Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-18 Thread Michael Hope
On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 2:21 AM, Andy Doan  wrote:
> On 08/17/2011 04:59 PM, Michael Hope wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Dave Martin  wrote:
>>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Zach Pfeffer  
>>> wrote:
 Nicolas,

 Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
 affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
 importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
 macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
 some more specific benchmark numbers at:

  https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking
>>>
>>> If we're confident that the benchmark produces results of a
>>> trustworthy quality, then that's fine.  I don't know this benchmark in
>>> detail, so I can't really judge, other than that the results look a
>>> bit odd.
>>
>> Ditto on that.  Have these benchmarks been qualified?  Do they
>> represent real workloads?  Where do they come from?  What aspects of
>> the system (CPU, memory, I/O, kernel, SMP) do they exercise?  How
>> sensitive are they to minor changes?
>
> The benchmark code comes from Android:
>  http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=toolchain/benchmark.git
>
> I'm not an expert on benchmarking. I've just tried to focus on running
> these in a way that's as fair and repeatable as possible.

OK.  Just keep an eye out then.  If the benchmarks are dominated by
things that Linaro isn't working on (such as I/O performance or memory
bandwidth) then the results won't change.  If they're dominated by
certain inner functions that are very sensitive to environment
changes, then you may see a regression.  Benchmarks need to represent
the workloads of a real system.

-- Michael

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-18 Thread Andy Doan
On 08/17/2011 04:59 PM, Michael Hope wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Dave Martin  wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Zach Pfeffer  
>> wrote:
>>> Nicolas,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
>>> affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
>>> importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
>>> macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
>>> some more specific benchmark numbers at:
>>>
>>>  https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking
>>
>> If we're confident that the benchmark produces results of a
>> trustworthy quality, then that's fine.  I don't know this benchmark in
>> detail, so I can't really judge, other than that the results look a
>> bit odd.
> 
> Ditto on that.  Have these benchmarks been qualified?  Do they
> represent real workloads?  Where do they come from?  What aspects of
> the system (CPU, memory, I/O, kernel, SMP) do they exercise?  How
> sensitive are they to minor changes?

The benchmark code comes from Android:
  http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=toolchain/benchmark.git

I'm not an expert on benchmarking. I've just tried to focus on running
these in a way that's as fair and repeatable as possible.

> gnugo in particular is a problem - the results don't change across a
> range of toolchains which suggests it's got a silly hot loop or isn't
> core bound.
> 


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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-17 Thread Michael Hope
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Dave Martin  wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Zach Pfeffer  wrote:
>> Nicolas,
>>
>> Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
>> affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
>> importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
>> macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
>> some more specific benchmark numbers at:
>>
>>  https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking
>
> If we're confident that the benchmark produces results of a
> trustworthy quality, then that's fine.  I don't know this benchmark in
> detail, so I can't really judge, other than that the results look a
> bit odd.

Ditto on that.  Have these benchmarks been qualified?  Do they
represent real workloads?  Where do they come from?  What aspects of
the system (CPU, memory, I/O, kernel, SMP) do they exercise?  How
sensitive are they to minor changes?

gnugo in particular is a problem - the results don't change across a
range of toolchains which suggests it's got a silly hot loop or isn't
core bound.

-- Michael

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-17 Thread Zach Pfeffer
On 17 August 2011 04:12, Dave Martin  wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Zach Pfeffer  wrote:
>> Nicolas,
>>
>> Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
>> affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
>> importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
>> macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
>> some more specific benchmark numbers at:
>>
>>  https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking
>
> If we're confident that the benchmark produces results of a
> trustworthy quality, then that's fine.  I don't know this benchmark in
> detail, so I can't really judge, other than that the results look a
> bit odd.
>
> But a performance comparison where the "fast" board occasionally
> produces worse numbers than "slow" board does rather undermine the
> argument -- when a given person comes to look at the demo and watches
> a single run then that result may be the only thing they see, and they
> may take away a negative impression.  Explanations can be made of
> course, but the point of a demo is that seeing is believing.

Sure. I have seen it be slower in a few instances.

> There might be ways to modify the demo to show the comparison a bit
> better though.  Someone (kiko?) suggested running the rendering
> continuously throughout the day, with a total frame count displayed
> for each board or something.  This could show more effectively the
> long-term average performance, and would smooth out the impact of
> short-term OS housekeeping tasks and other junk which may execute
> randomly during the demo.

Yeah, that sounds good. Most of our improvements are against the code
running on the main core so anything compute bound should work.
Perhaps we could do a fractal demo and throw up a realtime, slightly
transparent, dashboard that showed the results as the demo free ran.

> Cheers
> ---Dave
>
>
>
>
>>
>> -Zach
>>
>> On 13 August 2011 06:07, Dechesne, Nicolas  wrote:
>>> Zach,
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:56 AM, Zach Pfeffer 
>>> wrote:

 The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
 cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
 compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
 ship with our Android images from 0xlab. Each build ran the same
 Android userspace, 2.3.4, but one was using the 2.6.36 Linux kernel
 and GCC 4.4 from the stock AOSP distribution and one was using an
 upgraded Linaro 3.0 Linux kernel with Linaro GCC 4.5. We ran the board
 in 640x480 mode so that we wouldn't be memory bound.
>>>
>>>  have you checked all clock configuration and ensure they are the same? .36
>>> seems quite old (in the pandaboard lifetime) and i would suspect the CPU and
>>> memory clocks could be wrong compared to the linaro 3.0 (which I tried
>>> recently and which seems to have the right config). there are all bunch of
>>> kernel settings that can largely impact your demo like cache settings for
>>> example...
>>>
>>> since DVFS is not enabled in both kernel I believe, the clock setting might
>>> very well come from the bootloaders. which xloader and uboot are you using
>>> in both cases?
>>>
>>> have you tried to run the same demo with the exact same bootloaders and
>>> kernel? just a different user space built with 2 different compilers? I
>>> don't expect performances improvements to come from the kernel anyways (at
>>> least for such benchmark) that way you are sure you are really looking at
>>> GCC improvements. similarly you can run the same user space with both
>>> kernels.
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Martin 
> Linaro Kernel Working Group
>
> --
> http://www.linaro.org/ -- Open source software for ARM SoCs
>
> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Linaro
> http://twitter.com/#!/linaroorg
> http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/
>

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-17 Thread Dave Martin
On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Zach Pfeffer  wrote:
> Nicolas,
>
> Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
> affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
> importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
> macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
> some more specific benchmark numbers at:
>
>  https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking

If we're confident that the benchmark produces results of a
trustworthy quality, then that's fine.  I don't know this benchmark in
detail, so I can't really judge, other than that the results look a
bit odd.

But a performance comparison where the "fast" board occasionally
produces worse numbers than "slow" board does rather undermine the
argument -- when a given person comes to look at the demo and watches
a single run then that result may be the only thing they see, and they
may take away a negative impression.  Explanations can be made of
course, but the point of a demo is that seeing is believing.

There might be ways to modify the demo to show the comparison a bit
better though.  Someone (kiko?) suggested running the rendering
continuously throughout the day, with a total frame count displayed
for each board or something.  This could show more effectively the
long-term average performance, and would smooth out the impact of
short-term OS housekeeping tasks and other junk which may execute
randomly during the demo.

Cheers
---Dave




>
> -Zach
>
> On 13 August 2011 06:07, Dechesne, Nicolas  wrote:
>> Zach,
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:56 AM, Zach Pfeffer 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
>>> cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
>>> compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
>>> ship with our Android images from 0xlab. Each build ran the same
>>> Android userspace, 2.3.4, but one was using the 2.6.36 Linux kernel
>>> and GCC 4.4 from the stock AOSP distribution and one was using an
>>> upgraded Linaro 3.0 Linux kernel with Linaro GCC 4.5. We ran the board
>>> in 640x480 mode so that we wouldn't be memory bound.
>>
>>  have you checked all clock configuration and ensure they are the same? .36
>> seems quite old (in the pandaboard lifetime) and i would suspect the CPU and
>> memory clocks could be wrong compared to the linaro 3.0 (which I tried
>> recently and which seems to have the right config). there are all bunch of
>> kernel settings that can largely impact your demo like cache settings for
>> example...
>>
>> since DVFS is not enabled in both kernel I believe, the clock setting might
>> very well come from the bootloaders. which xloader and uboot are you using
>> in both cases?
>>
>> have you tried to run the same demo with the exact same bootloaders and
>> kernel? just a different user space built with 2 different compilers? I
>> don't expect performances improvements to come from the kernel anyways (at
>> least for such benchmark) that way you are sure you are really looking at
>> GCC improvements. similarly you can run the same user space with both
>> kernels.
>>
>>
>
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>



-- 
Dave Martin 
Linaro Kernel Working Group

--
http://www.linaro.org/ -- Open source software for ARM SoCs

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Linaro
http://twitter.com/#!/linaroorg
http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-16 Thread Zach Pfeffer
Nicolas,

Thanks for the notes. As you say there are many, many things that can
affect this demo. What notes like this really underscore is the
importance of staying up-to-date. This demo is more about the
macroscopic effects from tip support than anything else. We do have
some more specific benchmark numbers at:

 https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking

-Zach

On 13 August 2011 06:07, Dechesne, Nicolas  wrote:
> Zach,
>
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:56 AM, Zach Pfeffer 
> wrote:
>>
>> The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
>> cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
>> compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
>> ship with our Android images from 0xlab. Each build ran the same
>> Android userspace, 2.3.4, but one was using the 2.6.36 Linux kernel
>> and GCC 4.4 from the stock AOSP distribution and one was using an
>> upgraded Linaro 3.0 Linux kernel with Linaro GCC 4.5. We ran the board
>> in 640x480 mode so that we wouldn't be memory bound.
>
>  have you checked all clock configuration and ensure they are the same? .36
> seems quite old (in the pandaboard lifetime) and i would suspect the CPU and
> memory clocks could be wrong compared to the linaro 3.0 (which I tried
> recently and which seems to have the right config). there are all bunch of
> kernel settings that can largely impact your demo like cache settings for
> example...
>
> since DVFS is not enabled in both kernel I believe, the clock setting might
> very well come from the bootloaders. which xloader and uboot are you using
> in both cases?
>
> have you tried to run the same demo with the exact same bootloaders and
> kernel? just a different user space built with 2 different compilers? I
> don't expect performances improvements to come from the kernel anyways (at
> least for such benchmark) that way you are sure you are really looking at
> GCC improvements. similarly you can run the same user space with both
> kernels.
>
>

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-13 Thread Dechesne, Nicolas
Zach,

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:56 AM, Zach Pfeffer wrote:

> The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
> cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
> compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
> ship with our Android images from 0xlab. Each build ran the same
> Android userspace, 2.3.4, but one was using the 2.6.36 Linux kernel
> and GCC 4.4 from the stock AOSP distribution and one was using an
> upgraded Linaro 3.0 Linux kernel with Linaro GCC 4.5. We ran the board
> in 640x480 mode so that we wouldn't be memory bound.
>

 have you checked all clock configuration and ensure they are the same? .36
seems quite old (in the pandaboard lifetime) and i would suspect the CPU and
memory clocks could be wrong compared to the linaro 3.0 (which I tried
recently and which seems to have the right config). there are all bunch of
kernel settings that can largely impact your demo like cache settings for
example...

since DVFS is not enabled in both kernel I believe, the clock setting might
very well come from the bootloaders. which xloader and uboot are you using
in both cases?

have you tried to run the same demo with the exact same bootloaders and
kernel? just a different user space built with 2 different compilers? I
don't expect performances improvements to come from the kernel anyways (at
least for such benchmark) that way you are sure you are really looking at
GCC improvements. similarly you can run the same user space with both
kernels.
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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-13 Thread Jim Huang
2011/8/11 Zach Pfeffer :
> Ramin,
>
> Thanks for the email. I've added linaro-dev to my response.

hi Ramin and Zach,

> The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
> cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
> compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
> ship with our Android images from 0xlab.
[...]

For more information, please check the wiki:
http://code.google.com/p/0xbench/wiki/Benchmarks

Recently, we even added JavaScript benchmark.  And, every piece of
0xbench is licensed in the form of open source:
http://gitorious.org/0xbench

We are considering to integrate existing OpenGL|ES benchmark tests
such as glmark2:
https://launchpad.net/glmark2

Sincerely,
-jserv

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Re: 3D Demo at ARM

2011-08-10 Thread Zach Pfeffer
Ramin,

Thanks for the email. I've added linaro-dev to my response.

The demo consisted of two identical PandaBoards with identical SD
cards running the 3D benchmark of 0xbench using software 3D to amplify
compiler and kernel improvements. 0xbench is a benchmarking program we
ship with our Android images from 0xlab. Each build ran the same
Android userspace, 2.3.4, but one was using the 2.6.36 Linux kernel
and GCC 4.4 from the stock AOSP distribution and one was using an
upgraded Linaro 3.0 Linux kernel with Linaro GCC 4.5. We ran the board
in 640x480 mode so that we wouldn't be memory bound.

Users can use and recreate the builds easily. To program the builds visit

2.6.36
https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/panda-11.05-release/

and

3.0
https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/panda-11.07-release/

To recreate the builds from scratch visit:

https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/GetSource
https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/BuildSource

Here's a video of demo running:

https://plus.google.com/104422661029399872488/posts/Rjmo5HCHQxZ
(this is running in 720P mode not 640x480)

I'm happy to help you reproduce the demos. Feel free to drop by
#linaro-android on freenode.

-Zach

On 10 August 2011 06:24, Ramin Zaghi  wrote:
> Hi Zach
>
>
>
> I didn’t get a chance to see you yesterday so got your card from the table.
> I was one of the first
> employees of our Multimedia Division who was from a game-dev background.
>
> Your demos were interesting so I was wondering if I could ask for a bit of
> explanation, and what they were?
>
> I also like to know what engine they were running or was it a custom bit of
> code that you wrote?
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> Ramin
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Ramin Zaghi
>
> Software Engineer
>
> Processor Division / PDSW
>
> --
>
> ARM Ltd.
>
> 110 Fulbourn Road
>
> Cambridge
>
> CB1 9NJ, UK
>
> --
>
> Tel: +44 1223 406347
>
> [Extn 22347]
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -- IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are
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