AVX2 slower than SSE on Haswell - c++

Question

I have the following code (normal, SSE and AVX):
int testSSE(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
int result[4] __attribute__((aligned(16))) = {0};
__m128i vresult = _mm_set1_epi32(0);
__m128i v1, v2, vmax;
for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k += 4) {
v1 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & lhs[k]);
v2 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & ghs[k]);
vmax = _mm_add_epi32(v1, v2);
vresult = _mm_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
}
_mm_store_si128((__m128i *) result, vresult);
int mymax = result[0];
for (int k = 1; k < 4; k++) {
if (result[k] > mymax) {
mymax = result[k];
}
}
return mymax;
}
int testAVX(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
int result[8] __attribute__((aligned(32))) = {0};
__m256i vresult = _mm256_set1_epi32(0);
__m256i v1, v2, vmax;
for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k += 8) {
v1 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & ghs[ k]);
v2 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & lhs[k]);
vmax = _mm256_add_epi32(v1, v2);
vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
}
_mm256_store_si256((__m256i *) result, vresult);
int mymax = result[0];
for (int k = 1; k < 8; k++) {
if (result[k] > mymax) {
mymax = result[k];
}
}
return mymax;
}
int testNormal(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
int max = 0;
int tempMax;
for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k++) {
tempMax = lhs[k] + ghs[k];
if (max < tempMax) {
max = tempMax;
}
}
return max;
}
All these functions are tested with the following code:
void alignTestSSE() {
aligned_vector lhs;
aligned_vector ghs;
int mySize = 4096;
int FinalResult;
int nofTestCases = 1000;
double time, time1, time2, time3;
vector<int> lhs2;
vector<int> ghs2;
lhs.resize(mySize);
ghs.resize(mySize);
lhs2.resize(mySize);
ghs2.resize(mySize);
srand(1);
for (int k = 0; k < mySize; k++) {
lhs[k] = randomNodeID(1000000);
lhs2[k] = lhs[k];
ghs[k] = randomNodeID(1000000);
ghs2[k] = ghs[k];
}
/* Warming UP */
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs);
}
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs);
}
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs);
}
cout << "===========================" << endl;
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs);
}
time = timestamp() - time;
time1 = time;
cout << "SSE took " << time << " s" << endl;
cout << "SSE Result: " << FinalResult << endl;
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs);
}
time = timestamp() - time;
time3 = time;
cout << "AVX took " << time << " s" << endl;
cout << "AVX Result: " << FinalResult << endl;
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
FinalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs);
}
time = timestamp() - time;
cout << "Normal took " << time << " s" << endl;
cout << "Normal Result: " << FinalResult << endl;
cout << "SpeedUP SSE= " << time / time1 << " s" << endl;
cout << "SpeedUP AVX= " << time / time3 << " s" << endl;
cout << "===========================" << endl;
ghs.clear();
lhs.clear();
}
Where
inline double timestamp() {
struct timeval tp;
gettimeofday(&tp, NULL);
return double(tp.tv_sec) + tp.tv_usec / 1000000.;
}
And
typedef vector<int, aligned_allocator<int, sizeof (int)> > aligned_vector;
is an aligned vector using the AlignedAllocator of https://gist.github.com/donny-dont/1471329
I have an intel-i7 haswell 4771, and latest Ubuntu 14.04 64bit and gcc 4.8.2. Everything is up-to-date. I compiled with -march=native -mtune=native -O3 -m64.
Results are:
SSE took 0.000375986 s
SSE Result: 1982689
AVX took 0.000459909 s
AVX Result: 1982689
Normal took 0.00315714 s
Normal Result: 1982689
SpeedUP SSE= 8.39696 s
SpeedUP AVX= 6.8647 s
Which shows that the exact same code is 22% slower on AVX2 than SSE. Am I doing something wrong or is this normal behavior?

Answer 1

I converted your code to more vanilla C++ (plain arrays, no vectors, etc), cleaned it up and tested it with auto-vectorization disabled and got reasonable results:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstdint>
#include <immintrin.h>
inline double timestamp() {
struct timeval tp;
gettimeofday(&tp, NULL);
return double(tp.tv_sec) + tp.tv_usec / 1000000.;
}
int testSSE(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
int result[4] __attribute__((aligned(16))) = {0};
__m128i vresult = _mm_set1_epi32(0);
__m128i v1, v2, vmax;
for (int k = 0; k < n; k += 4) {
v1 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & lhs[k]);
v2 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & ghs[k]);
vmax = _mm_add_epi32(v1, v2);
vresult = _mm_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
}
_mm_store_si128((__m128i *) result, vresult);
int mymax = result[0];
for (int k = 1; k < 4; k++) {
if (result[k] > mymax) {
mymax = result[k];
}
}
return mymax;
}
int testAVX(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
int result[8] __attribute__((aligned(32))) = {0};
__m256i vresult = _mm256_set1_epi32(0);
__m256i v1, v2, vmax;
for (int k = 0; k < n; k += 8) {
v1 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & ghs[k]);
v2 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & lhs[k]);
vmax = _mm256_add_epi32(v1, v2);
vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
}
_mm256_store_si256((__m256i *) result, vresult);
int mymax = result[0];
for (int k = 1; k < 8; k++) {
if (result[k] > mymax) {
mymax = result[k];
}
}
return mymax;
}
int testNormal(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
int max = 0;
int tempMax;
for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
tempMax = lhs[k] + ghs[k];
if (max < tempMax) {
max = tempMax;
}
}
return max;
}
void alignTestSSE() {
int n = 4096;
int normalResult, sseResult, avxResult;
int nofTestCases = 1000;
double time, normalTime, sseTime, avxTime;
int lhs[n] __attribute__ ((aligned(32)));
int ghs[n] __attribute__ ((aligned(32)));
for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
lhs[k] = arc4random();
ghs[k] = arc4random();
}
/* Warming UP */
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
normalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs, n);
}
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
sseResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs, n);
}
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
avxResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs, n);
}
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
normalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs, n);
}
normalTime = timestamp() - time;
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
sseResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs, n);
}
sseTime = timestamp() - time;
time = timestamp();
for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
avxResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs, n);
}
avxTime = timestamp() - time;
cout << "===========================" << endl;
cout << "Normal took " << normalTime << " s" << endl;
cout << "Normal Result: " << normalResult << endl;
cout << "SSE took " << sseTime << " s" << endl;
cout << "SSE Result: " << sseResult << endl;
cout << "AVX took " << avxTime << " s" << endl;
cout << "AVX Result: " << avxResult << endl;
cout << "SpeedUP SSE= " << normalTime / sseTime << endl;
cout << "SpeedUP AVX= " << normalTime / avxTime << endl;
cout << "===========================" << endl;
}
int main()
{
alignTestSSE();
return 0;
}
Test:
$ clang++ -Wall -mavx2 -O3 -fno-vectorize SO_avx.cpp && ./a.out
===========================
Normal took 0.00324106 s
Normal Result: 2143749391
SSE took 0.000527859 s
SSE Result: 2143749391
AVX took 0.000221968 s
AVX Result: 2143749391
SpeedUP SSE= 6.14002
SpeedUP AVX= 14.6015
===========================
I suggest you try the above code, with -fno-vectorize (or -fno-tree-vectorize if using g++), and see if you get similar results. If you do then you can work backwards towards your original code to see where the inconsistency might be coming from.

Answer 2

On my machine (core i7-4900M), based on updated code from Paul R, with g++ 4.8.2with 100,000 iterations instead of 1000, I have the following results:
g++ -Wall -mavx2 -O3 -std=c++11 test_avx.cpp && ./a.exe
SSE took 508,029 us
AVX took 1,308,075 us
Normal took 297,017 us
g++ -Wall -mavx2 -O3 -std=c++11 -fno-tree-vectorize test_avx.cpp && ./a.exe
SSE took 509,029 us
AVX took 1,307,075 us
Normal took 3,436,197 us
GCC is doing an amazing job optimizing the "Normal" code. Yet the slow performance of the "AVX" code can be explained by the lines below, which requires a full 256 bit store (ouch!) followed by a max search over 8 integers.
_mm256_store_si256((__m256i *) result, vresult);
int mymax = result[0];
for (int k = 1; k < 8; k++) {
if (result[k] > mymax) {
mymax = result[k];
}
}
return mymax;
It is best to continue using AVX intrinsics for the max of 8. I can propose the following changes
v1 = _mm256_permute2x128_si256(vresult,vresult,1); // from ABCD-EFGH to ????-ABCD
vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, v1);
v1 = _mm256_permute4x64_epi64(vresult,1); // from ????-ABCD to ????-??AB
vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, v1);
v1 = _mm256_shuffle_epi32(vresult,1); // from ????-???AB to ????-???A
vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, v1);
// no _mm256_extract_epi32 => need extra step
__m128i vres128 = _mm256_extracti128_si256(vresult,0);
return _mm_extract_epi32(vres128,0);
For a fair comparaison, I have also updated the SSE code, I have then:
SSE took 483,028 us
AVX took 258,015 us
Normal took 307,017 us
AVX time has decreased by a factor 5!

Answer 3

Doing loop unrolling manually can speed up above SSE/AVX code.
Original version on my i5-5300U:
Normal took 0.347 s
Normal Result: 2146591543
AVX took 0.409 s
AVX Result: 2146591543
SpeedUP AVX= 0.848411
After manual loop unrolling:
Normal took 0.375 s
Normal Result: 2146591543
AVX took 0.297 s
AVX Result: 2146591543
SpeedUP AVX= 1.26263