LLVM Memory Model needs more rigor to avoid undesired optimization results

[RalfJung]

Bugzilla Link	35229
Version	5.0
OS	Linux
Depends On	#33896
Blocks	#39717
CC	@comex,@efriedma-quic,@hfinkel,@jrmuizel,@jplatte,@aqjune,@sunfishcode,@nunoplopes,@regehr,@rnk

Extended Description

Clang/LLVM currently miscompiles the following program:

// gvnbug.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>

int foo();

void test(int* gp1, int* gp2)
{
  int g = 0;
  int a = 0, b = 0;
  int x = 7777, y = 6666; // also try swapping these
  int* p = &g;
  int* q = &g;
  int* r = &g;

  if (foo()) {
    a = 1;
    p = &y+1;
    q = &x;
  }

  *gp1 = (uintptr_t)p+1;
  if (q == p) {
    b = 1;
    *gp2 = (uintptr_t)q+1;
    r = q;
  }
  *r = 42;

  printf("a = %d, b = %d, x = %d\n", a, b, x);
}

int main() {
  int gp1 = 0;
  int gp2 = 0;

  test(&gp1, &gp2);

  return 0;
}

// aux.c
int foo() { return 1; }

$ clang-5.0 aux.c gvnbug.c -o gvnbug -O3 && ./gvnbug 
a = 1, b = 1, x = 7777

This result is not allowed. If a and b are both 1, the branch q == p must have been taken, so r was set to &x (via q), so x cannot be 7777.

I think this issue has already come up in #33896, but so far there was no example showing that the bug arises independent of the incorrect inttoptr-simplification.

What is happening here (if my analysis is correct) is that GVN sees the equality q == p and uses that to replace q by p in the then-branch. Next, LLVM notices that because p is derived from y, writing to r (which will either have value &g or p in the line where the assignment happens) cannot possibly affect x, and hence the initial value of x can be propagated into the printf. GVN is wrong to perform this kind of replacement; just because the bit representations of two pointers are equal, that doesn't mean that their provenance information is equal.

Test case by Gil Hur.

[RalfJung]

This problem does not just affect clang; even safe Rust has miscompilations due to this: rust-lang/rust#45839

[llvmbot]

TL;DR Given the current state of the world and LLVM memory model, it's unclear what is okay and not.

Your claim that this result is not allowed is ... not clearly right :)

IE i'd stick with language that says "we don't want this to be right".

Nuno, et al are working on a memory model, and this isn't going to get fixed until then.

[nunoplopes]

Ralf is part of the memory model team btw.
We will share a document + patches starting late next week.

[llvmbot]

TL;DR Given the current state of the world and LLVM memory model, it's
unclear what is okay and not.

Your claim that this result is not allowed is ... not clearly right :)

IE i'd stick with language that says "we don't want this to be right".

Nuno, et al are working on a memory model, and this isn't going to get fixed
until then.

And it won't be fixed because ATM, you can show that propagating any equalities at all (pointer or not) is enough to break variants of this testcase.

Equality propagation exists all over the compiler (SimplifyInstruction does it too, as does CVP, LVI, you name it).

There are also non-obvious forms of equality propagation that would have the same effect, and be very hard to stop from happening.

You'd have to be able to stop anything from determining equivalence in general, and that's really really hard.

IE
if (pi > 48 && pi < 50)
if (yi > 48 && yi < 50)
(pi == yi inside here)

Besides the intractability of solving all of the above ATM, disabling all of it causes very significant performance loss.

[llvmbot]

Ralf is part of the memory model team btw.
We will share a document + patches starting late next week.

Oh, nice.
Great.
Then i'll stop explaining it :)

[RalfJung]

you can show that propagating any equalities at all (pointer or not) is enough to break variants of this testcase.

AFAIK these other examples rely on the inttoptr-simplification, don't they?

Equality propagation exists all over the compiler (SimplifyInstruction does it too, as does CVP, LVI, you name it).

I don't even know what half of that is, sorry -- but I get your point. :)

Your claim that this result is not allowed is ... not clearly right :)

IE i'd stick with language that says "we don't want this to be right".

Well, fair enough. Can we agree that either the compilation is wrong, or the above program should somehow trigger UB? In the latter case, that would mean that safe Rust programs can be UB, i.e., we'd need to figure out a way to statically ensure that this kind of stuff does not happen.

[llvmbot]

you can show that propagating any equalities at all (pointer or not) is enough to break variants of this testcase.

AFAIK these other examples rely on the inttoptr-simplification, don't they?

Yes, but mainly out of laziness (with on offense meant!)
We can definitely construct examples where that isn't true, i think folks have just not bothered because i think everyone agreed there is a problem once we saw the inttoptr examples.

My only concern, for example, is that i have a straightforward and sane way to know what to disallow and that it doesn't affect performance hugely.

IE All i have to do is disallow deriving equality from comparisons between two pointer values.

[llvmbot]

Hi,

I recently came across what seems to be at least a similar bug, while developing an application. I eventually managed to produce the following test case, which is miscompiling for me using llvm-8.0.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.

// gvnbug.c
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

typedef struct MyStruct {
  void* pointer1;
  void* pointer2;
} MyStruct;

MyStruct entry(const int* pointer, int index) {
  MyStruct r;
  if (pointer[index] == 0) {
    r.pointer1 = 0;
    r.pointer2 = 0;
  } else {
    r.pointer1 = (void*)0x123;
    r.pointer2 = (void*)0x456;
  }
  return r;
}

int main() {
  int* pointer = (int*) calloc(1, sizeof(int));
  int index = 0;
  while (1) {
    MyStruct et = entry(pointer, index);
    if (et.pointer1 == NULL) break;
    index++;
    if (index == pointer[0]) {
      index = 0;
    }
  }
  pointer[index] = 1;
  MyStruct r = entry(pointer, index);
  printf("%p %p\n", r.pointer1, r.pointer2);
  return 0;
}

$ clang -c -O1 -emit-llvm gvnbug.c -isysroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk -stdlib=libc++ -o - | opt -gvn | lli
0x0 0x456

The expected output is 0x123 0x456. Omitting the -gvn optimization produces the expected output. Is this the same bug?

[aqjune]

Hi Kosta,

If I understand correctly, it is more like a bug of PRE incorrectly assuming that r.pointer1 is equivalent to et.pointer1 at the first iteration of the loop.

After -O1, the bitcode looks like this:

pointer = calloc(1, 4)
et = entry(pointer, 0)
%1 = et.pointer1

if (%1 != null) { // Note that %1 is always null, so this is never taken.
  %2 = pointer[0] // always 0
  do {
    p = phi(0, %select)
    inc = p + 1
    select = (inc == %2) ? 0 : inc // always inc
    et2 = entry(pointer, select)
  } while(et2.pointer1 != null)
}

i2 = phi(0, select)
pointer[i2] = 1
r = entry(pointer, i2)
printf(.., r.pointer1, r.pointer2)

GVN-PRE replaces r.pointer1 with phi(et.pointer1, et2.pointer1), which is incorrect because pointer[i2] = 1 makes r and et different.

The incorrect replacement may have been fired due to the existence of the null comparison, but I guess it is not related with our bug (which replaces a pointer with another one with different origin).

[aqjune]

mentioned in issue llvm/llvm-bugzilla-archive#39846

[aqjune]

mentioned in issue #39717

[RalfJung]

TL;DR Given the current state of the world and LLVM memory model, it's unclear what is okay and not.

For what it's worth, while the LLVM memory model is indeed very unclear, I have not even seen a rough proposal of a sketch of a model that would allow this optimization. LLVM has a definition of "based on" for pointers that is quite clearly relevant, and the optimization in the OP can replace a pointer "based on" X by a pointer "based on" Y -- which is not equivalent, so this is not something an optimization is allowed to do. Many other questions remain open, but I think this one question we can answer with certainty: replacing one pointer value by another just because their addresses are equal is incorrect in a language like LLVM IR where "based on" for pointers is a deeply relevant notion (and not just an analysis artifact).

It'd be great if LLVM could at least offer the option for frontends to opt-out of this clearly incorrect optimization (similar to the --disable-i2p-p2i-opt flag that was added recently -- arguably this pointer replacement is worse since it will also affect code that doesn't even do any funny pointer-integer things).