--- /dev/null
+Welcome to Mesa's GLSL compiler. A brief overview of how things flow:
+
+1) lex and yacc-based preprocessor takes the incoming shader string
+and produces a new string containing the preprocessed shader. This
+takes care of things like #if, #ifdef, #define, and preprocessor macro
+invocations. Note that #version, #extension, and some others are
+passed straight through. See glcpp/*
+
+2) lex and yacc-based parser takes the preprocessed string and
+generates the AST (abstract syntax tree). Almost no checking is
+performed in this stage. See glsl_lexer.lpp and glsl_parser.ypp.
+
+3) The AST is converted to "HIR". This is the intermediate
+representation of the compiler. Constructors are generated, function
+calls are resolved to particular function signatures, and all the
+semantic checking is performed. See ast_*.cpp for the conversion, and
+ir.h for the IR structures.
+
+4) The driver (Mesa, or main.cpp for the standalone binary) performs
+optimizations. These include copy propagation, dead code elimination,
+constant folding, and others. Generally the driver will call
+optimizations in a loop, as each may open up opportunities for other
+optimizations to do additional work. See most files called ir_*.cpp
+
+5) linking is performed. This does checking to ensure that the
+outputs of the vertex shader match the inputs of the fragment shader,
+and assigns locations to uniforms, attributes, and varyings. See
+linker.cpp.
+
+6) The driver may perform additional optimization at this point, as
+for example dead code elimination previously couldn't remove functions
+or global variable usage when we didn't know what other code would be
+linked in.
+
+7) The driver performs code generation out of the IR, taking a linked
+shader program and producing a compiled program for each stage. See
+ir_to_mesa.cpp for Mesa IR code generation.
+
+FAQ:
+
+Q: What is HIR versus IR versus LIR?
+
+A: The idea behind the naming was that ast_to_hir would produce a
+high-level IR ("HIR"), with things like matrix operations, structure
+assignments, etc., present. A series of lowering passes would occur
+that do things like break matrix multiplication into a series of dot
+products/MADs, make structure assignment be a series of assignment of
+components, flatten if statements into conditional moves, and such,
+producing a low level IR ("LIR").
+
+However, it now appears that each driver will have different
+requirements from a LIR. A 915-generation chipset wants all functions
+inlined, all loops unrolled, all ifs flattened, no variable array
+accesses, and matrix multiplication broken down. The Mesa IR backend
+for swrast would like matrices and structure assignment broken down,
+but it can support function calls and dynamic branching. A 965 vertex
+shader IR backend could potentially even handle some matrix operations
+without breaking them down, but the 965 fragment shader IR backend
+would want to break to have (almost) all operations down channel-wise
+and perform optimization on that. As a result, there's no single
+low-level IR that will make everyone happy. So that usage has fallen
+out of favor, and each driver will perform a series of lowering passes
+to take the HIR down to whatever restrictions it wants to impose
+before doing codegen.
+
+Q: How is the IR structured?
+
+A: The best way to get started seeing it would be to run the
+standalone compiler against a shader:
+
+./glsl --dump-lir ~/src/piglit/tests/shaders/glsl-orangebook-ch06-bump.frag
+
+So for example one of the ir_instructions in main() contains:
+
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (var_ref litColor) (expression vec3 * (var_ref Surf
+aceColor) (var_ref __retval) ) )
+
+Or more visually:
+ (assign)
+ / | \
+ (var_ref) (expression *) (constant bool 1)
+ / / \
+(litColor) (var_ref) (var_ref)
+ / \
+ (SurfaceColor) (__retval)
+
+which came from:
+
+litColor = SurfaceColor * max(dot(normDelta, LightDir), 0.0);
+
+(the max call is not represented in this expression tree, as it was a
+function call that got inlined but not brought into this expression
+tree)
+
+Each of those nodes is a subclass of ir_instruction. A particular
+ir_instruction instance may only appear once in the whole IR tree with
+the exception of ir_variables, which appear once as variable
+declarations:
+
+(declare () vec3 normDelta)
+
+and multiple times as the targets of variable dereferences:
+...
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (var_ref __retval) (expression float dot
+ (var_ref normDelta) (var_ref LightDir) ) )
+...
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (var_ref __retval) (expression vec3 -
+ (var_ref LightDir) (expression vec3 * (constant float (2.000000))
+ (expression vec3 * (expression float dot (var_ref normDelta) (var_ref
+ LightDir) ) (var_ref normDelta) ) ) ) )
+...
+
+Each node has a type. Expressions may involve several different types:
+(declare (uniform ) mat4 gl_ModelViewMatrix)
+((assign (constant bool (1)) (var_ref constructor_tmp) (expression
+ vec4 * (var_ref gl_ModelViewMatrix) (var_ref gl_Vertex) ) )
+
+An expression tree can be arbitrarily deep, and the compiler tries to
+keep them structured like that so that things like algebraic
+optimizations ((color * 1.0 == color) and ((mat1 * mat2) * vec == mat1
+* (mat2 * vec))) or recognizing operation patterns for code generation
+(vec1 * vec2 + vec3 == mad(vec1, vec2, vec3)) are easier. This comes
+at the expense of additional trickery in implementing some
+optimizations like CSE where one must navigate an expression tree.
+
+Q: Why no SSA representation?
+
+A: Converting an IR tree to SSA form makes dead code elmimination,
+common subexpression elimination, and many other optimizations much
+easier. However, in our primarily vector-based language, there's some
+major questions as to how it would work. Do we do SSA on the scalar
+or vector level? If we do it at the vector level, we're going to end
+up with many different versions of the variable when encountering code
+like:
+
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (swiz x (var_ref __retval) ) (var_ref a) )
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (swiz y (var_ref __retval) ) (var_ref b) )
+(assign (constant bool (1)) (swiz z (var_ref __retval) ) (var_ref c) )
+
+If every masked update of a component relies on the previous value of
+the variable, then we're probably going to be quite limited in our
+dead code elimination wins, and recognizing common expressions may
+just not happen. On the other hand, if we operate channel-wise, then
+we'll be prone to optimizing the operation on one of the channels at
+the expense of making its instruction flow different from the other
+channels, and a vector-based GPU would end up with worse code than if
+we didn't optimize operations on that channel!
+
+Once again, it appears that our optimization requirements are driven
+significantly by the target architecture. For now, targeting the Mesa
+IR backend, SSA does not appear to be that important to producing
+excellent code, but we do expect to do some SSA-based optimizations
+for the 965 fragment shader backend when that is developed.
projects / mesa.git / commitdiff