4/1/2010

Performance Analysis and Loop Optimization

David Levinthal Principal Engineer SSG/DPD SSG/

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4/1/2010

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Agenda
Dominant issues in loop analysis Using LBRs g Example

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4/1/2010

What matters when optimizing a loop?

1. The Trip Count

2. The Trip Count

3.The TRIP COUNT!

4. Variations in the tripcount 5. And some other things

BUT..what you do about them depends on THE TRIP COUNT

And of course there are virtually no tools to assist you in determining this..other than printf (you can use PIN..)
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The tripcount dictates optimization options, as it defines the time available to amortize the cost of the proposed solution Short loops tripcount < 7?
Unroll the loop completely/vectorize

Basic loop tripcount ranges (for short loops)

Medium loops 7<tripcount<15-20?

Most difficult case..too short to do much of anything, only option is vectorize

Medium_long

20<tripcount<50

Almost long enough for real options

Long loops 50-100 < tripcount

Lots of options

Of course all loops have their own issues

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Basic Branch Analysis

Vastly improved precise branch monitoring capabilities
16 deep Last Branch Record (LBR) Records Taken Branches and their targets
LBR can be filtered by branch type and privilege level

Precise br retired by branch type

Calls, conditional and all calls Coupled with LBR capture yields
Call counts Basic Block execution counts HW call graph

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Processing LBRs
Branch_0 Target_0

Branch_1

Target_1

All instructions between Target_0 and Branch_1 are retired 1 time All Basic Blocks between Target_0 and Branch_1 are executed 1 time All Branch Instructions between Target_0 and Branch_1 Branch 1 are not taken

So it would all Seem Very Straight Forward

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4/1/2010

Shadowing and Precise Data Collection The time between the counter overflow and the PEBS arming creates a shadow, d i h d during which events cannot hi h t t be collected ~8 cycles? Ex: conditional branches retired
Sequence of short BBs (< 3 cycles in duration) If branch into first overflows counter, Pebs event cannot occur until branch at end of 4th BB Intervening branches will never be sampled

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O 20 20 2 2 2 2 P 20 P C P C O P C O O

Shadowing
Assume 10 cycle shadow for this example
N N O O O P C P C P C 0 0 0

20

O means counter overflow P means PEBS enabled C means interupt occurs

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5N

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Reducing Shadowing Impact

Some events will never occur!
Falling into shadowed window

Use LBR to extend range of the single sample Count the number of objects in LBR and increment count for all of them by 1/NUM
Since you have only one sample

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Minimizing Shadowing Impact on BB Execution Count

Cycles/branch taken
O P 20 C O 20 2 2 2 2 P 20 C P C P C P C O O O O O P C P C 0 N N 0 0 0

Pebs Samples taken

Number of LBR entries

16N 16N 16N 16N 17N 18N

19N

In this example there are always y 16 BBs covered BB d in the LBR. Incrementing the BB execution count for each BB detected in the LBR, by 1/NUM_LBR-1 will greatly reduce the effect of shadowing

20

5N

Many more with 20 Cycles/branch taken

Many more with N Many more with 16 samples taken N LBR Entries Winning with High-K 45nm Technology
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20N

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Nested Loop with 8 Basic Blocks

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Basic Block Execution Counts

Basic Block
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Instructions inst_ret
4 8 6 8 3 2 11 40 158 40 183 3 2 5 0 0 0 0 1036 6 241 2757 8476 4228 10516 0 0 60

BB_exec(inst)
0 0 0 0

br_ret
0 0 0 0 914 140 0 904 601 830 487 0 0 116

lbr_all
0 0 0 0 9267 5054 9270 28312 9543 28602 9633 5 5 4251 3990

lbr_tkn
0 0 0 0

expected

345.33 3 21.91 68.92 53.65 105.7 57.46 12

6286 3167 6287 19394 6726 19761 6727

2

1 0.5 1 3 1 3 1 0.5

0 0

3122

tripcount sav loop executions

78.793
2000000 157587619

2762

405.1429 200000 81028571

9427.048 13333.3 1.26E+08

6480.952
13333.3 86412482

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Normalization = Tripcount
Using br_inst_retired.near_call is difficult as the function is only called a few thousand times, while the hottest function is called ~ ti hil th h tt t f ti i ll d 1million times The true tripcount is 16384 call count = loop_executions/16384
BB_exec(inst) br_ret 9618.38 4945.59 lbr_all 7671.73 lbr_tkn 5274.2

True Call Count from printf ~ 5750 (done with new 11.1 based build)
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Summary
LBRs are very useful

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