How to stop VC++ compiler from reordering code? - c++

I have a code like that:
const uint64_t tsc = __rdtsc();
const __m128 res = computeSomethingExpensive();
const uint64_t elapsed = __rdtsc() - tsc;
printf( "%" PRIu64 " cycles", elapsed );
In release builds, this prints garbage like “38 cycles” because VC++ compiler reordered my code:
const uint64_t tsc = __rdtsc();
00007FFF3D398D00 rdtsc
00007FFF3D398D02 shl rdx,20h
00007FFF3D398D06 or rax,rdx
00007FFF3D398D09 mov r9,rax
const uint64_t elapsed = __rdtsc() - tsc;
00007FFF3D398D0C rdtsc
00007FFF3D398D0E shl rdx,20h
00007FFF3D398D12 or rax,rdx
00007FFF3D398D15 mov rbx,rax
00007FFF3D398D18 sub rbx,r9
const __m128 res = …
00007FFF3D398D1B lea rdx,[rcx+98h]
00007FFF3D398D22 mov rcx,r10
00007FFF3D398D25 call computeSomethingExpensive (07FFF3D393E50h)
What’s the best way to fix?
P.S. I’m aware rdtsc doesn’t count cycles, it measures time based on CPU’s base frequency. I’m OK with that, I still want to measure that number.
Update: godbolt link

Adding a fake store
static bool save = false;
if (save)
{
static float res1[4];
_mm_store_ps(res1, res);
}
before the second __rdtsc seem to be enough to fool the compiler.
(Not adding a real store to avoid contention if this function is called in multiple threads, though could use TLS to avoid that)

Related

OpenMP Strange Behavior - differences in performance

I want to speedup image processing code using OpenMP and I found some strange behavior in my code. I'm using Visual Studio 2019 and I also tried Intel C++ compiler with same result.
I'm not sure why is the code with OpenMP in some situations much slower than in the others. For example function divideImageDataWithParam() or difference between copyFirstPixelOnRow() and copyFirstPixelOnRowUsingTSize() using struct TSize as parameter of image data size. Why is performance of boxFilterRow() and boxFilterRow_OpenMP() so different a why isn't it with different radius size in program?
I created github repository for this little testing project:
https://github.com/Tb45/OpenMP-Strange-Behavior
Here are all results summarized:
https://github.com/Tb45/OpenMP-Strange-Behavior/blob/master/resuts.txt
I didn't find any explanation why is this happening or what am I doing wrong.
Thanks for your help.
I'm working on faster box filter and others for image processing algorithms.
typedef intptr_t int_t;
struct TSize
{
int_t width;
int_t height;
};
void divideImageDataWithParam(
const unsigned char * src, int_t srcStep, unsigned char * dst, int_t dstStep, TSize size, int_t param)
{
for (int_t y = 0; y < size.height; y++)
{
for (int_t x = 0; x < size.width; x++)
{
dst[y*dstStep + x] = src[y*srcStep + x]/param;
}
}
}
void divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP(
const unsigned char * src, int_t srcStep, unsigned char * dst, int_t dstStep, TSize size, int_t param, bool parallel)
{
#pragma omp parallel for if(parallel)
for (int_t y = 0; y < size.height; y++)
{
for (int_t x = 0; x < size.width; x++)
{
dst[y*dstStep + x] = src[y*srcStep + x]/param;
}
}
}
Results of divideImageDataWithParam():
generateRandomImageData :: 3840x2160
numberOfIterations = 100
With Visual C++ 2019:
32bit 64bit
336.906ms 344.251ms divideImageDataWithParam
1832.120ms 6395.861ms divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP single-thread parallel=false
387.152ms 1204.302ms divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP multi-threaded parallel=true
With Intel C++ 19:
32bit 64bit
15.162ms 8.927ms divideImageDataWithParam
266.646ms 294.134ms divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP single-threaded parallel=false
239.564ms 1195.556ms divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP multi-threaded parallel=true
Screenshot from Intel VTune Amplifier, where divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP() with parallel=false take most of the time in instruction mov to dst memory.
648trindade is right; it has to do with optimizations that cannot be done with openmp. But its not loop-unrolling or vectorization, its inlining which allows for a smart substitution.
Let me explain: Integer divisions are incredibly slow (64bit IDIV: ~40-100 Cycles). So whenever possible people (and compilers) try to avoid divisions. One trick you can use is to substitute a division with a multiplication and a shift. That only works if the divisor is known at compile time. This is the case because your function divideImageDataWithParam is inlined and PARAM is known. You can verify this by prepending it with __declspec(noinline). You will get the timings that you expected.
The openmp parallelization does not allow this trick because the function cannot be inlined and therefore param is not known at compile time and an expensive IDIV-instruction is generated.
Compiler output of divideImageDataWithParam (WIN10, MSVC2017, x64):
0x7ff67d151480 <+ 336> movzx ecx,byte ptr [r10+r8]
0x7ff67d151485 <+ 341> mov rax,r12
0x7ff67d151488 <+ 344> mul rax,rcx <------- multiply
0x7ff67d15148b <+ 347> shr rdx,3 <------- shift
0x7ff67d15148f <+ 351> mov byte ptr [r8],dl
0x7ff67d151492 <+ 354> lea r8,[r8+1]
0x7ff67d151496 <+ 358> sub r9,1
0x7ff67d15149a <+ 362> jne test!main+0x150 (00007ff6`7d151480)
And the openmp-version:
0x7ff67d151210 <+ 192> movzx eax,byte ptr [r10+rcx]
0x7ff67d151215 <+ 197> lea rcx,[rcx+1]
0x7ff67d151219 <+ 201> cqo
0x7ff67d15121b <+ 203> idiv rax,rbp <------- idiv
0x7ff67d15121e <+ 206> mov byte ptr [rcx-1],al
0x7ff67d151221 <+ 209> lea rax,[r8+rcx]
0x7ff67d151225 <+ 213> mov rdx,qword ptr [rbx]
0x7ff67d151228 <+ 216> cmp rax,rdx
0x7ff67d15122b <+ 219> jl test!divideImageDataWithParam$omp$1+0xc0 (00007ff6`7d151210)
Note 1) If you try out the compiler explorer (https://godbolt.org/) you will see that some compilers do the substitution for the openmp version too.
Note 2) As soon as the parameter is not known at compile time this optimization cannot be done anyway. So if you put your function into a library it will be slow. I'd do something like precomputing the division for all possible values and then do a lookup. This is even faster because the lookup table fits into 4-5 cache lines and L1 latency is only 3-4 cycles.
void divideImageDataWithParam(
const unsigned char * src, int_t srcStep, unsigned char * dst, int_t dstStep, TSize size, int_t param)
{
uint8_t tbl[256];
for(int i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
tbl[i] = i / param;
}
for (int_t y = 0; y < size.height; y++)
{
for (int_t x = 0; x < size.width; x++)
{
dst[y*dstStep + x] = tbl[src[y*srcStep + x]];
}
}
}
Also thanks for the interesting question, I learned a thing or two along the way! ;-)
This behavior is explained by the use of compiler optimizations: when enabled, divideImageDataWithParam sequential code will be subjected to a series of optimizations (loop-unrolling, vectorization, etc.) that divideImageDataWithParam_OpenMP parallel code probably is not, as it is certainly uncharacterized after the process of outlining parallel regions by the compiler.
If you compile this same code without optimizations, you will find that the runtime version of the sequential version is very similar to that of the parallel version with only one thread.
The maximum speedup of parallel version in this case is limited by the division of the original workload without optimizations. Optimizations in this case need to be writed manually.

Why is _mm_set_epi16 sometimes faster than _mm_load_si128?

I've understood it's best to avoid _mm_set_epi*, and instead rely on _mm_load_si128 (or even _mm_loadu_si128 with a small performance hit if the data is not aligned). However, the impact this has on performance seems inconsistent to me. The following is a good example.
Consider the two following functions that utilize SSE intrinsics:
static uint32_t clmul_load(uint16_t x, uint16_t y)
{
const __m128i c = _mm_clmulepi64_si128(
_mm_load_si128((__m128i const*)(&x)),
_mm_load_si128((__m128i const*)(&y)), 0);
return _mm_extract_epi32(c, 0);
}
static uint32_t clmul_set(uint16_t x, uint16_t y)
{
const __m128i c = _mm_clmulepi64_si128(
_mm_set_epi16(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, x),
_mm_set_epi16(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, y), 0);
return _mm_extract_epi32(c, 0);
}
The following function benchmarks the performance of the two:
template <typename F>
void benchmark(int t, F f)
{
std::mt19937 rng(static_cast<unsigned int>(std::time(0)));
std::uniform_int_distribution<uint32_t> uint_dist10(
0, std::numeric_limits<uint32_t>::max());
std::vector<uint32_t> vec(t);
auto start = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now();
for (int i = 0; i < t; ++i)
{
vec[i] = f(uint_dist10(rng), uint_dist10(rng));
}
auto duration = std::chrono::duration_cast<
std::chrono::milliseconds>(
std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now() -
start);
std::cout << (duration.count() / 1000.0) << " seconds.\n";
}
Finally, the following main program does some testing:
int main()
{
const int N = 10000000;
benchmark(N, clmul_load);
benchmark(N, clmul_set);
}
On an i7 Haswell with MSVC 2013, a typical output is
0.208 seconds. // _mm_load_si128
0.129 seconds. // _mm_set_epi16
Using GCC with parameters -O3 -std=c++11 -march=native (with slightly older hardware), a typical output is
0.312 seconds. // _mm_load_si128
0.262 seconds. // _mm_set_epi16
What explains this? Are there actually cases where _mm_set_epi* is preferable over _mm_load_si128? There are other times where I've noticed _mm_load_si128 to perform better, but I can't really characterize those observations.
Your compiler is optimizing away the "gather" behavior of your _mm_set_epi16() call since it really isn't needed. From g++ 4.8 (-O3) and gdb:
(gdb) disas clmul_load
Dump of assembler code for function clmul_load(uint16_t, uint16_t):
0x0000000000400b80 <+0>: mov %di,-0xc(%rsp)
0x0000000000400b85 <+5>: mov %si,-0x10(%rsp)
0x0000000000400b8a <+10>: vmovdqu -0xc(%rsp),%xmm0
0x0000000000400b90 <+16>: vmovdqu -0x10(%rsp),%xmm1
0x0000000000400b96 <+22>: vpclmullqlqdq %xmm1,%xmm0,%xmm0
0x0000000000400b9c <+28>: vmovd %xmm0,%eax
0x0000000000400ba0 <+32>: retq
End of assembler dump.
(gdb) disas clmul_set
Dump of assembler code for function clmul_set(uint16_t, uint16_t):
0x0000000000400bb0 <+0>: vpxor %xmm0,%xmm0,%xmm0
0x0000000000400bb4 <+4>: vpxor %xmm1,%xmm1,%xmm1
0x0000000000400bb8 <+8>: vpinsrw $0x0,%edi,%xmm0,%xmm0
0x0000000000400bbd <+13>: vpinsrw $0x0,%esi,%xmm1,%xmm1
0x0000000000400bc2 <+18>: vpclmullqlqdq %xmm1,%xmm0,%xmm0
0x0000000000400bc8 <+24>: vmovd %xmm0,%eax
0x0000000000400bcc <+28>: retq
End of assembler dump.
The vpinsrw (insert word) is ever-so-slightly faster than the unaligned double-quadword move from clmul_load, likely due to the internal load/store unit being able to do the smaller reads simultaneously but not the 16B ones. If you were doing more arbitrary loads, this would go away, obviously.
The slowness of _mm_set_epi* comes from the need to scrape together various variables into a single vector. You'd have to examine the generated assembly to be certain, but my guess is that since most of the arguments to your _mm_set_epi16 calls are constants (and zeroes, at that), GCC is generating a fairly short and fast set of instructions for the intrinsic.

How to atomically add and fetch a 128-bit number in C++?

I use Linux x86_64 and clang 3.3.
Is this even possible in theory?
std::atomic<__int128_t> doesn't work (undefined references to some functions).
__atomic_add_fetch also doesn't work ('error: cannot compile this atomic library call yet').
Both std::atomic and __atomic_add_fetch work with 64-bit numbers.
It's not possible to do this with a single instruction, but you can emulate it and still be lock-free. Except for the very earliest AMD64 CPUs, x64 supports the CMPXCHG16B instruction. With a little multi-precision math, you can do this pretty easily.
I'm afraid I don't know the instrinsic for CMPXCHG16B in GCC, but hopefully you get the idea of having a spin loop of CMPXCHG16B. Here's some untested code for VC++:
// atomically adds 128-bit src to dst, with src getting the old dst.
void fetch_add_128b(uint64_t *dst, uint64_t* src)
{
uint64_t srclo, srchi, olddst[2], exchlo, exchhi;
srchi = src[0];
srclo = src[1];
olddst[0] = dst[0];
olddst[1] = dst[1];
do
{
exchlo = srclo + olddst[1];
exchhi = srchi + olddst[0] + (exchlo < srclo); // add and carry
}
while(!_InterlockedCompareExchange128((long long*)dst,
exchhi, exchlo,
(long long*)olddst));
src[0] = olddst[0];
src[1] = olddst[1];
}
Edit: here's some untested code going off of what I could find for the GCC intrinsics:
// atomically adds 128-bit src to dst, returning the old dst.
__uint128_t fetch_add_128b(__uint128_t *dst, __uint128_t src)
{
__uint128_t dstval, olddst;
dstval = *dst;
do
{
olddst = dstval;
dstval = __sync_val_compare_and_swap(dst, dstval, dstval + src);
}
while(dstval != olddst);
return dstval;
}
That isn't possible. There is no x86-64 instruction that does a 128-bit add in one instruction, and to do something atomically, a basic starting point is that it is a single instruction (there are some instructions which aren't atomic even then, but that's another matter).
You will need to use some other lock around the 128-bit number.
Edit: It is possible that one could come up with something that uses something like this:
__volatile__ __asm__(
" mov %0, %%rax\n"
" mov %0+4, %%rdx\n"
" mov %1,%%rbx\n"
" mov %1+4,%%rcx\n"
"1:\n
" add %%rax, %%rbx\n"
" adc %%rdx, %%rcx\n"
" lock;cmpxcchg16b %0\n"
" jnz 1b\n"
: "=0"
: "0"(&arg1), "1"(&arg2));
That's just something I just hacked up, and I haven't compiled it, never mind validated that it will work. But the principle is that it repeats until it compares equal.
Edit2: Darn typing too slow, Cory Nelson just posted the same thing, but using intrisics.
Edit3: Update loop to not unnecessary read memory that doesn't need reading... CMPXCHG16B does that for us.
Yes; you need to tell your compiler that you're on hardware that supports it.
This answer is going to assume you're on x86-64; there's likely a similar spec for arm.
From the generic x86-64 microarchitecture levels, you'll want at least x86-64-v2 to let the compiler know that you have the cmpxchg16b instruction.
Here's a working godbolt, note the compiler flag -march=x86-64-v2:
https://godbolt.org/z/PvaojqGcx
For more reading on the x86-64-psABI, the spec is published here.

Extremely bizarre code generation in Visual C++, for nearly identical code; 3x speed difference

The code below (reduced from my larger code, after my astonishment at how its speed paled in comparison with that of std::vector) has two peculiar features:
It runs more than three times faster when I make a very tiny modification to the source code (always compiling it with /O2 with Visual C++ 2010).
Note: To make this a little more fun, I put a hint for the modification at the end, so you can spend some time figuring out the change yourself. The original code was ~500 lines, so it took me a heck of a lot longer to pin it down, since the fix looks pretty irrelevant to the performance.
It runs about 20% faster with /MTd than with /MT, even though the output loop looks the same!!!
The difference in the assembly code for the tiny-modification case is:
Loop without the modification (~300 ms):
00403383 mov esi,dword ptr [esp+10h]
00403387 mov edx,dword ptr [esp+0Ch]
0040338B mov dword ptr [edx+esi*4],eax
0040338E add dword ptr [esp+10h],ecx
00403392 add eax,ecx
00403394 cmp eax,4000000h
00403399 jl main+43h (403383h)
Loop with /MTd (looks identical! but ~270 ms):
00407D73 mov esi,dword ptr [esp+10h]
00407D77 mov edx,dword ptr [esp+0Ch]
00407D7B mov dword ptr [edx+esi*4],eax
00407D7E add dword ptr [esp+10h],ecx
00407D82 add eax,ecx
00407D84 cmp eax,4000000h
00407D89 jl main+43h (407D73h)
Loop with the modification (~100 ms!!):
00403361 mov dword ptr [esi+eax*4],eax
00403364 inc eax
00403365 cmp eax,4000000h
0040336A jl main+21h (403361h)
Now my question is, why should the changes above have the effects they do? It's completely bizarre!
Especially the first one -- it shouldn't affect anything at all (once you see the difference in the code), and yet it lowers the speed dramatically.
Is there an explanation for this?
#include <cstdio>
#include <ctime>
#include <algorithm>
#include <memory>
template<class T, class Allocator = std::allocator<T> >
struct vector : Allocator
{
T *p;
size_t n;
struct scoped
{
T *p_;
size_t n_;
Allocator &a_;
~scoped() { if (p_) { a_.deallocate(p_, n_); } }
scoped(Allocator &a, size_t n) : a_(a), n_(n), p_(a.allocate(n, 0)) { }
void swap(T *&p, size_t &n)
{
std::swap(p_, p);
std::swap(n_, n);
}
};
vector(size_t n) : n(0), p(0) { scoped(*this, n).swap(p, n); }
void push_back(T const &value) { p[n++] = value; }
};
int main()
{
int const COUNT = 1 << 26;
vector<int> vect(COUNT);
clock_t start = clock();
for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) { vect.push_back(i); }
printf("time: %d\n", (clock() - start) * 1000 / CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
}
Hint (hover your mouse below):
It has to do with the allocator.
Answer:
Change Allocator &a_ to Allocator a_.
For what it's worth, my speculation for the difference between /MT and /MTd is that the /MTd heap allocation will paint the heap memory for debugging purposes making it more likely to be paged in - that occurs before you start the clock.
If you 'pre-heat' the vector allocation, you get the same numbers for /MT and /MTd:
vector<int> vect(COUNT);
// make sure vect's memory is warmed up
for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) { vect.push_back(i); }
vect.n = 0; // clear the vector
clock_t start = clock();
for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) { vect.push_back(i); }
printf("time: %d\n", (clock() - start) * 1000 / CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
It's strange that Allocator& will break the alias chain while Allocator will not.
You can try
for(int i=vect.n; i<COUNT;++i){
...
}
to enforce i and n are synchronized.
This will make vc much easier to optimize.
emm... It seems that the "fastest" code
00403361 mov dword ptr [esi+eax*4],eax
00403364 inc eax
00403365 cmp eax,4000000h
0040336A jl main+21h (403361h)
is somewhat over-optimized. In this loop, vect.n is ignored at all...
If there was an exception happened in the loop, vect.n will not be updated correctly.
So the answer might be: when you use Allocator, vc figures out that vect.n will be never used again,
so that it can be ignored. It's amazing, but in general it's not so useful and dangerous.

Did I implement clock drift properly?

I couldn't find any clock drift RNG code for Windows anywhere so I attempted to implement it myself. I haven't run the numbers through ent or DIEHARD yet, and I'm just wondering if this is even remotely correct...
void QueryRDTSC(__int64* tick) {
__asm {
xor eax, eax
cpuid
rdtsc
mov edi, dword ptr tick
mov dword ptr [edi], eax
mov dword ptr [edi+4], edx
}
}
__int64 clockDriftRNG() {
__int64 CPU_start, CPU_end, OS_start, OS_end;
// get CPU ticks -- uses RDTSC on the Processor
QueryRDTSC(&CPU_start);
Sleep(1);
QueryRDTSC(&CPU_end);
// get OS ticks -- uses the Motherboard clock
QueryPerformanceCounter((LARGE_INTEGER*)&OS_start);
Sleep(1);
QueryPerformanceCounter((LARGE_INTEGER*)&OS_end);
// CPU clock is ~1000x faster than mobo clock
// return raw
return ((CPU_end - CPU_start)/(OS_end - OS_start));
// or
// return a random number from 0 to 9
// return ((CPU_end - CPU_start)/(OS_end - OS_start)%10);
}
If you're wondering why I Sleep(1), it's because if I don't, OS_end - OS_start returns 0 consistently (because of the bad timer resolution, I presume).
Basically, (CPU_end - CPU_start)/(OS_end - OS_start) always returns around 1000 with a slight variation based on the entropy of CPU load, maybe temperature, quartz crystal vibration imperfections, etc.
Anyway, the numbers have a pretty decent distribution, but this could be totally wrong. I have no idea.
Edit: According to Stephen Nutt, Sleep(1) may not be doing what I'm expecting, so instead of Sleep(1), I'm trying to use:
void loop() {
__asm {
mov ecx, 1000
cylcles:
nop
loop cylcles
}
}
The Sleep function is limited by the resolution of the system clock, so Sleep (1) may not be doing what you want.
Consider some multiplication to increase the range. Then use the result to seed a PRNG.