[Dwarf-Discuss] Vector base types...

[John DelSignore]

I'm not sure you can consider this a "convention", but the GNU compiler seems to do the following for the Cell SPU vector types...

For example, "dt_v" is a parameter of type 4 vector floats:

 <2><233>: Abbrev Number: 12 (DW_TAG_formal_parameter)
     DW_AT_name        : dt_v	
     DW_AT_decl_file   : 1	
     DW_AT_decl_line   : 78	
     DW_AT_type        : <1bf>	
     DW_AT_location    : 2 byte block: 91 70 	(DW_OP_fbreg: -16)

The vector type is represented as an array with an upper bound of 3 with the DW_AT_GNU_vector attribute:

 <1><1bf>: Abbrev Number: 7 (DW_TAG_array_type)
     DW_AT_sibling     : <1d0>	
     DW_AT_GNU_vector  : 1	
     DW_AT_type        : <14c>	
 <2><1c9>: Abbrev Number: 8 (DW_TAG_subrange_type)
     DW_AT_type        : <ad>	
     DW_AT_upper_bound : 3	

The type of the index is unsigned long:

 <1><ad>: Abbrev Number: 2 (DW_TAG_base_type)
     DW_AT_name        : (indirect string, offset: 0x9): long unsigned int	
     DW_AT_byte_size   : 4	
     DW_AT_encoding    : 7	(unsigned)

The base type of the array is float:

 <1><14c>: Abbrev Number: 3 (DW_TAG_base_type)
     DW_AT_name        : float	
     DW_AT_byte_size   : 4	
     DW_AT_encoding    : 4	(float)

AFAICT, the only difference between the above and a "normal" array of 4 floats, is that the vector array type has the DW_AT_GNU_vector attribute.

Cheers, John D.


Relph, Richard wrote:
> Is there a convention for representing vector base types in a language?
> 
> Our language (OpenCL) has 2, 3, 4, 8, and 16 element vectors of each of
> the normal C base types and we?re currently representing them in an ad
> hoc way. We?d like to follow whatever convention exists for doing this,
> but we haven?t figured out what that is. Setting DW_AT_byte_size to the
> size of one element begs the question of how many, and setting it to the
> size of the type itself is ambiguous (unless you peek at the name? which
> we are resisting, though perhaps that ?right way?.) A char4, short2, and
> int all have 4 bytes and the same encoding.
> 
> We do have a DW_LANG value for OpenCL?
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Richard
> 
> PS. Thanks for the many replies to the question about column number usage?
>