[DirectX][docs] Expand DXILArchitecture documentation

[llvm-beanz]

This just seeks to give a high level overview of the current state of the DirectX backend. It doesn't go in too deep, but should be a starting point for further documentation.

[llvmbot]

@llvm/pr-subscribers-backend-directx

Author: Chris B (llvm-beanz)

Changes

This just seeks to give a high level overview of the current state of the DirectX backend. It doesn't go in too deep, but should be a starting point for further documentation.

---

Full diff: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/84077.diff

1 Files Affected:

• (modified) llvm/docs/DirectX/DXILArchitecture.rst (+46)

diff --git a/llvm/docs/DirectX/DXILArchitecture.rst b/llvm/docs/DirectX/DXILArchitecture.rst
index f47db5413631c5..32eee08f805bae 100644
--- a/llvm/docs/DirectX/DXILArchitecture.rst
+++ b/llvm/docs/DirectX/DXILArchitecture.rst
@@ -89,6 +89,52 @@ leverage LLVM's current bitcode libraries to do a lot of the work, but
 it's possible that at some point in the future it will need to be
 completely separate as modern LLVM bitcode evolves.
 
+DirectX Backend Flow
+--------------------
+
+The code generation flow for DXIL is broken into a series of passes. The passes
+are grouped into two flows:
+
+#. Generating DXIL IR.
+#. Generating DXIL Binary.
+
+The passes to generate DXIL IR follow the flow:
+
+DXILOpLowering -> DXILPrepare -> DXILTranslateMetadata
+
+Each of these passes has a defined responsibility:
+
+#. DXILOpLowering translates LLVM intrinsic calls to dx.op calls.
+#. DXILPrepare transforms the DXIL IR to be compatible with LLVM 3.7, and
+   inserts bitcasts to allow typed pointers to be inserted.
+#. DXILTranslateMetadata emits the DXIL Metadata structures.
+
+The passes to encode DXIL to binary in the DX Container follow the flow:
+
+DXILEmbedder -> DXContainerGlobals -> AsmPrinter
+
+These passes have defined responsibilities:
+
+#. DXILEmbedder runs the DXIL bitcode writer to generate a bitcode stream and
+   embeds the binary data inside a global in the original module.
+#. DXContainerGlobals generates binary data globals for the other DX Container
+   parts based on computed analysis passes.
+#. AsmPrinter is the standard LLVM infrastructure for emitting object files.
+
+When emitting DXIL into a DX Container file the MC layer is used in a similar
+way to how the Clang ``-fembed-bitcode`` option operates. The DX Container
+object writer knows how to construct the headers and structural fields of the
+container, and reads global variables from the module to fill in the remaining
+part data.
+
+DirectX Container
+-----------------
+
+The DirectX container format is treated in LLVM as an object file format.
+Reading is implemented between the BinaryFormat and Object libraries, and
+writing is implemented in the MC layer. Additional testing and inspection
+support are implemented in the ObjectYAML library and tools.
+
 Testing
 =======
 

[bogner]

Looks good, thanks

[bogner]

This probably renders more readably if you indent it (it'll treat it as a block quote that way, rather than a paragraph)

[coopp]

Looks good to me. Also good to know where these docs are located in the llvm/docs/DirectX location too.