LLVM {{env.config.release}} Release Notes

```{warning} These are in-progress notes for the upcoming LLVM {{env.config.release}}
             release. Release notes for previous releases can be found on
             [the Download Page](https://releases.llvm.org/download.html).
```

Introduction
This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, release {{env.config.release}}.  Here we describe the status of LLVM, including major improvements from the previous release, improvements in various subprojects of LLVM, and some of the current users of the code.  All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the LLVM releases web site.
For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest release, please check out the main LLVM web site.  If you have questions or comments, the Discourse forums is a good place to ask them.
Note that if you are reading this file from a Git checkout or the main LLVM web page, this document applies to the next release, not the current one.  To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the releases page.
Non-comprehensive list of changes in this release
  • ...
Changes to the LLVM IR
  • The ptrtoaddr instruction was introduced. This instruction returns the address component of a pointer type variable but unlike ptrtoint does not capture provenance (#125687).
  • The alignment argument of the @llvm.masked.load, @llvm.masked.store, @llvm.masked.gather and @llvm.masked.scatter intrinsics has been removed. Instead, the align attribute should be placed on the pointer (or vector of pointers) argument.
  • A load atomic may now be used with vector types on x86.
  • Added @llvm.reloc.none intrinsic to emit null relocations to symbols. This emits an undefined symbol reference without adding any dedicated code or data to to bear the relocation.
  • Added modular-format attribute to dynamically pull in aspects of libc format string function implementations from statically-linked libc's based on the requirements of each call. Currently only float is supported; this can keep floating point support out of printf if it can be proven unused.
Changes to LLVM infrastructure
Changes to building LLVM
Changes to TableGen
Changes to Interprocedural Optimizations
  • Added -enable-machine-outliner={optimistic-pgo,conservative-pgo} to read profile data to guide the machine outliner (#154437).
Changes to Vectorizers
  • Added initial support for copyable elements in SLP, which models copyable elements as add , 0, i.e. uses identity constants for missing lanes.
  • SLP vectorizer supports initial recognition of FMA/FMAD pattern
Changes to the AArch64 Backend
  • Assembler/disassembler support has been added for Armv9.7-A (2025) architecture extensions.
Changes to the AMDGPU Backend
Changes to the ARM Backend
Changes to the AVR Backend
Changes to the DirectX Backend
Changes to the Hexagon Backend
Changes to the LoongArch Backend
Changes to the MIPS Backend
Changes to the PowerPC Backend
Changes to the RISC-V Backend
  • The loop vectorizer now performs tail folding by default on RISC-V, which removes the need for a scalar epilogue loop. To restore the previous behaviour use -prefer-predicate-over-epilogue=scalar-epilogue.
  • llvm-objdump now has basic support for switching between disassembling code and data using mapping symbols such as $x and $d. Switching architectures using $x with an architecture string suffix is not yet supported.
  • Ssctr and Smctr extensions are no longer experimental.
  • Add support for Zvfbfa (Additional BF16 vector compute support)
  • Adds experimental support for the 'Zibi` (Branch with Immediate) extension.
  • Add support for Zvfofp8min (OFP8 conversion extension)
  • Adds assembler support for the Andes XAndesvsinth (Andes Vector Small Int Handling Extension).
Changes to the WebAssembly Backend
Changes to the Windows Target
  • -fpseudo-probe-for-profiling is now supported for COFF.
Changes to the X86 Backend
  • -mcpu=wildcatlake is now supported.
  • -mcpu=novalake is now supported.
Changes to the OCaml bindings
Changes to the Python bindings
Changes to the C API
  • Add LLVMGetOrInsertFunction to get or insert a function, replacing the combination of LLVMGetNamedFunction and LLVMAddFunction.
  • Allow LLVMGetVolatile to work with any kind of Instruction.
Changes to the CodeGen infrastructure
Changes to the Metadata Info
Changes to the Debug Info
Changes to the LLVM tools
  • llvm-profgen now supports decoding pseudo probe for COFF binaries.
  • llvm-readelf now dumps all hex format values in lower-case mode.
  • Some code paths for supporting Python 2.7 in llvm-lit have been removed.
  • Support for %T in lit has been removed.
  • Add --save-stats option to llc to save LLVM statistics to a file. Compatible with the Clang option.
  • llvm-config gained a new flag --quote-paths which quotes and escapes paths emitted on stdout, to account for spaces or other special characters in path. (#97305 <https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/97305>_).
Changes to LLDB
  • LLDB can now set breakpoints, show backtraces, and display variables when debugging Wasm with supported runtimes (WAMR and V8).
  • LLDB no longer stops processes by default when receiving SIGWINCH signals (window resize events) on Linux. This is the default on other Unix platforms. You can re-enable it using process handle --notify=true --stop=true SIGWINCH.
  • The show-progress setting, which became a NOOP with the introduction of the statusline, now defaults to off and controls using OSC escape codes to show a native progress bar in supporting terminals like Ghostty and ConEmu.
  • The default PDB reader on Windows was changed from DIA to native, which uses LLVM's PDB and CodeView support. You can switch back to the DIA reader with settings set plugin.symbol-file.pdb.reader dia. Note that support for the DIA reader will be removed in a future version of LLDB.
Changes to BOLT
Changes to Sanitizers
Other Changes
  • Introduces the AllocToken pass, an instrumentation pass providing tokens to memory allocators enabling various heap organization strategies, such as heap partitioning.
External Open Source Projects Using LLVM {{env.config.release}}
  • A project...
Additional Information
A wide variety of additional information is available on the LLVM web page, in particular in the documentation section.  The web page also contains versions of the API documentation which is up-to-date with the Git version of the source code.  You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going into the llvm/docs/ directory in the LLVM tree.
If you have any questions or comments about LLVM, please feel free to contact us via the Discourse forums.