TLDR: The reason why I am doing this is that often times people confuse assembly
vision remarks for normal opt remarks. I want to accentuate that this is
actually trying to do something different than a traditional opt remark. To that
end I renamed things in the compiler and added a true attribute
`@_assemblyVision` to trigger the compiler to emit these remarks to help
everyone remember what this is in their ontology. I explain below the
difference.
----
Normal opt remarks work by the optimizer telling you if it succeeded or failed
to perform an optimization. Another way of putting this is that opt remarks is
trying to give back feedback to the user from an expert system about why it did
or not do something. There is inherently an act of interpretation in the
optimizer about whether or not to report an 'action' that it perpetrated to the
user.
Assembly Vision Remarks is instead trying to be an expert tool that acts like an
xray. Instead of telling the user about what the optimizer did, it is instead a
simple visitor that visits the IR and emits SourceLocations for where specific
hazards ending up in the program. In this sense it is just telling the user
where certain instructions ended up and using heuristics to relate this to
information at the IR level. To a get a sense of this difference, consider the
following Swift Code:
```
public class Klass {
func doSomething() {}
}
var global: Klass = Klass()
@inline(__always)
func bar() -> Klass { global }
@_assemblyVision
@inline(never)
func foo() {
bar().doSomething()
}
```
In this case, we will emit the following remarks:
```
test.swift:16:5: remark: begin exclusive access to value of type 'Klass'
bar().doSomething()
^
test.swift:7:5: note: of 'global'
var global: Klass = Klass()
^
test.swift:16:9: remark: end exclusive access to value of type 'Klass'
bar().doSomething()
^
test.swift:7:5: note: of 'global'
var global: Klass = Klass()
^
test.swift:16:11: remark: retain of type 'Klass'
bar().doSomething()
^
test.swift:7:5: note: of 'global'
var global: Klass = Klass()
^
test.swift:16:23: remark: release of type 'Klass'
bar().doSomething()
^
test.swift:7:5: note: of 'global'
var global: Klass = Klass()
^
```
Notice how the begin/end exclusive access are marked as actually being before
the retain, release of global. That seems weird since exclusive access to memory
seems like something that should not escape an exclusivity scope... but in fact
this corresponds directly to what we eventually see in the SIL:
```
// test.sil
sil hidden [noinline] [_semantics "optremark"] @$ss3fooyyF : $@convention(thin) () -> () {
bb0:
%0 = global_addr @$ss6globals5KlassCvp : $*Klass
%1 = begin_access [read] [dynamic] [no_nested_conflict] %0 : $*Klass
%2 = load %1 : $*Klass
end_access %1 : $*Klass
%4 = class_method %2 : $Klass, #Klass.doSomething : (Klass) -> () -> (), $@convention(method) (@guaranteed Klass) -> ()
strong_retain %2 : $Klass
%6 = apply %4(%2) : $@convention(method) (@guaranteed Klass) -> ()
strong_release %2 : $Klass
%8 = tuple ()
return %8 : $()
} // end sil function '$ss3fooyyF'
```
and assembly,
```
// test.S
_$ss3fooyyF:
pushq %rbp
movq %rsp, %rbp
pushq %r13
pushq %rbx
subq $32, %rsp
leaq _$ss6globals5KlassCvp(%rip), %rdi
leaq -40(%rbp), %rsi
xorl %edx, %edx
xorl %ecx, %ecx
callq _swift_beginAccess
movq _$ss6globals5KlassCvp(%rip), %r13
movq (%r13), %rax
movq 80(%rax), %rbx
movq %r13, %rdi
callq _swift_retain
callq *%rbx
movq %r13, %rdi
callq _swift_release
addq $32, %rsp
popq %rbx
popq %r13
popq %rbp
retq
```
so as one can see what we are trying to do is inform the user of hazards in the
code without trying to reason about it, automated a task that users often have
to perform by hand: inspection of assembly to determine where runtime calls and
other hazards ended up.
