AddressSpace

public struct AddressSpace : Equatable

An address space is an identifier for a target-specific range of address values. An address space is a fundamental part of the type of a pointer value and the type of operations that manipulate memory.

LLVM affords a default address space (numbered zero) and places a number of assumptions on pointer values within that address space:

• The pointer must have a fixed integral value
• The null pointer has a bit-value of 0

These assumptions are not guaranteed to hold in any other address space. In particular, a target may allow pointers in non-default address spaces to have non-integral types. Non-integral pointer types represent pointers that have an unspecified bitwise representation; that is, the integral representation may be target dependent or have an unstable value. Further, outside of the default address space, it is not always the case that the null pointer value, especially as returned by IRType.constPointerNull() has a bit value of 0. e.g. A non-default address space may use an offset-based or segment-based addressing mode in which 0 is a valid, addressable pointer value.

Target-Level Address Space Overrides

A target may choose to override the default address space for code, data, and local allocations through the data layout string. This has multiple uses. For example, the address space of an alloca is only configurable via the data layout string, because it is a target-dependent property. There are also use-cases for overriding language standards e.g. the C standard requires the address-of operator applied to values on the stack to result in a pointer in the default address space. However, many OpenCL-based targets consider the stack to be a private region, and place such pointers in a non-default address space.

Care must be taken when interacting with these non-standard targets. The IR printer currently does not print anything when the default address space is attached to an instruction or value, and values will still report being assigned to that space. However, these values are still subject to the backend’s interpretation of the data layout string overrides and as such may not always reside in the default address space when it comes time to codegen them.

Restrictions

There are currently a number of artificial restrictions on values and operations that have non-default address spaces:

• A bitcast between two pointer values residing in different address spaces, even if those two values have the same size, is always an illegal operation. Use an addrspacecast instead or always use IRBuilder.buildPointerCast(of:to:name:) to get the correct operation.
• The so-called “null pointer” has a bit value that may differ from address space to address space. This exposes bugs in optimizer passes and lowerings that did not consider this possibility.
• A pointer value may not necessarily “round-trip” when converted between address spaces, even if annotated nonnull and dereferenceable. This is especially true of non-integral pointer types.
• Though the zero address space is the default, many backends and some errant passes interpret this to mean a “lack of address space” and may miscompile code with pointers in mixed address spaces.
• A number of intriniscs that operate on memory currently do not support a non-default address space.
• The address space is ultimately an integer value and in theory an address space identifier may take on any value. In practice, LLVM guarantees only 24 bits of precision, though higher address space identifiers may succeed in being properly represented.