Extend the decoder-pattern case optimization to selectors that are too
wide for a full 2^width lookup table. A decoder-pattern case (where
every case item assigns constants to a fixed set of LHSs) is lowered to
a new AstMachMasked expression. AstMachMasked is emitted as a run-time
VL_MATCHMASKEd_* function call. It contains a packed constant pool table,
'matchp', which is a list of '(mask, bits)' pairs. At runtime, the index of the
first matching entry is returned, and is used to index a value table. This single
(albeit complicated) expression can replace large if-else trees whole, resulting
in much more compact code with fewer static hard to predict branches. It
is worth about 10% speed and 30% code size in some designs.
Example:
```systemverilog
logic [39:0] sel;
always_comb
casez (sel)
40'b???????????????????????????????????????1: out = 8'h01;
40'b??????????????????????????????????????1?: out = 8'h02;
40'b?????????????????????????????????????1??: out = 8'h03;
default: out = 8'hff;
endcase
```
is compiled to:
```c++
out = TABLE_value[VL_MATCHMASKED_Q(sel, CONST_match)];
```
Where 'CONST_match' contains 4 entries, of a 40-bit mask and 40-bit bit
pattern each, and 'TABLE_value' contains 4 entries of the corresponding
8-bit results. (Entries are aligned to word boundaries to avoid runtime
bit swizzling)
Recognize "decoder" case statements (where every case item only assigns
constants to a fixed set of left-hand sides) and replace them with a
single packed constant lookup table indexed by the case expression.
Small tables are materialized inline in the generated code, and are
always optimized. Larger ones are placed in the constant pool and only
optimized if deemed beneficial over branches.
While this slightly conflicts with V3Table, and is not worth that much
on it's own, there will be a follow up patch that converts more cases of
this form which will be much more valuable. This patch does the
necessary analysis and the simple table conversion when possible.
Split -fcase into -fcase-table (this new conversion) and -fcase-tree (the
existing bitwise branch-tree conversion); -fno-case is now an alias for
both.
Default branches, assignments preceding the case (used as default values),
casez wildcards, multiple and partial left-hand sides, and both blocking and
non-blocking assignments are handled. Cases that cannot be safely tabled (e.g.
non-exhaustive with no default, overlapping writes to one variable, or mixed
blocking/non-blocking assignments) fall back to the existing if/else lowering.
Consequently disabled re-inlining of constant pool variables in V3Const,
and rebuild the constant pool hash in V3Dead (previously we didn't
create constant pool entries early enough for this to matter)
When a lot of combinational logic is driven from top level inputs,
work can be wasted evaluating that logic if the top level inputs don't
change.
This change adds an optimization by performing a change detect on the
top level inputs, and evaluate 'ico' logic only if the top level input
actually changed. This especially helps with --hierarchical/--lib-create
which runs the 'ico' of each sub-model in the eval settle loop.
This was observed to yield 40%+ run-time speedup on some partitioned
designs.
The added change detection is cheap, so it is emitted even if the 'ico'
region is small, and is on by default.
The optimization is only sound if the model itself does not write to the
top level inputs (otherwise the 'previous value' variables would be out
of sync, which are not updated by internal writes.). If we can detect a
top level input is written within the design, then for that input, we
fall back on always running the relevant logic. With --vpi we cannot
prove safety statically, so --vpi will disable this optimisation unless
explicitly enabled. (In which case it's the user's responsibility to not
write to top level inputs via the VPI.)
As per discussion. Remove the unsound V3SplitAs pass. The
isolate_assignments attribute/directive is now parsed and ignored in the
frontend for compatibility but otherwise have no effect.
Fixes#7144
Marco Bartoli
Artur Bieniek
Bartosz Skorowski
Philip Axer
Yilou Wang
Nick Brereton
Geza Lore
Wilson Snyder
Adam Kostrzewski
Matthew Ballance
Krzysztof Bieganski
Jakub Michalski
em2machine
github action
Yogish Sekhar
Bartłomiej Chmiel
Nikolai Kumar
Ryszard Rozak
Todd Strader
Leela Pakanati
Christian Hecken