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cdg2lax
Adept I

GCN Instructions scheduling clarification

Hello All,

Disclaimer: I am new to GPU programming (started on Tuesday but not to parrallel programing or SIMD programming (Connection Machine 16K 1 bit processors running in SIMD fashion... I am dating myself here 😉 .

Also I did read the white paper 2620_final and the southern island ISA plus any other papers/presentations I could put my hands on...

I have a some questions regarding the way instructions are schedule on a GCN CU.

What I have understood so far:

A CU has 4 vector units 1 scalar and 1 LDS  and emit one instruction per cycles to each but

vector unit i consume 4 times the same instruction from  wavefront wf-ai (4 cycles) (i in {0,1,2,3})

The scalar unit get one instruction per cycle from 4 different wf-b0, wf-b1, wf-b2 and wf-b3. So seen from one vector unit one scalar instructions could be executed per 4 cycles if it belong to a wavefront not running on the vector unit.

Question 1: Could a wavefront with many successive scalar instructions (and no other wavefront in the CU in position to execute a scalar instruction)
run more than one scalar per 4 cycles group? (I will guess not, if the scalar unit as the same needs to hide pipeline latency than the vector units.)

Question 2: Could a LDS instruction and a scalar instruction belonging to the same wavefront run in the same time 4 cycles group?

                 Same question for LDS and Vector instructions of the same wavefront.

Question 3; Wavefront priority: does the priority affect LDS and scalar instruction dispatch over the whole CU or just on a per vector unit basis?

Question 5: On a Vector unit with two wavefront executing on it (same priority) could it be assumed that they will alternate every 4 cycles (no GDS or LDS pending execution or conflict)?

Questions 6: 64 bits instructions on the vector unit take 4 cycles (16 cycles for a wavefront) I understand it as a pure stall for that Vector unit but could 4 or more Scalar and LDS instructions belonging to other wavefront running on the same vector unit been executed during those cycles? 

Voila, I guess that will be it for now...

Thanks,

Eric L.

PS: The targeted app is of symbolic nature (marginal use of floating point) and it his latency sensible.

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4 Replies
realhet
Miniboss

Hi,

1: It can't. If you write 2 scalar instructions adjacent to each, then you simply lose a vector one. As I know it works in a cool coreography: there are phase differences between the 4 vector units (4 stage pipeline) so in each cycle the S unit belongs to a specific V unit only.

The goal is that you should insert S instructions into the V instruction stream in a way, that it doesn't make stall the V instructions at all.

Here are some rules:

- Don't place an S right after an S.

- Don't place an S right after a V which is writing into the S registers. (for example v_add_i32 which writer carry to S regs)

- Don't let 64bit instructions to be concentrated at on location, because there is a limit in the instruction decoder: Denser code needs more threads to hide this thing. Basically In an SVSVSVS pattern don't put a 64bit instruction right after another 64bit one. I mean, you could use more than one 64bit instr near, but later use more 32bit ones.

- The S and V instructions are completely separated from each other, you can use the result of an S instr in the next V instr, there'll be at least 4cycle gap between the S and the corresponding V instr.

- If VRegCount exceeds 128 (256 is the max), then the S unit will stall the vector units so badly. If you go below 129 then it means 2x more wavefronts, and that hides this kind of stall.

2: An LDS and S instructions can executed in 'paralell' like an S and a V. V cannot be combined with LDS because both uses VRegs. But LDS the result of an LDS operation is not immediate, you have to wait for it with s_wait instruction (you can do like 6-8 V instructions before the s_wait if you want).

3: I think this priority is managed on a higher level. -> Page 4 of GCN_2620_final.pdf  "work distributor". That distributes wavefronts across CUes.

5: 2 WF is not enough for the 4 V units. There should be 2*4 64threaded WFs to get peak performance out of V and S alu. So on a 2048steamed Tahiti you need at least 8192 threads, of if there are lot's of S instructions then 16K is better. (or 4x 128 threaded WF can be an option too per CU)

6: Those special instructions generating stalls. I'm not sure, but I think all the 64bit ones (including int and float) are bound to the Douple Precision stream processors. There are fewer of those than the 32bit V streams. On Tahiti the DP:SP ratio is 1:4. They work only exclusively, because the work with one register array.

("Connection Machine 16K 1 bit processors" I've looked up that on Wiki, those photographs with the many thousand processor usage leds. A radeon would be fun with a few hundred leds displaying actual CU usage )

@Realhet,

Thanks for your prompt answers.

As I am not interested in throughtput  but purely latency I need to understand precisely the minmal execution time and the caveats associated with each instructions.

So does a paper or web page describe the timing of an instruction for Tahiti chip as I will be working with a S9000?

Also the syntax to describe instructions in the ISA document are more often than not criptic: For example  V_ALIGNBYTE_B32 is described as

D.u = ({S0, S1} >>  8*S2.u[4:0])) & 0xFFFFFFFF

4:0 represent 5 bits I figure that one of the shift is 2 bits and the other is a sign 3 bits number in  order to enable left shifting for one of S0 or S1 VGRP.

But that is probably whishfull thinking. Where  is the syntax described more precisely?

Cheers.

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Latencyes:

I don't know about an exact documentation of that for each instruction.

If I don't know what slow an instruction is, I try measuring clock cycles with s_memtime. From now on a 1 'clock' is when s_memtime reports a difference of 1, when adding or removing a thing from the instr stream.

With s_memtime I can tell that a good VSVSVSVS instruction sequence is executed in sum(V) clocks, or there is a penalty there.

Basically there are 3 kinds of instructions (not talking about S, because if you do it well, then they executed transparently):

1 cycle: the simple 32bit ones: no matter if 1,2,or 3 operands.

4 cycle: the 64bit ones, or the complicated ones: precise sin/cos (there are coarse sin/cos as well in 1 clock)

many cycles: I think the complicated graphic things are using many clocks (for example the LIT lighting calculation instruction), but I'm just speculating, never tried...

1 cycle, but delayed completion with many cycles: these are LDS ops (around 5 clocks), memory ops (so many clocks)

Check the s_wait instruction -> it is to synchronize those very long memory/lds/gds latencyes (because the V/S stream still work while they're executes)

And there are penalties also:

If you put an S instruction after a V which writes s-regs (like compare ops, or add_i32) then it will punish you with +4 clocks. So a good SV pair will be executed in 1 cycle, and the above will take S-reg thing will take 5 cycles in total (reported by s_memtime).

Also there are some conflicts that you have to watch out for, and use either filling V instructions, or using the nop instruction (check in the manual! There are recommended nop times for different things, maybe there you can find some latency info you wanted)

V_ALIGNBYTE_B32 is described as

D.u = ({S0, S1} >>  8*S2.u[4:0])) & 0xFFFFFFFF

I think they just copy+pasted the description of V_ALIGNBIT_B32, there needed the 5 bits, here we need only 3 as you noticed.

And {S0, S1} means S0.u+S1.u<<32, a 64bit number, you can address a dword inside with the 3 LSB of S2.

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jesikakorla
Journeyman III

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