like What happens if I run CSE again here?.

Statistics can be added to a pass by using the 'Pass::Statistic' class. This class takes as a constructor arguments: the parent pass, a name, and a description. This class acts like an unsigned integer, and may be incremented and updated accordingly. These statistics use the same infrastructure as llvm::Statistic and thus have similar usage constraints. Collected statistics can be dumped by the pass manager programmatically via PassManager::enableStatistics; or via -pass-statistics and -pass-statistics-display on the command line.

An example is shown below:

struct MyPass : public OperationPass<MyPass> {
  Statistic testStat{this, "testStat", "A test statistic"};

  void runOnOperation() {
    ...

    // Update our statistic after some invariant was hit.
    ++testStat;

    ...
  }
};

The collected statistics may be aggregated in two types of views:

A pipeline view that models the structure of the pass manager, this is the default view:

$ mlir-opt -pass-pipeline='func(my-pass,my-pass)' foo.mlir -pass-statistics

===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
                         ... Pass statistics report ...
===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
'func' Pipeline
  MyPass
    (S) 15 testStat - A test statistic
  VerifierPass
  MyPass
    (S)  6 testStat - A test statistic
  VerifierPass
VerifierPass

And a list view that aggregates all instances of a specific pass together:

$ mlir-opt -pass-pipeline='func(my-pass, my-pass)' foo.mlir -pass-statistics -pass-statistics-display=list

===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
                         ... Pass statistics report ...
===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
MyPass
  (S) 21 testStat - A test statistic

Declarative Pass Specification

Some aspects of a Pass may be specified declaratively, in a form similar to operations. This specification simplifies several mechanisms used when defining passes. It can be used for generating pass registration calls, defining boilerplate pass utilities, and generating pass documentation.

Consider the following pass specified in C++:

struct MyPass : PassWrapper<MyPass, OperationPass<ModuleOp>> {
  ...

  /// Options.
  Option<bool> option{
      *this, "example-option",
      llvm::cl::desc("An example option"), llvm::cl::init(true)};
  ListOption<int64_t> listOption{
      *this, "example-list",
      llvm::cl::desc("An example list option"), llvm::cl::ZeroOrMore,
      llvm::cl::MiscFlags::CommaSeparated};

  /// Statistics.
  Statistic statistic{this, "example-statistic", "An example statistic"};
};

/// Expose this pass to the outside world.
std::unique_ptr<Pass> foo::createMyPass() {
  return std::make_unique<MyPass>();
}

static PassRegistration<MyPass> pass("my-pass", "My pass summary");

This pass may be specified declaratively as so:

def MyPass : Pass<"my-pass", "ModuleOp"> {
  let summary = "My Pass Summary";
  let description = [{
    Here we can now give a much larger description of `MyPass`, including all of
    its various constraints and behavior.
  }];

  // A constructor must be provided to specify how to create a default instance
  // of MyPass.
  let constructor = "foo::createMyPass()";

  // Specify any options.
  let options = [
    Option<"option", "example-option", "bool", /*default=*/"true",
           "An example option">,
    ListOption<"listOption", "example-list", "int64_t",
               "An example list option",
               "llvm::cl::ZeroOrMore, llvm::cl::MiscFlags::CommaSeparated">
  ];

  // Specify any statistics.
  let statistics = [
    Statistic<"statistic", "example-statistic", "An example statistic">
  ];
}

Using the gen-pass-decls generator, we can generate the much of the boilerplater above automatically. This generator takes as an input a -name parameter, that provides a tag for the group of passes that are being generated. This generator produces two chunks of output:

The first is the code for registering the declarative passes with the global registry. For each pass, the generator produces a registerFooPass where Foo is the name of the definition specified in tablegen. It also generates a registerGroupPasses, where Group is the tag provided via the -name input parameter, that registers all of the passes present.

#define GEN_PASS_REGISTRATION
#include "Passes.h.inc"

void registerMyPasses() {
  // Register all of our passes.
  registerMyPasses();

  // Register `MyPass` specifically.
  registerMyPassPass();
}

The second is a base class for each of the passes, with each containing most of the boiler plate related to pass definition. These classes are named in the form of MyPassBase, where MyPass is the name of the definition in tablegen. We can update the original C++ pass definition as so:

/// Include the generated base pass class definitions.
#define GEN_PASS_CLASSES
#include "Passes.h.inc"

// Define the main class as deriving from the generated base class.
struct MyPass : MyPassBase<MyPass> {
  ...
};

/// Expose this pass to the outside world.
std::unique_ptr<Pass> foo::createMyPass() {
  return std::make_unique<MyPass>();
}

Using the gen-pass-doc generator, we can generate markdown documentation for each of our passes. See Passes.md for example output of real MLIR passes.

Tablegen Specification

The Pass class is used to begin a new pass definition. This class takes as an argument the command line argument to attribute to the pass, as well as an optional string corresponding to the operation type that the pass operates on. It contains the following fields:

• summary
  • A short one line summary of the pass, used as the description when registering the pass.
• description
  • A longer, more detailed description of the pass. This is used when generating pass documentation.
• dependentDialects
  • A list of strings that are the Dialect classes this pass can introduce.
• constructor
  • A piece of C++ code used to create a default instance of the pass.
• options
  • A list of pass options used by the pass.
• statistics
  • A list of pass statistics used by the pass.

Options

Options can be specified by the Option and ListOption classes. The Option class takes the following fields:

• C++ variable name
  • A name to use for the generated option variable.
• argument
  • The command line argument of the option.
• type
  • The C++ type of the option.
• default value
  • The default option value.
• description
  • A one line description of the option.
• additional option flags
  • A string containing any additional options necessary to construct the option.

The ListOption class takes the following fields:

• C++ variable name
  • A name to use for the generated option variable.
• argument
  • The command line argument of the option.
• element type
  • The C++ type of the list element.
• description
  • A one line description of the option.
• additional option flags
  • A string containing any additional options necessary to construct the option.

Statistic

Statistics can be specified via the Statistic, which takes the following fields:

• C++ variable name
  • A name to use for the generated statistic variable.
• display name
  • The name used when displaying the statistic.
• description
  • A one line description of the statistic.

Pass Instrumentation

MLIR provides a customizable framework to instrument pass execution and analysis computation. This is provided via the PassInstrumentation class. This class provides hooks into the PassManager that observe various pass events:

• runBeforePipeline
  • This callback is run just before a pass pipeline, i.e. pass manager, is executed.
• runAfterPipeline
  • This callback is run right after a pass pipeline has been executed, successfully or not.
• runBeforePass
  • This callback is run just before a pass is executed.
• runAfterPass
  • This callback is run right after a pass has been successfully executed. If this hook is executed, runAfterPassFailed will not be.
• runAfterPassFailed
  • This callback is run right after a pass execution fails. If this hook is executed, runAfterPass will not be.
• runBeforeAnalysis
  • This callback is run just before an analysis is computed.
• runAfterAnalysis
  • This callback is run right after an analysis is computed.

PassInstrumentation objects can be registered directly with a PassManager instance via the addInstrumentation method. Instrumentations added to the PassManager are run in a stack like fashion, i.e. the last instrumentation to execute a runBefore* hook will be the first to execute the respective runAfter* hook. Below in an example instrumentation that counts the number of times DominanceInfo is computed:

struct DominanceCounterInstrumentation : public PassInstrumentation {
  unsigned &count;

  DominanceCounterInstrumentation(unsigned &count) : count(count) {}
  void runAfterAnalysis(llvm::StringRef, TypeID id, Operation *) override {
    if (id == TypeID::get<DominanceInfo>())
      ++count;
  }
};

MLIRContext *ctx = ...;
PassManager pm(ctx);

// Add the instrumentation to the pass manager.
unsigned domInfoCount;
pm.addInstrumentation(
    std::make_unique<DominanceCounterInstrumentation>(domInfoCount));

// Run the pass manager on a module operation.
ModuleOp m = ...;
if (failed(pm.run(m)))
    ...

llvm::errs() << "DominanceInfo was computed " << domInfoCount << " times!\n";

Standard Instrumentations

MLIR utilizes the pass instrumentation framework to provide a few useful developer tools and utilities. Each of these instrumentations are immediately available to all users of the MLIR pass framework.

Pass Timing

The PassTiming instrumentation provides timing information about the execution of passes and computation of analyses. This provides a quick glimpse into what passes are taking the most time to execute, as well as how much of an effect your pass has on the total execution time of the pipeline. Users can enable this instrumentation directly on the PassManager via enableTiming. This instrumentation is also made available in mlir-opt via the -pass-timing flag. The PassTiming instrumentation provides several different display modes for the timing results, each of which is described below:

List Display Mode

In this mode, the results are displayed in a list sorted by total time with each pass/analysis instance aggregated into one unique result. This view is useful for getting an overview of what analyses/passes are taking the most time in a pipeline. This display mode is available in mlir-opt via -pass-timing-display=list.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -mlir-disable-threading -pass-pipeline='func(cse,canonicalize)' -convert-std-to-llvm -pass-timing -pass-timing-display=list

===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
                      ... Pass execution timing report ...
===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
  Total Execution Time: 0.0203 seconds

   ---Wall Time---  --- Name ---
   0.0047 ( 55.9%)  Canonicalizer
   0.0019 ( 22.2%)  VerifierPass
   0.0016 ( 18.5%)  LLVMLoweringPass
   0.0003 (  3.4%)  CSE
   0.0002 (  1.9%)  (A) DominanceInfo
   0.0084 (100.0%)  Total

Pipeline Display Mode

In this mode, the results are displayed in a nested pipeline view that mirrors the internal pass pipeline that is being executed in the pass manager. This view is useful for understanding specifically which parts of the pipeline are taking the most time, and can also be used to identify when analyses are being invalidated and recomputed. This is the default display mode.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -mlir-disable-threading -pass-pipeline='func(cse,canonicalize)' -convert-std-to-llvm -pass-timing

===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
                      ... Pass execution timing report ...
===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
  Total Execution Time: 0.0249 seconds

   ---Wall Time---  --- Name ---
   0.0058 ( 70.8%)  'func' Pipeline
   0.0004 (  4.3%)    CSE
   0.0002 (  2.6%)      (A) DominanceInfo
   0.0004 (  4.8%)    VerifierPass
   0.0046 ( 55.4%)    Canonicalizer
   0.0005 (  6.2%)    VerifierPass
   0.0005 (  5.8%)  VerifierPass
   0.0014 ( 17.2%)  LLVMLoweringPass
   0.0005 (  6.2%)  VerifierPass
   0.0082 (100.0%)  Total

Multi-threaded Pass Timing

When multi-threading is enabled in the pass manager the meaning of the display slightly changes. First, a new timing column is added, User Time, that displays the total time spent across all threads. Secondly, the Wall Time column displays the longest individual time spent amongst all of the threads. This means that the Wall Time column will continue to give an indicator on the perceived time, or clock time, whereas the User Time will display the total cpu time.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -pass-pipeline='func(cse,canonicalize)' -convert-std-to-llvm -pass-timing

===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
                      ... Pass execution timing report ...
===-------------------------------------------------------------------------===
  Total Execution Time: 0.0078 seconds

   ---User Time---   ---Wall Time---  --- Name ---
   0.0177 ( 88.5%)     0.0057 ( 71.3%)  'func' Pipeline
   0.0044 ( 22.0%)     0.0015 ( 18.9%)    CSE
   0.0029 ( 14.5%)     0.0012 ( 15.2%)      (A) DominanceInfo
   0.0038 ( 18.9%)     0.0015 ( 18.7%)    VerifierPass
   0.0089 ( 44.6%)     0.0025 ( 31.1%)    Canonicalizer
   0.0006 (  3.0%)     0.0002 (  2.6%)    VerifierPass
   0.0004 (  2.2%)     0.0004 (  5.4%)  VerifierPass
   0.0013 (  6.5%)     0.0013 ( 16.3%)  LLVMLoweringPass
   0.0006 (  2.8%)     0.0006 (  7.0%)  VerifierPass
   0.0200 (100.0%)     0.0081 (100.0%)  Total

IR Printing

When debugging it is often useful to dump the IR at various stages of a pass pipeline. This is where the IR printing instrumentation comes into play. This instrumentation allows for conditionally printing the IR before and after pass execution by optionally filtering on the pass being executed. This instrumentation can be added directly to the PassManager via the enableIRPrinting method. mlir-opt provides a few useful flags for utilizing this instrumentation:

• print-ir-before=(comma-separated-pass-list)
  • Print the IR before each of the passes provided within the pass list.
• print-ir-before-all
  • Print the IR before every pass in the pipeline.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -pass-pipeline='func(cse)' -print-ir-before=cse

*** IR Dump Before CSE ***
func @simple_constant() -> (i32, i32) {
  %c1_i32 = constant 1 : i32
  %c1_i32_0 = constant 1 : i32
  return %c1_i32, %c1_i32_0 : i32, i32
}

• print-ir-after=(comma-separated-pass-list)
  • Print the IR after each of the passes provided within the pass list.
• print-ir-after-all
  • Print the IR after every pass in the pipeline.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -pass-pipeline='func(cse)' -print-ir-after=cse

*** IR Dump After CSE ***
func @simple_constant() -> (i32, i32) {
  %c1_i32 = constant 1 : i32
  return %c1_i32, %c1_i32 : i32, i32
}

• print-ir-after-change
  • Only print the IR after a pass if the pass mutated the IR. This helps to reduce the number of IR dumps for "uninteresting" passes.
  • Note: Changes are detected by comparing a hash of the operation before and after the pass. This adds additional run-time to compute the hash of the IR, and in some rare cases may result in false-positives depending on the collision rate of the hash algorithm used.
  • Note: This option should be used in unison with one of the other 'print-ir-after' options above, as this option alone does not enable printing.

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -pass-pipeline='func(cse,cse)' -print-ir-after=cse -print-ir-after-change

*** IR Dump After CSE ***
func @simple_constant() -> (i32, i32) {
  %c1_i32 = constant 1 : i32
  return %c1_i32, %c1_i32 : i32, i32
}

• print-ir-module-scope
  • Always print the top-level module operation, regardless of pass type or operation nesting level.
  • Note: Printing at module scope should only be used when multi-threading is disabled(-mlir-disable-threading)

$ mlir-opt foo.mlir -mlir-disable-threading -pass-pipeline='func(cse)' -print-ir-after=cse -print-ir-module-scope

*** IR Dump After CSE ***  ('func' operation: @bar)
func @bar(%arg0: f32, %arg1: f32) -> f32 {
  ...
}

func @simple_constant() -> (i32, i32) {
  %c1_i32 = constant 1 : i32
  %c1_i32_0 = constant 1 : i32
  return %c1_i32, %c1_i32_0 : i32, i32
}

*** IR Dump After CSE ***  ('func' operation: @simple_constant)
func @bar(%arg0: f32, %arg1: f32) -> f32 {
  ...
}

func @simple_constant() -> (i32, i32) {
  %c1_i32 = constant 1 : i32
  return %c1_i32, %c1_i32 : i32, i32
}

Crash and Failure Reproduction

The pass manager in MLIR contains a builtin mechanism to generate reproducibles in the even of a crash, or a pass failure. This functionality can be enabled via PassManager::enableCrashReproducerGeneration or via the command line flag pass-pipeline-crash-reproducer. In either case, an argument is provided that corresponds to the output .mlir file name that the reproducible should be written to. The reproducible contains the configuration of the pass manager that was executing, as well as the initial IR before any passes were run. A potential reproducible may have the form:

// configuration: -pass-pipeline='func(cse, canonicalize), inline'
// note: verifyPasses=false

module {
  func @foo() {
    ...
  }
}

Local Reproducer Generation

An additional flag may be passed to PassManager::enableCrashReproducerGeneration, and specified via pass-pipeline-local-reproducer on the command line, that signals that the pass manager should attempt to generate a "local" reproducer. This will attempt to generate a reproducer containing IR right before the pass that fails. This is useful for situations where the crash is known to be within a specific pass, or when the original input relies on components (like dialects or passes) that may not always be available.

For example, if the failure in the previous example came from canonicalize, the following reproducer will be generated:

// configuration: -pass-pipeline='func(canonicalize)'
// note: verifyPasses=false

module {
  func @foo() {
    ...
  }
}