An Introduction to GCC Compiler Intrinsics in Vector Processing

Suggestions for Writing Vector Code

Examine the Tradeoffs

Writing vector code with intrinsics forces you to make trade-offs. Your program will have a balance between scalar and vector operations. Do you have enough work for the vector hardware to make using it worthwhile? You must balance the portability of C against the need for speed and the complexity of vector code, especially if you maintain code paths for scalar and vector code. You must judge the need for speed versus accuracy. It may be that integer math will be fast enough and accurate enough to meet the need. One way to make those decisions is to test: write your program with a scalar code path and a vector code path and compare the two.

Data Structures

Start by laying out your data structures assuming that you'll be using intrinsics. This means getting data items aligned. If you can arrange the data for uniform vectors, do that.

Write Portable Scalar Code and Profile

Next, write your portable scalar code and profile it. This will be your reference code for correctness and the baseline to time your vector code. Profiling the code will show where the bottlenecks are. Make vector versions of the bottlenecks.

Write Vector Code

When you're writing that vector code, group the non-portable code into separate files by architecture. Write a separate Makefile for each architecture. That makes it easy to select the files you want to compile and supply arguments to the compiler for each architecture. Minimize the intermixing of scalar and vector code.

Use Compiler-Supplied Symbols if you #ifdef

For files that are common to more than one architecture, but have architecture-specific parts, you can #ifdef with symbols supplied by the compiler when SIMD instructions are available. These are:

• __MMX__ -- X86 MMX
• __SSE__ -- X86 SSE
• __SSE2__ -- X86 SSE2
• __VEC__ -- altivec functions
• __ARM_NEON__ -- neon functions

To see the baseline macros defined for other processors:

touch emptyfile.c
gcc -E -dD emptyfile.c | more

To see what's added for SIMD, do this with the SIMD command-line arguments for your compiler (see Table 1). For example:

touch emptyfile.c
gcc -E -dD emptyfile.c -mmmx -msse  -msse2 -mfpmath=sse | more

Then compare the two results.

Check Processor at Runtime

Next, your code should check your processor at runtime to see if you have vector support for it. If you don't have a vector code path for that processor, fall back to your scalar code. If you have vector support, and the vector support is faster, use the vector code path. Test processor features on X86 with the cpuid instruction from <cpuid.h>. (You saw examples of that in samples/simple/x86/*c.) We couldn't find something that well established for Altivec and Neon, so the examples there parse /proc/cpuinfo. (Serious code might insert a test SIMD instruction. If the processor throws a SIGILL signal when it encounters that test instruction, you do not have that feature.)

Test, Test, Test

Test everything. Test for timing: see if your scalar or vector code is faster. Test for correct results: compare the results of your vector code against the results of your scalar code. Test at different optimization levels: the behavior of the programs can change at different levels of optimization. Test against integer math versions of your code. Finally, watch for compiler bugs. GCC's SIMD and intrinsics are a work in progress.

This gets us to our last code sample. In samples/colorconv2 is a colorspace conversion library that takes images in non-planar YUV422 and turns them into RGBA. It runs on PowerPCs using Altivec; ARM Cortex-A using Neon; and X86 using MMX, SSE and SSE2. (We tested on PowerMac G5 running Fedora 12, a Beagleboard running Angstrom 2009.X-test-20090508 and a Pentium 3 running Fedora 10.) Colorconv detects CPU features and uses code for them. It falls back to scalar code if no supported features are detected.

To build, untar the sources file and run make. Make uses the "uname" command to look for an architecture specific Makefile. (Unfortunately, Angstrom's uname on Beagleboard returns "unknown", so that's what the directory is called.)

Test programs are built along with the library. Testrange compares the results of the scalar code to the vector code over the entire range of inputs. Testcolorconv runs timing tests comparing the code paths it has available (intrinsics and scalar code) so you can see which runs faster.