Golang cmd/compile: memcombine should learn allignement of byte slices - easy mode - types

Go version

go version devel go1.25-b38415d7e9 Sat Feb 15 21:47:27 2025 -0800 linux/amd64

Output of `go env` in your module/workspace:

AR='ar'
CC='gcc'
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_ENABLED='0'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CXX='g++'
GCCGO='gccgo'
GO111MODULE=''
GOARCH='riscv64'
GOAUTH='netrc'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/tmp/go-build'
GOCACHEPROG=''
GODEBUG=''
GOENV='/home/hugo/.config/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFIPS140='off'
GOFLAGS=''
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -ffile-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build3509629757=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches'
GOHOSTARCH='amd64'
GOHOSTOS='linux'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMOD='/dev/null'
GOMODCACHE='/home/hugo/go/pkg/mod'
GONOPROXY=''
GONOSUMDB=''
GOOS='linux'
GOPATH='/home/hugo/go'
GOPRIVATE=''
GOPROXY='https://proxy.golang.org,direct'
GORISCV64='rva20u64'
GOROOT='/home/hugo/k/go'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTELEMETRY='local'
GOTELEMETRYDIR='/home/hugo/.config/go/telemetry'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='local'
GOTOOLDIR='/home/hugo/k/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='devel go1.25-b38415d7e9 Sat Feb 15 21:47:27 2025 -0800'
GOWORK=''
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'

What did you do?

See this piece of code:

package a

import "encoding/binary"

type S struct {
        v uint64
        arr [8]byte
}

func f(s *S) uint64 {
        return binary.LittleEndian.Uint64(s.arr[:])
}

What did you see happen?

This code compiles to a a series of 8bits memory loads then shift them left and finally bitwise or them together.

What did you expect to see?

A single 64 bits memory load.

Comment From: Jorropo

This came up while I was reviewing some library I was considering using in my project and found this cursed (invalid) use of unsafe: https://github.com/xtaci/kcp-go/blob/5c80bedd4bd984dd71fb8c8669d91397235aec90/crypt.go#L297-L319

To fix all real world usecases it would be nice to have something like _ structs.Allign8 zero sized type to save 8 bytes over _ uint64 but that an other unrelated proposal.

Comment From: gabyhelp

Related Issues

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Comment From: magical

Your snippet compiles down to a single `MOVQ' on amd64 but not riscv64. It looks to me like the memcombine pass is not enabled on riscv64 for some reason.

I don't see why alignment would matter - the RISC-V spec explicitly allows unaligned loads.

Comment From: randall77

I don't see why alignment would matter - the RISC-V spec explicitly allows unaligned loads.

It does, but it allows them to be implemented by taking a fault and simulating them in the OS. That would be very slow.

Comment From: Jorropo

The exact relevant lines of code are: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/81c66e71d480ae2372b7eea4bcdf600b50fdd5e1/src/cmd/compile/internal/ssa/config.go#L187 https://github.com/golang/go/blob/81c66e71d480ae2372b7eea4bcdf600b50fdd5e1/src/cmd/compile/internal/ssa/memcombine.go#L19-L23 Which is not enabled for riscv64: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/81c66e71d480ae2372b7eea4bcdf600b50fdd5e1/src/cmd/compile/internal/ssa/config.go#L324-L337

There is Zicclsm for GORISCV64=rva22u64 and later. which require the CPU to support unaligned loads and stores, however it usually is still extremely slow.

Since linux v6.11 we can use the hwprobe api to check for load and store support using RISCV_HWPROBE_KEY_MISALIGNED_PERF. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c42e2f076769c9c1bc5f3f0aa1c2032558e76647 Which can be SLOW, FAST and EMULATED, however there is no RISCV64 profile which yet require fast misaligned memory operations so we would need to extend GORISCV64 with ,fast-misaligned or something.

What I'm saying right now is that there are enough arm and riscv64 cores out there which will always be slow that people get around the compiler not being that smart by using unsafe in a liberal manner. If memcombine could figure out some loads and stores are aligned it would merge them even with unalignedOK == false and help theses chips.

Comment From: oliverbestmann