On Fri, 26 Sep 2025 14:02:35 GMT, Marc Chevalier <[email protected]> wrote:

> ## Act I: dead loops
> 
> [JDK-8336003: [lworld] TestLWorld::test151 triggers "Should have been 
> buffered" assert](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8336003), allows to 
> replace a Phi node by a single input recursively through phis. This change 
> was only added to Valhalla. In mainline, a Phi can be simplified to its 
> single direct input, not through other phis. The valhalla version will work 
> on loops, while the mainline version will reduce all the phis into a single 
> input only if the blob of Phis is acyclic.
> 
> When a loop is dead, it is possible that the said single input is also an 
> output of the phi. After applying the identity, the phi's unique input 
> becomes its own output (or input). For most nodes, that is not allowed. This 
> is probably relatively harmless as the whole code around is dead and will be 
> removed, but it makes some verification fail. It is also possible that some 
> other idealization are not protected against data loops without phis on the 
> way, and would not terminate. It is interesting to notice that applying 
> [JDK-8336003](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8336003) to mainline is 
> enough to reproduce the bug there too.
> 
> We could detect when it's about to happen, and handle the situation 
> differently if we are about to create a very small loop that would be caught 
> by the dead loop detection. It would be possible to make big dead data loop. 
> How annoying that is? Immediately, there is the non-termination problem 
> mentioned above. But also, maybe some nodes can be optimized away by IGVN and 
> end up with a small loop and then the assert would strike again. Is the dead 
> loop check too weak then? It depends what we think is the purpose of this 
> check. During IGVN, we cannot clean up eagerly every dead loop since it would 
> be too expensive to traverse everything. Avoiding dead data loop would also 
> need a lot of traversal. My understanding is that it's rather a sanity check, 
> to make sure that one doesn't mess up the graph surgery and create dead loops 
> accidentally, when something else was meant, and detecting as soon as 
> possible is helpful. So I'm not sure it's worth strengthening the check.
> 
> A way to avoid the creation of dead data loop is to simply limit the 
> simplification allowed by 
> [JDK-8336003](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8336003) to constant nodes: 
> since they don't have input, they can't make a cycle! And it seems enough for 
> the bug initially reported.
> 
> Yet, that makes `test151` in `compiler/valhalla/inlinetypes/TestLWorld.java` 
> fail in another way:...

This pull request has now been integrated.

Changeset: 2abd3a90
Author:    Marc Chevalier <[email protected]>
Committer: Tobias Hartmann <[email protected]>
URL:       
https://git.openjdk.org/valhalla/commit/2abd3a90185e5ec06f3cb12b92d9d0452681673e
Stats:     27 lines in 4 files changed: 15 ins; 0 del; 12 mod

8367242: [lworld] C2 compilation asserts with "dead loop detected"

Reviewed-by: thartmann

-------------

PR: https://git.openjdk.org/valhalla/pull/1640

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