Bug 71414

The core loop is

.L8:
        addq    $1, %rdx
        vaddps  (%r8), %ymm1, %ymm1
        addq    $32, %r8
        cmpq    %rdx, %rcx
        ja      .L8

which compared to LLVM is not unrolled.  You can use -funroll-loops to
force that which probably fixes the performance compared to LLVM.  For
the short loop above I also guess this is not the optimal IV choice.

(In reply to Richard Biener from comment #1)
> The core loop is
> 
> .L8:
>         addq    $1, %rdx
>         vaddps  (%r8), %ymm1, %ymm1
>         addq    $32, %r8
>         cmpq    %rdx, %rcx
>         ja      .L8
> 
> which compared to LLVM is not unrolled.  You can use -funroll-loops to
> force that which probably fixes the performance compared to LLVM.  For
> the short loop above I also guess this is not the optimal IV choice.

-funroll-loops only gains 10% or so, nowhere near the factor of 2 with clang. Except for the slightly better induction choice in llvm, the 2 unrolled loops look quite similar, I have a hard time seeing how one can be so much faster than the other. Maybe the alignment somehow ends up better in one case? Or the loop being one instruction shorter lets it fit better in cache?

(In reply to Marc Glisse from comment #2)
> (In reply to Richard Biener from comment #1)
> > The core loop is
> > 
> > .L8:
> >         addq    $1, %rdx
> >         vaddps  (%r8), %ymm1, %ymm1
> >         addq    $32, %r8
> >         cmpq    %rdx, %rcx
> >         ja      .L8
> > 
> > which compared to LLVM is not unrolled.  You can use -funroll-loops to
> > force that which probably fixes the performance compared to LLVM.  For
> > the short loop above I also guess this is not the optimal IV choice.
> 
> -funroll-loops only gains 10% or so, nowhere near the factor of 2 with
> clang. Except for the slightly better induction choice in llvm, the 2
> unrolled loops look quite similar, I have a hard time seeing how one can be
> so much faster than the other. Maybe the alignment somehow ends up better in
> one case? Or the loop being one instruction shorter lets it fit better in
> cache?

Can you post a full example?  The LLVM bug and this copy lacks information
on what actual 'a' and 'n' is used.  Note that unless a fits in L2 I hardly
doubt one can exceeed memory bandwidth (and thus code-gen should not matter
unless it affects the HW prefetcher).

The C code is in the gist linked `a` is a cacheline aligned pointer and `n` is 1024 so `a` should even fits in L1d, which is 32kB on both processors I benchmarked.

More precise timing (ns per loop)

6700K

```
% ./benchmark-gcc           
80.553456
% ./benchmark-clang37 
28.222281
% ./benchmark-clang38 
41.782532
```

4702HQ

```
% ./benchmark-gcc 
140.744893
% ./benchmark-clang37 
50.835441
% ./benchmark-clang38
70.220946
```

Pasting the whole program over for completeness.
The alignment line gives some weird timing on clang without `-mcore-avx2` but doesn't change anything too much with `-Ofast -mcore-avx2`

```
//

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

uint64_t gettime_ns()
{
    struct timespec t;
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &t);
    return t.tv_sec * (uint64_t) 1e9 + t.tv_nsec;
}


__attribute__((noinline)) float sum32(float *a, size_t n)
{
    /* a = (float*)__builtin_assume_aligned(a, 64); */
    float s = 0;
    for (size_t i = 0;i < n;i++)
        s += a[i];
    __asm__ volatile ("" ::: "memory");
    return s;
}

int main()
{
    float *p = aligned_alloc(64, sizeof(float) * 1024);
    memset(p, 0, sizeof(float) * 1024);
    uint64_t start = gettime_ns();
    for (int i = 0;i < 1024 * 1024;i++)
        sum32(p, 1024);
    free(p);
    uint64_t end = gettime_ns();
    printf("%f\n", (end - start) / (1024.0 * 1024.0));
    return 0;
}
```

An interesting observation is that we clone sum32 for IPA-CP of n == 1024 but
for some unknown reason figure Alignment of 'a' as unusable:

Lattices:
  Node: main/35:
  Node: sum32/34:
    param [0]: VARIABLE
         ctxs: VARIABLE
         Alignment unusable (BOTTOM)
        AGGS VARIABLE
    param [1]: VARIABLE
               1024 [from: 35(99000)] [loc_time: 65, loc_size: 10, prop_time: 0, prop_size: 0]
         ctxs: VARIABLE
         Alignment unusable (BOTTOM)
        AGGS VARIABLE

Evaluating opportunities for sum32/34.
 - considering value 1024 for param #1 n (caller_count: 1)
     good_cloning_opportunity_p (time: 65, size: 10, freq_sum: 99000) -> evaluation: 643500, threshold: 500
  Creating a specialized node of sum32/34.
    replacing param #1 n with const 1024
                Accounting size:7.00, time:72.78 on predicate:(true)
                Accounting size:3.00, time:2.00 on new predicate:(not inlined)
     the new node is sum32.constprop/43.


iff LLVM disables IPA CP cloning with 'noinline' the testcase should add
'noclone' as well to be a fair comparison.

The vectorizer decides to peel the loop for alignment (as usual...) and thus
creates both prologue and epilogue loop.  That shouldn't matter in practice
but it likely obfuscates code enough to make the Job for IVOPTs harder.
If the desire was to have nothing known about alignment and 'n' in sum32
the above cannot be avoided anyway.  We also peel both prologue and epilogue
loop.

clang 3.6 (the one I have locally) doesn't peel for alignment and thus uses
unaligned loads and unrolls the loop by 2 only.  It doesn't do any IPA CP
with -Ofast.

Note that the difference WRT clangs unrolling and GCCs unrolling is that
clang uses two accumulators while GCC just processes multiple loads on
the same accumulator with its unrolling.  Thus clang can exploit parallelism
in the pipeline of the CPU while GCC restricts the CPU due to the dependences.

This means that it is the vectorizer that needs to consider using a larger
vectorization factor rather than post-vectorization unrolling (that's likely
to pay off only for reductions).  I wonder what LLVMs heuristic is here.

The IPA-CP alignment question remains though.  Martins?

Isn't this a case where -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller is helpful ?

> gcc -Ofast t.c -lrt ; ./a.out
285.670206

> gcc -Ofast -funroll-loops -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller  t.c -lrt ; ./a.out
151.246083

> gcc -Ofast -funroll-loops  t.c -lrt ; ./a.out
277.047507

There is some relation with PR25621 I think.

If I add `-fvariable-expansion-in-unroller` (omg this options is like half the command line ;-p ...), the performance matches the clang one after the clang 3.8 regression.

```
% gcc -funroll-loops -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller -Ofast -march=core-avx2 benchmark.c -o benchmark2 
% ./benchmark2 
45.588861
% ./benchmark-gcc
80.518152
% ./benchmark-clang38
41.920054
% ./benchmark-clang37
25.093145
```

On Tue, 7 Jun 2016, yyc1992 at gmail dot com wrote:

> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=71414
> 
> --- Comment #7 from Yichao Yu <yyc1992 at gmail dot com> ---
> If I add `-fvariable-expansion-in-unroller` (omg this options is like half the
> command line ;-p ...), the performance matches the clang one after the clang
> 3.8 regression.
> 
> ```
> % gcc -funroll-loops -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller -Ofast -march=core-avx2
> benchmark.c -o benchmark2 
> % ./benchmark2 
> 45.588861
> % ./benchmark-gcc
> 80.518152
> % ./benchmark-clang38
> 41.920054
> % ./benchmark-clang37
> 25.093145
> ```

Yeah, but -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller is quite late.

(In reply to Richard Biener from comment #5)
> An interesting observation is that we clone sum32 for IPA-CP of n == 1024 but
> for some unknown reason figure Alignment of 'a' as unusable:

The function sum32 is not static, so it can be called from outside of
the current compilation unit with any alignment.  IPA-CP does not
clone for alignment, which was my deliberate decision because I found
it very difficult to reason about its profitability (I am opened to
suggestions in this area, of course).

Make it static or compile with -flto and you will get:

IPA lattices after all propagation:

Lattices:
  Node: main/35:
  Node: sum32/34:
    param [0]: VARIABLE
         ctxs: VARIABLE
         Alignment 64, misalignment 0
        AGGS VARIABLE
    param [1]: 1024 [from: 35(99000)] [loc_time: 0, loc_size: 0, prop_time: 0, prop_size: 
0]
         ctxs: VARIABLE
         Alignment unusable (BOTTOM)
        AGGS VARIABLE

On June 10, 2016 5:22:39 PM GMT+02:00, "jamborm at gcc dot gnu.org" <gcc-bugzilla@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=71414
>
>--- Comment #9 from Martin Jambor <jamborm at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
>(In reply to Richard Biener from comment #5)
>> An interesting observation is that we clone sum32 for IPA-CP of n ==
>1024 but
>> for some unknown reason figure Alignment of 'a' as unusable:
>
>The function sum32 is not static, so it can be called from outside of
>the current compilation unit with any alignment.  IPA-CP does not
>clone for alignment, which was my deliberate decision because I found
>it very difficult to reason about its profitability (I am opened to
>suggestions in this area, of course).

It ends up cloning for the constant second arg though so I'd have expected the alignment to be set on the first...

>Make it static or compile with -flto and you will get:
>
>IPA lattices after all propagation:
>
>Lattices:
>  Node: main/35:
>  Node: sum32/34:
>    param [0]: VARIABLE
>         ctxs: VARIABLE
>         Alignment 64, misalignment 0
>        AGGS VARIABLE
>param [1]: 1024 [from: 35(99000)] [loc_time: 0, loc_size: 0, prop_time:
>0,
>prop_size: 
>0]
>         ctxs: VARIABLE
>         Alignment unusable (BOTTOM)
>        AGGS VARIABLE

I've been looking into this and the big difference appears to be that when Clang unrolls the loop it does so using multiple accumulators (and indeed does this without need to be told to unroll.  Given:

double acc(double *x, int n)
{
    double a = 0;
    #pragma omp simd
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
	a += x[i];
    return a;
}


and compiling with clang -march=native -Ofast -fopenmp -S the core loop reads as:

	vaddpd	(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm0, %ymm0
	vaddpd	32(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm1, %ymm1
	vaddpd	64(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm2, %ymm2
	vaddpd	96(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm3, %ymm3
	vaddpd	128(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm0, %ymm0
	vaddpd	160(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm1, %ymm1
	vaddpd	192(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm2, %ymm2
	vaddpd	224(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm3, %ymm3
	vaddpd	256(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm0, %ymm0
	vaddpd	288(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm1, %ymm1
	vaddpd	320(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm2, %ymm2
	vaddpd	352(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm3, %ymm3
	vaddpd	384(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm0, %ymm0
	vaddpd	416(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm1, %ymm1
	vaddpd	448(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm2, %ymm2
	vaddpd	480(%rdi,%rsi,8), %ymm3, %ymm3

which is heavily unrolled and uses four separate accumulators to hide the latency of the vector adds.  Interestingly, one could argue that Clang is not using enough registers given that Skylake can dual-issue adds and they have a latency of 4 cycles (implying you want 8 separate accumulators).

GCC 10 with gcc -march=skylake -Ofast -fopenmp -S test.c -funroll-loops

	vaddpd	-224(%r8), %ymm1, %ymm2
	vaddpd	-192(%r8), %ymm2, %ymm3
 	vaddpd	-160(%r8), %ymm3, %ymm4
	vaddpd	-128(%r8), %ymm4, %ymm5
	vaddpd	-96(%r8), %ymm5, %ymm6
	vaddpd	-64(%r8), %ymm6, %ymm7
	vaddpd	-32(%r8), %ymm7, %ymm0

which although it is unrolled, is not a useful unrolling due to the dependency chain.  Indeed, I would not be surprised if the performance is similar to the unrolled code as the loop related cruft can be hidden.

This problem has been recently discussed at:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76407241/why-is-cython-so-much-slower-than-numba-for-this-simple-loop

The target now has the ability to tell the vectorizer to choose a larger VF based on the cost info it got for the default VF, so the x86 backend could
make use of that.  For example with the following patch we'll unroll the
vectorized loops 4 times (of course the actual check for small reduction
loops and a register pressure estimate is missing).  That generates

.L4:
        vaddps  (%rax), %zmm1, %zmm1
        vaddps  64(%rax), %zmm2, %zmm2
        addq    $256, %rax
        vaddps  -128(%rax), %zmm0, %zmm0
        vaddps  -64(%rax), %zmm3, %zmm3
        cmpq    %rcx, %rax
        jne     .L4
        movq    %rdx, %rax
        andq    $-64, %rax
        vaddps  %zmm3, %zmm0, %zmm0
        vaddps  %zmm2, %zmm1, %zmm1
        vaddps  %zmm1, %zmm0, %zmm1
... more epilog ...

with -march=znver4 on current trunk.

diff --git a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
index d4ff56ee8dd..53c09bb9d9c 100644
--- a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
+++ b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
@@ -23615,8 +23615,18 @@ class ix86_vector_costs : public vector_costs
                              stmt_vec_info stmt_info, slp_tree node,
                              tree vectype, int misalign,
                              vect_cost_model_location where) override;
+  void finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs);
 };
 
+void
+ix86_vector_costs::finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs)
+{
+  auto *scalar_costs
+    = static_cast<const ix86_vector_costs *> (uncast_scalar_costs);
+  m_suggested_unroll_factor = 4;
+  vector_costs::finish_cost (scalar_costs);
+}
+
 /* Implement targetm.vectorize.create_costs.  */
 
 static vector_costs *

(In reply to Richard Biener from comment #13)
> The target now has the ability to tell the vectorizer to choose a larger VF
> based on the cost info it got for the default VF, so the x86 backend could
> make use of that.  For example with the following patch we'll unroll the
> vectorized loops 4 times (of course the actual check for small reduction
> loops and a register pressure estimate is missing).  That generates
> 
> .L4:
>         vaddps  (%rax), %zmm1, %zmm1
>         vaddps  64(%rax), %zmm2, %zmm2
>         addq    $256, %rax
>         vaddps  -128(%rax), %zmm0, %zmm0
>         vaddps  -64(%rax), %zmm3, %zmm3
>         cmpq    %rcx, %rax
>         jne     .L4
>         movq    %rdx, %rax
>         andq    $-64, %rax
>         vaddps  %zmm3, %zmm0, %zmm0
>         vaddps  %zmm2, %zmm1, %zmm1
>         vaddps  %zmm1, %zmm0, %zmm1
> ... more epilog ...
> 
> with -march=znver4 on current trunk.
> 
> diff --git a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> index d4ff56ee8dd..53c09bb9d9c 100644
> --- a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> +++ b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> @@ -23615,8 +23615,18 @@ class ix86_vector_costs : public vector_costs
>                               stmt_vec_info stmt_info, slp_tree node,
>                               tree vectype, int misalign,
>                               vect_cost_model_location where) override;
> +  void finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs);
>  };
>  
> +void
> +ix86_vector_costs::finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs)
> +{
> +  auto *scalar_costs
> +    = static_cast<const ix86_vector_costs *> (uncast_scalar_costs);
> +  m_suggested_unroll_factor = 4;
> +  vector_costs::finish_cost (scalar_costs);

I remember we have posted an patch for that
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2022-October/604186.html

One regression observed is the VF of epilog loop will increase(from xmm to ymm) after unroll the vectorized loops, and it regressed performance for lower-tripcount loop(similar as -mprefer-vector-width=512).

Also for the case in the PR, I'm trying to enable -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller when -funroll-loops, and the partial sum will break reduction chain.

On Wed, 7 Jun 2023, crazylht at gmail dot com wrote:

> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=71414
> 
> --- Comment #14 from Hongtao.liu <crazylht at gmail dot com> ---
> (In reply to Richard Biener from comment #13)
> > The target now has the ability to tell the vectorizer to choose a larger VF
> > based on the cost info it got for the default VF, so the x86 backend could
> > make use of that.  For example with the following patch we'll unroll the
> > vectorized loops 4 times (of course the actual check for small reduction
> > loops and a register pressure estimate is missing).  That generates
> > 
> > .L4:
> >         vaddps  (%rax), %zmm1, %zmm1
> >         vaddps  64(%rax), %zmm2, %zmm2
> >         addq    $256, %rax
> >         vaddps  -128(%rax), %zmm0, %zmm0
> >         vaddps  -64(%rax), %zmm3, %zmm3
> >         cmpq    %rcx, %rax
> >         jne     .L4
> >         movq    %rdx, %rax
> >         andq    $-64, %rax
> >         vaddps  %zmm3, %zmm0, %zmm0
> >         vaddps  %zmm2, %zmm1, %zmm1
> >         vaddps  %zmm1, %zmm0, %zmm1
> > ... more epilog ...
> > 
> > with -march=znver4 on current trunk.
> > 
> > diff --git a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> > index d4ff56ee8dd..53c09bb9d9c 100644
> > --- a/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> > +++ b/gcc/config/i386/i386.cc
> > @@ -23615,8 +23615,18 @@ class ix86_vector_costs : public vector_costs
> >                               stmt_vec_info stmt_info, slp_tree node,
> >                               tree vectype, int misalign,
> >                               vect_cost_model_location where) override;
> > +  void finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs);
> >  };
> >  
> > +void
> > +ix86_vector_costs::finish_cost (const vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs)
> > +{
> > +  auto *scalar_costs
> > +    = static_cast<const ix86_vector_costs *> (uncast_scalar_costs);
> > +  m_suggested_unroll_factor = 4;
> > +  vector_costs::finish_cost (scalar_costs);
> 
> I remember we have posted an patch for that
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2022-October/604186.html
> 
> One regression observed is the VF of epilog loop will increase(from xmm to ymm)
> after unroll the vectorized loops, and it regressed performance for
> lower-tripcount loop(similar as -mprefer-vector-width=512).

Ah, yeah.  We could resort to check estimated_number_of_iterations
to guide us with profile feedback.  I'm also (again) working on
fully masked epilogues which should reduce the impact on low-trip
count loops.

> Also for the case in the PR, I'm trying to enable
> -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller when -funroll-loops, and the partial sum will
> break reduction chain.

Probably also a good idea - maybe -fvariable-expansion-in-unroller can
be made smarter and guided by register pressure?