Large parts of the code in regalloc2 are currently licensed under the
Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0, because they derive in meaningful
ways from the register allocator in IonMonkey, which is part of
Firefox. The relevant source files are marked as such, with references
to the files in the Firefox source tree.
The intent of the regalloc2 project was to port the register allocator
from Firefox to use in Cranelift, borrowing good technology and
improving on it in the spirit of open source.
However, Several use-cases of Cranelift require, or at least strongly
prefer, the Apache-2.0 license with the LLVM exception (matching the
license of Cranelift itself, and Bytecode Alliance projects
generally). While using this license is not strictly necessary for
regalloc2 to be usable (The MPL is an excellent open-source license!),
relicensing fully under this license to harmonize with the rest of
Cranelift and Bytecode Alliance codebases significantly widens
possibilities and reduces friction; then regalloc2 is "just another
part of Cranelift" and doesn't have to be treated specially.
The source in `src/ion/` specifically began as a fairly direct port of
the algorithms in the following files in the `mozilla-central`
repository (Firefox codebase):
* The bulk of the "backtracking allocator" algorithm:
* `js/src/jit/BacktrackingAllocator.{cpp,h}`
* Helpers and definitions in the surrounding infrastructure:
* `js/src/jit/RegisterAllocator.h`
* `js/src/jit/RegisterAllocator.cpp`
* `js/src/jit/StackSlotAllocator.h`
* `js/src/jit/LIR.h`
* A few data structure implementations:
* `js/src/ds/SplayTree.h`
* `js/src/ds/PriorityQueue.h`
Subsequent work in improving regalloc2 has caused it to drift from the
direct port -- for example, it no longer uses splay trees or the
direct port of the priority queue above -- but it is of course very
clearly still a derivative work.
Analysis of the contributors to these files indicates that we need
signoff from the following folks:
* Mozilla Corp, for contributions made by Mozilla employees (the
majority of the code). Communications with Mozilla (thanks
@tschneidereit and @bholley for doing the work here!) indicate that
@ekr is able to sign off when ready here.
* Andy Wingo, specifically for the work done in [Bug
1620197](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1620197) and
[Bug 1609057](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609057) to
generalize the stack allocator for a Wasm feature (multiple returns).
Additionally, since the initial port, we have had three contributions
from @Amanieu:
[#9](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/regalloc2/pull/9),
[#11](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/regalloc2/pull/11),
[#13](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/regalloc2/pull/13).
So, if everyone applicable is happy with this relicensing, this PR
removes the MPL-2.0 license in `src/ion/` and marks all files as
covered under `Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception`. Please let us know if
this is OK!
Signoffs:
- [ ] @ekr, for Mozilla's contributions
- [ ] @wingo, for contributions to original code in `mozilla-central`
- [ ] @Amanieu, for the three PRs linked above
Thanks!
From feedback from @julian-seward1. I had used "list" in a more generic
sense, meaning ordered sequence of elements, while in a Rust context it
can sometimes be confused with "linked list" specifically. These
alternative terms are more precise.
In wasmtime's `gc::many_live_refs` unit-test, approximately ~1K vregs
are live over ~1K safepoints (actually, each vreg is live over half the
safepoints on average, in a LIFO sort of arrangement).
This causes a huge slowdown with the current heuristics. Basically, each
vreg had a `Conflict` requirement because it had both stack uses
(safepoints) and register uses (the actual def and normal use). The
action in this case when processing the vreg's bundle is to split off
the first use -- a conservative-but-correct approach that will always
eventually split bundles far enough to get non-conflicting-requirement
pieces.
However, because each vreg had N stack uses followed by one register
use, this meant that each had to be split N times (!) -- so we had
O(n^2) splits and O(n^2) bundles by the end of the allocation.
This instead implements another simple heuristic that is much better:
when the requirements are conflicting, scan forward and find the exact
point at which the requirements become conflicting, such that the prefix
(first half prior to the split) still has no conflict, and split there.
This turns the above test-case into an O(n)-bundle / O(n)-split
situation.
This feature needs more thought; for now we will of course continue to
support pinned vregs, but perhaps we can do better for
"pass-through-and-forget" operands that are given non-allocatable
registers.
This reverts commit 736f636c36.
