Raise user error if device-loop is empty after DCE

helion/_compiler/generate_ast.py

@@ -325,6 +325,8 @@ def visit_For(self, node: ast.For) -> ast.AST | None:
                     if persistent_body is not None:
                         self.device_function.body = persistent_body  # pyright: ignore[reportAttributeAccessIssue]
                 self.device_function.dead_code_elimination()
+                if not self.device_function.preamble and not self.device_function.body:
+                    raise exc.EmptyDeviceLoopAfterDCE
                 return self.device_function.codegen_function_call()
             return None
         return self.generic_visit(node)

helion/exc.py

@@ -479,3 +479,10 @@ class NestedKernelCallsNotSupported(BaseError):
         "If you need to share code between kernels, consider extracting the shared logic "
         "into a regular Python function that can be called from within both kernels."
     )
+
+
+class EmptyDeviceLoopAfterDCE(BaseError):
+    message = (
+        "Device loop is empty after dead-code elimination. "
+        "The kernel contains no operations that affect the output."
+    )

test/test_errors.py

@@ -543,6 +543,22 @@ def kernel_with_dot_mismatch(
         ):
             code_and_output(kernel_with_dot_mismatch, (q, k))
 
+    def test_empty_device_loop_after_dce(self):
+        @helion.kernel()
+        def empty_kernel(x: torch.Tensor) -> torch.Tensor:
+            # All computation is dead code
+            output = torch.zeros_like(x)
+            for _tile in hl.tile(x.size(0)):
+                # Do nothing that affects the output
+                _a = 1
+            return output
+
+        with self.assertRaisesRegex(
+            helion.exc.EmptyDeviceLoopAfterDCE,
+            r"Device loop is empty after dead-code elimination",
+        ):
+            code_and_output(empty_kernel, (torch.randn(4, 4, device=DEVICE),))
+
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     unittest.main()