Updates

Author: cshung

ReadyToInterpret.md

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+# Investigation on making interpreter work with ReadyToRun
+
+## Status
+
+This document is preliminary - it only covers the most basic case - it doesn't even cover very often used case (i.e. virtual method calls).
+
+I am doing a Hackathon overnight trying to get something working, not designing something for the long term, yet.
+
+## Goals
+
+- Figure out how relevant parts of ready to run works.
+- Figure out how to hack it so that we can get into the CoreCLR interpreter.
+
+## Non Goals
+
+- Deliver a working prototype (I just don't have the time - and the CoreCLR interpreter is not the right target)
+- Come up with an optimal design (Same, I just don't have the time)
+
+## High-level observations
+
+We already have a mechanism to call an arbitrary managed method from the native runtime - this mechanism can be used to call ReadyToRun compiled method. So in general, interpreter -> ReadyToRun is not an issue.
+
+The key challenge is to get ReadyToRun code to call into the interpreter.
+
+## Understanding what happened when we are about to make an outgoing call from ReadyToRun
+
+When ReadyToRun code makes a call to a static function, it
+
+- push the arguments on the register/stack as per the calling convention
+- call into a redirection cell
+- get into the runtime.
+
+Inside the runtime, I will eventually get to `ExternalMethodFixupWorker` defined in `prestub.cpp`.
+
+At this point, I have
+- transitionBlock - no idea what it is
+- pIndirection - the address for storing the callee address
+- sectionIndex - a number, pushed by the thunk, and
+- pModule - a pointer to the module containing the call instruction
+
+Since the call comes from a ReadyToRun image, `pModule` must have a ready to run image
+
+We can easily calculate the RVA of the `pIndirection`
+
+If the call provided the `sectionIndex`, we will just use it, otherwise we can still calculate the section index based on the RVA.
+
+The calculation is simply by sequentially scanning the import sections, each section is self describing its address range so we can check
+
+The import section has an array signature - using the rva - beginning rva of the section. we can index into the signature array to find the signature.
+
+The signature is then parsed to become a `MethodDesc` - where the method preparation continues as usual
+
+Last but not least, eventually, the `pIndirection` will be patched with that entry point, and the call proceed by using the arguments already on the stack/restored registers.
+
+## How the potential hack looks like
+
+We keep everything the same up to the method preparation part.
+
+We knew it is possible to produce an `InterpreterMethodInfo` given a `MethodDesc` when the system is ready to JIT, so we should be able to produce the `InterpreterMethodInfo` there.
+
+The arguments are already on the registers, but we can't dynamically generate the `InterpreterStub`, the only reasonable thing is to pre-generate the stubs in the ReadyToRun image itself.
+
+> A stub per signature is necessary because each signature need a different way to populate the arguments (and the interpreter method info). On the other hand, a stub per signature is sufficient because if we knew how to prepare the register to begin with, we must know exactly what steps are needed to put them into a format the `InterpretMethodBody` likes. As people points out, this is going to be a large volume, this is by no means optimal.
+
+The stub generation code can 'mostly' be exactly the same as `GenerateInterpreterStub` with two twists:
+
+- We need to use indirection to get to the `InterpreterMethodInfo` object. That involves having a slot that the `InterpreterMethodInfo` construction process need to patch.
+- What if the call signature involves unknown struct size (e.g. a method in A.dll take a struct in B.dll where B.dll is considered not in the same version bubble)
+
+Next, we need the data structure that get us to the address of the stub as well as the address of the cell storing the `InterpreterMethodInfo`. What we have is `pIndirection` and therefore `MethodDesc`.
+
+To do that, we might want to mimic how the runtime locate ReadyToRun code.
+
+Here is a stack of how the ready to run code discovery look like:
+
+```
+coreclr!ReadyToRunInfo::GetEntryPoint+0x238 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\readytoruninfo.cpp @ 1148]
+coreclr!MethodDesc::GetPrecompiledR2RCode+0x24e [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 507]
+coreclr!MethodDesc::GetPrecompiledCode+0x30 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 443]
+coreclr!MethodDesc::PrepareILBasedCode+0x5e6 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 412]
+coreclr!MethodDesc::PrepareCode+0x20f [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 319]
+coreclr!CodeVersionManager::PublishVersionableCodeIfNecessary+0x5a1 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\codeversion.cpp @ 1739]
+coreclr!MethodDesc::DoPrestub+0x72d [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 2869]
+coreclr!PreStubWorker+0x46d [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\prestub.cpp @ 2698]
+coreclr!ThePreStub+0x55 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\amd64\ThePreStubAMD64.asm @ 21]
+coreclr!CallDescrWorkerInternal+0x83 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\amd64\CallDescrWorkerAMD64.asm @ 74]
+coreclr!CallDescrWorkerWithHandler+0x12b [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\callhelpers.cpp @ 66]
+coreclr!MethodDescCallSite::CallTargetWorker+0xb79 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\callhelpers.cpp @ 595]
+coreclr!MethodDescCallSite::Call+0x24 [C:\dev\runtime\src\coreclr\vm\callhelpers.h @ 465]
+```
+
+The interesting part, of course, is how `GetEntryPoint` works. Turn out it is just a `NativeHashtable` lookup given a `VersionResilientMethodHashCode`, so we should be able to encode the same hash table for the stubs as well.
+
+Note that `GetEntryPoint` has the fixup concept, maybe we can use the same concept to patch the slot for `InterpreterMethodInfo`.
+
+## How to implement the potential hack
+
+From the compiler side:
+
+### When do we need to generate the stubs?
+When the ReadyToRun compiler generate a call, the JIT will call back into crossgen2 to create a slot for it. At that point, we should know what we need to make sure a stub is available for it by working with the dependency tracking engine.
+
+### Actually generate the stubs
+
+To stub generation should mostly work the same as in `GenerateInterpreterStub` today with a couple twists
+- We don't need to generate the `InterpreterMethodInfo`, that work is left until runtime.
+- If the stub involve types with unknown size, we need to generate the right stub code for it (e.g. A.dll call a function that involves a struct defined in `B.dll` where they are not in the same version bubble)
+- The stub needs an instance of `InterpreterMethodInfo`, it cannot be hardcoded, the pointer of it must be read from somewhere else.
+- Whenever we generate the stub, we need to store it somewhere so that we can follow the logic as in `MethodEntryPointTableNode`
+
+From the runtime side:
+
+### Locating the stub
+- When we reach `ExternalMethodFixupWorker`, we need to use the table to get back to the generated stubs
+
+### Preparing the data
+- We need to create the `InterpreterMethodInfo` and make sure the stub code will be able to read it.
+
+## Alternative designs
+Following the thought on the earlier prototype for tagged pointers, we could envision a solution that ditch all those stubs, e.g.
+
+1. Changing the call convention for every method so that it is the same as what the interpreter method likes.
+
+    Pros:
+    - Consistency, easily to understand
+    - No need for stubs, efficient for interpreter calls
+
+    Cons:
+    - Lots of work to have a different calling convention
+    - Inefficient for non interpreter calls
+
+2. Changing the call site so that it detects tagged pointers and call differently
+
+    Pros:
+    - Similar with what we have in the tagged pointer prototype
+    - No need for stubs, efficient for interpreter calls
+
+    Cons:
+    - Every call involves dual call code
+
+3. The approach described in this document (i.e. using stubs)
+
+    Pros:
+    - Probably cheapest to implement
+
+    Cons:
+    - Lots of stubs
+    - Inefficient for interpreter call (involve stack rewriting)
+    - Unclear how it could work with virtual or interface calls
+
+I haven't put more thoughts into these alternative solutions, but I am aware they exists.