Why doesn't the loop vectorize after certain number of elements? - c

I have made a matrix-vector multiplication function which is nicely auto-vectorized, when array is under 16x16 size, compiling with GCC 11.2 results in vectorized code:
#define no_el 16
void mv_mul(float arr[no_el][no_el],float a1[no_el],float a2[no_el])
{
for(int i=0;i<no_el;i++)
{
a2[i]=0;
for(int j=0;j<no_el;j++)
{
a2[i]+=arr[i][j]*a1[j];
}
}
}
However, when I increase number of elements to 24, 32, etc. the compiler gives these warnings:
Output of x86-64 gcc 11.2 (Compiler #1)
<source>:7:18: missed: couldn't vectorize loop
<source>:12:11: missed: not vectorized: complicated access pattern.
<source>:10:18: missed: couldn't vectorize loop
<source>:12:11: missed: not vectorized: complicated access pattern.
<source>:5:7: note: vectorized 0 loops in function.
<source>:15:1: note: ***** Analysis failed with vector mode V8SF
<source>:15:1: note: ***** Skipping vector mode V32QI, which would repeat the analysis for V8SF
And the code is not vectorized.
Is there anything that can be done ?

As tstanisl commented, adding restrict keyword solved the issue.

Related

How to use AVX instructions to optimize ReLU written in C

I have the following simplified ReLU simulation code that I am trying to optimize. The code uses a ternary operation which is perhaps coming in the way of automatic vectorization by the compiler. How can I vectorize this code?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <mkl.h>
void relu(double* &Amem, double* Z_curr, int bo)
{
for (int i=0; i<bo; ++i) {
Amem[i] = Z_curr[i] > 0 ? Z_curr[i] : Z_curr[i]*0.1;
}
}
int main()
{
int i, j;
int batch_size = 16384;
int output_dim = 21;
// double* Amem = new double[batch_size*output_dim];
// double* Z_curr = new double[batch_size*output_dim];
double* Amem = (double *)mkl_malloc(batch_size*output_dim*sizeof( double ), 64 );
double* Z_curr = (double *)mkl_malloc(batch_size*output_dim*sizeof( double ), 64 );
memset(Amem, 0, sizeof(double)*batch_size*output_dim);
for (i=0; i<batch_size*output_dim; ++i) {
Z_curr[i] = -1+2*((double)rand())/RAND_MAX;
}
relu(Amem, Z_curr, batch_size*output_dim);
}
To compile it, if you have MKL then use the following, otherwise plain g++ -O3.
g++ -O3 ex.cxx -L${MKLROOT}/lib/intel64 -lmkl_intel_ilp64 -lmkl_intel_thread -lmkl_core -liomp5
So far, I have tried adding -march=skylake-avx512 as a compiler option, but it does not vectorize the loop as I found using option -fopt-info-vec-all for compilation:
ex.cxx:9:16: missed: couldn't vectorize loop
ex.cxx:9:16: missed: not vectorized: control flow in loop.
ex.cxx:6:6: note: vectorized 0 loops in function.
ex.cxx:9:16: missed: couldn't vectorize loop
ex.cxx:9:16: missed: not vectorized: control flow in loop.
and this is the time it takes currently at my end:
time ./a.out
real 0m0.034s
user 0m0.026s
sys 0m0.009s
There is usually no benefit to pass a pointer by reference (unless you want to modify the pointer itself). Furthermore, you can help your compiler using the (non-standard) __restrict keyword, telling it that no aliasing happens between input and output (of course, this will likely give wrong results, if e.g., Amem == Z_curr+1 -- but Amem == Z_curr should (in this case) be fine).
void relu(double* __restrict Amem, double* Z_curr, int bo)
Using that alone, clang actually is capable of vectorizing your loop using vcmpltpd and masked moves (for some reasons, only using 256bit registers).
If you simplify your expression to std::max(Z_curr[i], 0.1*Z_curr[i]) even gcc easily is capable of vectorizing it: https://godbolt.org/z/eTv4PnMWb
Generally, I would suggest compiling crucial routines of your code with different compilers and different compile options (sometimes trying -ffast-math can show you ways to simplify your expressions) and have a look at the generated code. For portability you could then re-translate the generated code into intrinsics (or leave it as is, if every compiler you care about gives good-enough results).
For completeness, here is a possible manually vectorized implementation using intrinsics:
void relu_avx512(double* __restrict Amem, double* Z_curr, int bo)
{
int i;
for (i=0; i<=bo-8; i+=8)
{
__m512d z = _mm512_loadu_pd(Z_curr+i);
__mmask8 positive = _mm512_cmplt_pd_mask (_mm512_setzero_pd(), z);
__m512d res = _mm512_mask_mul_pd(z, positive, z, _mm512_set1_pd(0.9));
_mm512_storeu_pd(Amem+i, res);
}
// remaining elements in scalar loop
for (; i<bo; ++i) {
Amem[i] = 0.0 < Z_curr[i] ? Z_curr[i] : Z_curr[i]*0.1;;
}
}
Godbolt: https://godbolt.org/z/s6br5KEEc (if you compile this with -O2 or -O3 on clang, it will heavily unroll the cleanup loop, even though it can't have more than 7 iterations. Theoretically, you could do the remaining elements with a masked or overlapping store (or maybe you have use-cases where the size is guaranteed to be a multiple of 8 and you can leave it away).

pragma omp for simd does not generate vector instructions in GCC

Short: Does the pragma omp for simd OpenMP directive generate code that uses SIMD registers?
Longer:
As stated in the OpenMP documentation "The worksharing-loop SIMD construct specifies that the iterations of one or more associated loops will be distributed across threads that already exist [..] using SIMD instructions". From this statement, I would expect the following code (simd.c) to use XMM, YMM or ZMM registers when compiling running gcc simd.c -o simd -fopenmp but it does not.
#include <stdio.h>
#define N 100
int main() {
int x[N];
int y[N];
int z[N];
int i;
int sum;
for(i=0; i < N; i++) {
x[i] = i;
y[i] = i;
}
#pragma omp parallel
{
#pragma omp for simd
for(i=0; i < N; i++) {
z[i] = x[i] + y[i];
}
#pragma omp for simd reduction(+:sum)
for(i=0; i < N; i++) {
sum += x[i];
}
}
printf("%d %d\n",z[N/2], sum);
return 0;
}
When checking the assembler generated running gcc simd.c -S -fopenmp no SIMD register is used.
I can use SIMD registers without OpenMP using the option -O3 because according to GCC documentation
it includes the -ftree-vectorize flag.
XMM registers: gcc simd.c -o simd -O3
YMM registers: gcc simd.c -o simd -O3 -march=skylake-avx512
ZMM registers: gcc simd.c -o simd -O3 -march=skylake-avx512 -mprefer-vector-width=512
However, using the flags -march=skylake-avx512 -mprefer-vector-width=512 combined with -fopenmp does not generates SIMD instructions.
Therefore, I can easily vectorize my code with -O3 without the pragma omp for simd but not for the other way around.
At this point, my purpose is not to generate SIMD instructions but to understand how do OpenMP SIMD directives work in GCC and how to generate SIMD instructions only with OpenMP (without -O3).
Enable at least -O2 for -fopenmp to work, and for performance in general
gcc simd.c -S -fopenmp
GCC's default is -O0, anti-optimized for consistent debugging. It's never going to auto-vectorize with -O0 because it's pointless when every i value from the C source has to exist in memory, and so on. Why does clang produce inefficient asm with -O0 (for this simple floating point sum)?
Also impossible when you have to be able to single-step source lines one at a time, and even modify i or memory contents at runtime with the debugger, and have the program keep running like you'd expect the C abstract machine would.
Building without any optimization is utter garbage for performance; it's insane to even consider if you care about performance enough to be using OpenMP. (Except of course for actual debugging.) Often the speedup from anti-optimized to optimized scalar is more than what you could gain from vectorizing that scalar code, but both can be large factors so you definitely want optimizations beyond auto-vectorization.
I can use SIMD registers without OpenMP using the option -O3 because according to GCC documentation it includes the -ftree-vectorize flag.
Right, so do that. -O3 -march=native -flto is usually your best bet for code that will run on the compile host. Also -fno-trapping-math -fno-math-errno should be safe for everything and enable some better FP function inlining, even if you don't want -ffast-math. Also preferably -fprofile-generate / -fprofile-use profile-guided optimization (PGO), to unroll hot loops and choose branchy vs. branchless appropriately, etc.
#pragma omp parallel is still effective at -O3 -fopenmp - GCC doesn't enable autoparallelization by default.
Also, #pragma omp simd will use a different vectorization style sometimes. In your case, it seems to make GCC forget that it knows the arrays are 16-byte aligned, and use movdqu loads (when AVX isn't available for an unaligned memory source operand for paddd xmm0, [rax]). Compare https://godbolt.org/z/8q8Dqm - the main._omp_fn.0: helper function that main calls doesn't assume alignment. (Although maybe it can't after division by number of threads splits up the array into ranges, if GCC doesn't bother to do vector-sized chunks?)
Use -O2 -fopenmp to get what you were expecting
OpenMP will let gcc vectorize more easily or efficiently for loops where you didn't use restrict on pointer args to functions to let it know that arrays don't overlap, or for floating point to let it pretend that FP math is associative even if you didn't use -ffast-math.
Or if you enable some optimization but not full optimization (e.g. -O2 which doesn't include -ftree-vectorize), then #pragma omp will work the way you expected.
Note that the x[i] = y[i] = i; init loop doesn't get auto-vectorized at -O2, but the #pragma loops are. And that without -fopenmp, pure scalar. Godbolt compiler explorer
The serial -O3 code will run faster for this small N because thread-startup overhead is nowhere near worth it. But for large N, parallelization could help if a single core can't saturate memory bandwidth (e.g. on a Xeon, but most dual/quad-core desktop CPUs can almost saturate mem bandwidth with one core). Or if your arrays are hot in cache on different cores.
Unfortunately(?) even GCC -O3 doesn't manage to do constant-propagation through your whole code and just print the result. Or to fuse the z[i] = x[i]+y[i] loop with the sum(x[]) loop.

cilk plus array notation not vectorized with gcc 4.9.0

I'm trying to figure out why gcc 4.9.0 won't vectorize a simple array addition when using gcc 4.9.0, using -O -ftree-vectorize:
int a[256], b[256], c[256];
foo () {
int i;
a[:] = b[:] + c[:];
}
From looking at the assembler produced this loop hasn't been vectorized and with the -fopt-info-vec-all flag I get a lot of output telling me why vectorization failed, beginning with:
>testvec.c:5: note: ===== analyze_loop_nest =====
>testvec.c:5: note: === vect_analyze_loop_form ===
>testvec.c:5: note: not vectorized: control flow in loop.
>testvec.c:5: note: bad loop form.
which is puzzling, since there's not control flow in the loop. Vectorization of the for loop using standard array notation for the same operation works fine.
It looks like only the latest version of GCC (6.1) can vectorize your example:
http://melpon.org/wandbox/permlink/LOIweYNRRLXeJsZf

Force the compiler duplicate c inline function code which been called from inside a loop [duplicate]

How can I tell GCC to unroll a particular loop?
I have used the CUDA SDK where loops can be unrolled manually using #pragma unroll. Is there a similar feature for gcc? I googled a bit but could not find anything.
GCC gives you a few different ways of handling this:
Use #pragma directives, like #pragma GCC optimize ("string"...), as seen in the GCC docs. Note that the pragma makes the optimizations global for the remaining functions. If you used #pragma push_options and pop_options macros cleverly, you could probably define this around just one function like so:
#pragma GCC push_options
#pragma GCC optimize ("unroll-loops")
//add 5 to each element of the int array.
void add5(int a[20]) {
int i = 19;
for(; i > 0; i--) {
a[i] += 5;
}
}
#pragma GCC pop_options
Annotate individual functions with GCC's attribute syntax: check the GCC function attribute docs for a more detailed dissertation on the subject. An example:
//add 5 to each element of the int array.
__attribute__((optimize("unroll-loops")))
void add5(int a[20]) {
int i = 19;
for(; i > 0; i--) {
a[i] += 5;
}
}
Note: I'm not sure how good GCC is at unrolling reverse-iterated loops (I did it to get Markdown to play nice with my code). The examples should compile fine, though.
GCC 8 has gained a new pragma that allows you to control how loop unrolling is done:
#pragma GCC unroll n
Quoting from the manual:
You can use this pragma to control how many times a loop should be
unrolled. It must be placed immediately before a for, while or do loop
or a #pragma GCC ivdep, and applies only to the loop that follows. n
is an integer constant expression specifying the unrolling factor. The
values of 0 and 1 block any unrolling of the loop.
-funroll-loops might be helpful (though it turns on loop-unrolling globally, not per-loop). I'm not sure whether there's a #pragma to do the same...

Tell gcc to specifically unroll a loop

How can I tell GCC to unroll a particular loop?
I have used the CUDA SDK where loops can be unrolled manually using #pragma unroll. Is there a similar feature for gcc? I googled a bit but could not find anything.
GCC gives you a few different ways of handling this:
Use #pragma directives, like #pragma GCC optimize ("string"...), as seen in the GCC docs. Note that the pragma makes the optimizations global for the remaining functions. If you used #pragma push_options and pop_options macros cleverly, you could probably define this around just one function like so:
#pragma GCC push_options
#pragma GCC optimize ("unroll-loops")
//add 5 to each element of the int array.
void add5(int a[20]) {
int i = 19;
for(; i > 0; i--) {
a[i] += 5;
}
}
#pragma GCC pop_options
Annotate individual functions with GCC's attribute syntax: check the GCC function attribute docs for a more detailed dissertation on the subject. An example:
//add 5 to each element of the int array.
__attribute__((optimize("unroll-loops")))
void add5(int a[20]) {
int i = 19;
for(; i > 0; i--) {
a[i] += 5;
}
}
Note: I'm not sure how good GCC is at unrolling reverse-iterated loops (I did it to get Markdown to play nice with my code). The examples should compile fine, though.
GCC 8 has gained a new pragma that allows you to control how loop unrolling is done:
#pragma GCC unroll n
Quoting from the manual:
You can use this pragma to control how many times a loop should be
unrolled. It must be placed immediately before a for, while or do loop
or a #pragma GCC ivdep, and applies only to the loop that follows. n
is an integer constant expression specifying the unrolling factor. The
values of 0 and 1 block any unrolling of the loop.
-funroll-loops might be helpful (though it turns on loop-unrolling globally, not per-loop). I'm not sure whether there's a #pragma to do the same...

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