[RFC] Add result accuracy to transcendental unary ops

rfcs/20241015-result-accuracy.md

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+# [RFC] Add result accuracy to transcendental unary ops
+
+Status: In Review<br/>
+Initial version: 10/15/2024<br/>
+Last updated: 10/15/2024<br/>
+Discussion thread:
+
+## Overview
+
+This RFC proposes adding a new attribute `result_accuracy` to the following
+transcendental unary ops: `exp`, `expm1`, `log`, `logp1`, `logistic` and `tanh`.
+`result_accuracy` allows the user to choose the implementation of these ops
+based on the accuracy they request. The choice of implementation is restricted
+to F32 inputs.
+
+## Background
+
+Transcendental ops can have multiple implementations on a processing unit that
+vary in accuracy and performance. By allowing users to select implementation
+based on accuracy per op, we can offer more tools to weigh tradeoffs between
+accuracy and performance and also ensure more consistent numerical behaviors
+across different devices.
+
+### Caveats on targets
+
+The proposed result_accuracy attribute can only be supported for targets that
+have multiple implementations of the ops. For example, for XLA-CPU, the
+implementations of these ops are dependent on LLVM and each target may have a
+different implementation with a different level of accuracy. Thus, further
+analysis needs to be done to support this feature on CPUs. This analysis could
+be performed while building the compiler, assuming the compiler will only be
+used on a single type of CPU.
+
+## Proposed Specification
+
+### `result_accuracy`
+
+The users can specify the worst case numerical error they can tolerate in terms
+of absolute, relative and ULP (unit in last place) errors. If they don't care
+about the numerical accuracy, they can also choose the implementation using
+`mode`. We propose a new attribute `result_accuracy`. `result_accuracy` can be
+any combination of the following numerical tolerances `atol`, `rtol`, `ulps` or
+an enum of `HIGHEST`, `DEFAULT` or `TOLERANCE`. `TOLERANCE` enum is a default
+placeholder value for `mode` when the numerical tolerances are used. When using
+the numerical tolerances, at least one of atol, rtol or ulps should be
+specified. `HIGHEST` will give the most accurate implementation of the op
+and `DEFAULT` will give the fastest implementation with less accuracy.
+
+Name | Type | Constraints
+------ | --------------------- | ---------------------------------
+`atol` | APFloat::IEEEdouble() | `atol >= 0`
+`rtol` | APFloat::IEEEdouble() | `rtol >= 0`
+`ulp` | int64_t | `ulp >= 0`
+`mode` | EnumAttr | `HIGHEST`, `DEFAULT`, `TOLERANCE`
+
+```text
+New Attribute:
+ #stablehlo.result_accuracy<atol, rtol, ulps, mode=ResultAccuracyModeAttr>
+
+New Enum:
+ ResultAccuracyModeAttr ::= DEFAULT, HIGHEST, TOLERANCE
+```
+
+The default values are set as follows:
+
+```text
+#stablehlo.result_accuracy<atol, rtol, ulps, mode=EnumAttr>
+
+Case1: I want DEFAULT
+#stablehlo.result_accuracy<atol=0, rtol=0, ulps=0, mode=DEFAULT>
+
+Case2: I want HIGHEST
+#stablehlo.result_accuracy<atol=0, rtol=0, ulps=0, mode=HIGHEST>
+
+Case3: I want numerical tolerance X
+#stablehlo.result_accuracy<atol=X, rtol=X, ulps=X, mode=TOLERANCE>
+
+(C1) if mode != TOLERANCE: atol = rtol = ulps = 0
+```
+
+The numerical tolerances will be compared against the compiler errors according
+to the following inequality:
+
+`abs(expected(x)-actual(x)) <= max(abs(expected(x))*max(rtol, ulps*epsilon),
+atol)` for all x, where `epsilon` is the machine epsilon.
+
+The inequality will be checked against the errors of each implementation and the
+one that can satisfy the constraint will be returned. If multiple
+implementations satisfy the inequality, the faster implementation will be used.
+If none of the implementations can meet the requested tolerance, the compiler
+will return an error.
+
+### Unary Ops
+
+The supported ops listed above will be enhanced to support this field. The
+result accuracy can appear on IR as follows:
+
+```text
+stablehlo.exp %arg0, result_accuracy = <ulps = 1> : ...
+stablehlo.tanh %arg0, result_accuracy = <mode HIGHEST> : ...
+stablehlo.logistic %arg0, result_accuracy = <atol=1e-4, rtol=1e-6 > : ...
+```