On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 1:18 PM Richard Sandiford via Gcc-patches
<gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Richard Biener <rguent...@suse.de> writes:
> > On Wed, 12 Apr 2023, juzhe.zh...@rivai.ai wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> >> Thanks for the detailed explanation. Just to clarify - with RVV
> >> >> there's only a single mask register, v0.t, or did you want to
> >> >> say an instruction can only specify a single mask register?
> >>
> >> RVV has 32 (v0~v31) vector register in total.
> >> We can store vector data value or mask value in any of them.
> >> We also have mask-logic instruction for example mask-and between any
> >> vector register.
> >>
> >> However, any vector operation for example like vadd.vv can only
> >> predicated by v0 (in asm is v0.t) which is the first vector register.
> >> We can predicate vadd.vv with v1 - v31.
> >>
> >> So, you can image every time we want to use a mask to predicate a vector
> >> operation, we should always first store the mask value
> >> into v0.
> >>
> >> So, we can write intrinsic sequence like this:
> >>
> >> vmseq v0,v8,v9 (store mask value to v0)
> >> vmslt v1,v10,v11 (store mask value to v1)
> >> vmand v0,v0,v1
> >> vadd.vv ...v0.t (predicate mask should always be mask).
> >
> > Ah, I see - that explains it well.
> >
> >> >> ARM SVE would have a loop control mask and a separate mask
> >> >> for the if (cond[i]) which would be combined with a mask-and
> >> >> instruction to a third mask which is then used on the
> >> >> predicated instructions.
> >>
> >> Yeah, I know it. ARM SVE way is a more elegant way than RVV do.
> >> However, for RVV, we can't follow this flow.
> >> We don't have a "whilelo" instruction to generate loop control mask.
> >
> > Yep. Similar for AVX512 where I have to use a vector compare. I'm
> > currently using
> >
> > { 0, 1, 2 ... } < { remaining_len, remaining_len, ... }
> >
> > and careful updating of remaining_len (we know it will either
> > be adjusted by the full constant vector length or updated to zero).
> >
> >> We only can do loop control with length generated by vsetvl.
> >> And we can only use "v0" to mask predicate vadd.vv, and mask value can
> >> only generated by comparison or mask logical instructions.
> >>
> >> >> PowerPC and s390x might be able to use WHILE_LEN as well (though
> >> >> they only have LEN variants of loads and stores) - of course
> >> >> only "simulating it". For the fixed-vector-length ISAs the
> >> >> predicated vector loop IMHO makes most sense for the epilogue to
> >> >> handle low-trip loops better.
> >>
> >> Yeah, I wonder how they do the flow control (if (cond[i])).
> >> For RVV, you can image I will need to add a pattern
> >> LEN_MASK_LOAD/LEN_MASK_STORE (length generated by WHILE_LEN and mask
> >> generated by comparison)
> >>
> >> I think we can CC IBM folks to see whether we can make WHILE_LEN works
> >> for both IBM and RVV ?
> >
> > I've CCed them. Adding WHILE_LEN support to rs6000/s390x would be
> > mainly the "easy" way to get len-masked (epilog) loop support.
>
> I think that already works for them (could be misremembering).
> However, IIUC, they have no special instruction to calculate the
> length (unlike for RVV), and so it's open-coded using vect_get_len.
>
> I suppose my two questions are:
>
> (1) How easy would it be to express WHILE_LEN in normal gimple?
> I haven't thought about this at all, so the answer might be
> "very hard". But it reminds me a little of UQDEC on AArch64,
> which we open-code using MAX_EXPR and MINUS_EXPR (see
> vect_set_loop_controls_directly).
>
> I'm not saying WHILE_LEN is the same operation, just that it seems
> like it might be open-codeable in a similar way.
I think WHILE_LEN is saturate-to-zero subtraction. So when the IV
can be expressed signed
remain = MAX (0, remain - vf);
the details are more complicated then you need an unsigned IV.
It might be that WHILE_LEN for RVV computes remain % VL
so another MIN around (not sure). For the AVX512 work I
also have a scalar 'remain' like above but currently I'm adding
a branch
do {
if (remain < vf)
mask = ... vector compare ..;
else
mask = all-ones;
} while (mask-not-all-zeros);
so I'm using the mask as control "IV". But that's because I do
open-code WHILE_ULT at RTL expansion time and this is how
the vectorizer works for SVE.
When manually creating a loop mask in the vectorizer tracking
'remain' is easier. Note the extra control flow complicates the
fully masked variant, for the epilog we know remain < vf and
that we'll immediately exit the loop.
> Even if we can open-code it, we'd still need some way for the
> target to select the "RVV way" from the "s390/PowerPC way".
>
> (2) What effect does using a variable IV step (the result of
> the WHILE_LEN) have on ivopts? I remember experimenting with
> something similar once (can't remember the context) and not
> having a constant step prevented ivopts from making good
> addresing-mode choices.
Any kind of variable length stuff (WHILE_ULT or WHILE_LEN) will probably
make niter analysis fail. All IV uses that are not SCEV analyzable will
just remain as-is as IVOPTs cannot deal with them either - but usually
that should be only the control IV.
Richard.
>
> Thanks,
> Richard
>
>
