SystemC variables are fairly special (they can only be assigned to/from,
but not otherwise participate in expressions), which complicates some
DFG code. These variables only ever appear as port on the top level
wrapper, so excluding them from DFG does not make us loose any
optimizations, but simplifies internals.
Previously DFG was limited to having a Sel, or an ArraySel potentially
under a Concat on the LHS of combinational assignments. Other forms or
combinations were not representable in the graph.
This adds support for arbitrary combinations of the above by
combining DfgSplicePacked and DfgSpliceArray vertices introduced in
#6176. In particular, Sel(ArraySel(VarRef,_),_) enables a lot more code
to be represented in DFG.
This is mostly a refactoring, but also enables handling some more
UNOPTFLAT, when the variable is only partially assigned in the cycle.
Previously the way partial assignments to variables were handled were
through the DfgVerexVar types themselves, which kept track of all
drivers. This has been replaced by DfgVertexSplice (which always drives
a DfgVeretexVar), and all DfgVertexVar now only have a single source,
either a DfgVertexSplice, if partially assigned, or an arbitrary
DfgVertex when updated as a whole.
This functionality used to be distributed in the removeVars pass and the
final dfgToAst conversion. Instead added a new 'regularize' pass to
convert DFGs into forms that can be trivially converted back to Ast, and
a new 'eliminateVars' pass to remove/repalce redundant variables. This
simplifies dfgToAst significantly and makes the code a bit easier to
follow.
The new 'regularize' pass will ensure that every sub-expression with
multiple uses is assigned to a temporary (unless it's a trivial memory
reference or constant), and will also eliminate or replace redundant
variables. Overall it is a performance neutral change but it does
enable some later improvements which required the graph to be in this
form, and this also happens to be the form required for the dfgToAst
conversion.
Geza Lore
Wilson Snyder