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LLVM-EXEGESIS(1) LLVM LLVM-EXEGESIS(1)
NAME
llvm-exegesis - LLVM Machine Instruction Benchmark
SYNOPSIS
llvm-exegesis [options]
DESCRIPTION
llvm-exegesis is a benchmarking tool that uses information available in
LLVM to measure host machine instruction characteristics like latency,
throughput, or port decomposition.
Given an LLVM opcode name and a benchmarking mode, llvm-exegesis
generates a code snippet that makes execution as serial (resp. as
parallel) as possible so that we can measure the latency (resp. inverse
throughput/uop decomposition) of the instruction. The code snippet is
jitted and executed on the host subtarget. The time taken (resp.
resource usage) is measured using hardware performance counters. The
result is printed out as YAML to the standard output.
The main goal of this tool is to automatically (in)validate the LLVM's
TableDef scheduling models. To that end, we also provide analysis of
the results.
llvm-exegesis can also benchmark arbitrary user-provided code snippets.
EXAMPLE 1: BENCHMARKING INSTRUCTIONS
Assume you have an X86-64 machine. To measure the latency of a single
instruction, run:
$ llvm-exegesis -mode=latency -opcode-name=ADD64rr
Measuring the uop decomposition or inverse throughput of an instruction
works similarly:
$ llvm-exegesis -mode=uops -opcode-name=ADD64rr
$ llvm-exegesis -mode=inverse_throughput -opcode-name=ADD64rr
The output is a YAML document (the default is to write to stdout, but
you can redirect the output to a file using -benchmarks-file):
---
key:
opcode_name: ADD64rr
mode: latency
config: ''
cpu_name: haswell
llvm_triple: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
num_repetitions: 10000
measurements:
- { key: latency, value: 1.0058, debug_string: '' }
error: ''
info: 'explicit self cycles, selecting one aliasing configuration.
Snippet:
ADD64rr R8, R8, R10
'
...
the snippets-file option (- reads from standard input).
$ echo "vzeroupper" | llvm-exegesis -mode=uops -snippets-file=-
Real-life code snippets typically depend on registers or memory.
llvm-exegesis checks the liveliness of registers (i.e. any register use
has a corresponding def or is a "live in"). If your code depends on the
value of some registers, you have two options:
o Mark the register as requiring a definition. llvm-exegesis will
automatically assign a value to the register. This can be done using
the directive LLVM-EXEGESIS-DEFREG <reg name> <hex_value>, where
<hex_value> is a bit pattern used to fill <reg_name>. If <hex_value>
is smaller than the register width, it will be sign-extended.
o Mark the register as a "live in". llvm-exegesis will benchmark using
whatever value was in this registers on entry. This can be done using
the directive LLVM-EXEGESIS-LIVEIN <reg name>.
For example, the following code snippet depends on the values of XMM1
(which will be set by the tool) and the memory buffer passed in RDI
(live in).
# LLVM-EXEGESIS-LIVEIN RDI
# LLVM-EXEGESIS-DEFREG XMM1 42
vmulps (%rdi), %xmm1, %xmm2
vhaddps %xmm2, %xmm2, %xmm3
addq $0x10, %rdi
EXAMPLE 3: ANALYSIS
Assuming you have a set of benchmarked instructions (either latency or
uops) as YAML in file /tmp/benchmarks.yaml, you can analyze the results
using the following command:
$ llvm-exegesis -mode=analysis \
-benchmarks-file=/tmp/benchmarks.yaml \
-analysis-clusters-output-file=/tmp/clusters.csv \
-analysis-inconsistencies-output-file=/tmp/inconsistencies.html
This will group the instructions into clusters with the same
performance characteristics. The clusters will be written out to
/tmp/clusters.csv in the following format:
cluster_id,opcode_name,config,sched_class
...
2,ADD32ri8_DB,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD32ri_DB,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD32rr,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD32rr_DB,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD32rr_REV,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD64i32,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD64ri32,,WriteALU,1.01
2,MOVSX64rr32,,BSWAP32r_BSWAP64r_MOVSX64rr32,1.00
2,VPADDQYrr,,VPADDBYrr_VPADDDYrr_VPADDQYrr_VPADDWYrr_VPSUBBYrr_VPSUBDYrr_VPSUBQYrr_VPSUBWYrr,1.02
2,VPSUBQYrr,,VPADDBYrr_VPADDDYrr_VPADDQYrr_VPADDWYrr_VPSUBBYrr_VPSUBDYrr_VPSUBQYrr_VPSUBWYrr,1.01
2,ADD64ri8,,WriteALU,1.00
2,SETBr,,WriteSETCC,1.01
...
shown. This does not invalidate any of the analysis results though.
OPTIONS
-help Print a summary of command line options.
-opcode-index=<LLVM opcode index>
Specify the opcode to measure, by index. Specifying -1 will
result in measuring every existing opcode. See example 1 for
details. Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must
be set.
-opcode-name=<opcode name 1>,<opcode name 2>,...
Specify the opcode to measure, by name. Several opcodes can be
specified as a comma-separated list. See example 1 for details.
Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must be set.
-snippets-file=<filename>
Specify the custom code snippet to measure. See example 2 for
details. Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must
be set.
-mode=[latency|uops|inverse_throughput|analysis]
Specify the run mode. Note that some modes have additional
requirements and options.
latency mode can be make use of either RDTSC or LBR.
latency[LBR] is only available on X86 (at least Skylake). To
run in latency mode, a positive value must be specified for
x86-lbr-sample-period and --repetition-mode=loop.
In analysis mode, you also need to specify at least one of the
-analysis-clusters-output-file= and
-analysis-inconsistencies-output-file=.
-x86-lbr-sample-period=<nBranches/sample>
Specify the LBR sampling period - how many branches before we
take a sample. When a positive value is specified for this
option and when the mode is latency, we will use LBRs for
measuring. On choosing the "right" sampling period, a small
value is preferred, but throttling could occur if the sampling
is too frequent. A prime number should be used to avoid
consistently skipping certain blocks.
-repetition-mode=[duplicate|loop|min]
Specify the repetition mode. duplicate will create a large,
straight line basic block with num-repetitions instructions
(repeating the snippet num-repetitions/snippet size times). loop
will, optionally, duplicate the snippet until the loop body
contains at least loop-body-size instructions, and then wrap the
result in a loop which will execute num-repetitions instructions
(thus, again, repeating the snippet num-repetitions/snippet size
times). The loop mode, especially with loop unrolling tends to
better hide the effects of the CPU frontend on architectures
that cache decoded instructions, but consumes a register for
counting iterations. If performing an analysis over many
opcodes, it may be best to instead use the min mode, which will
run each other mode, and produce the minimal measured result.
Only effective for -repetition-mode=[loop|min]. Instead of
looping over the snippet directly, first duplicate it so that
the loop body contains at least this many instructions. This
potentially results in loop body being cached in the CPU Op
Cache / Loop Cache, which allows to which may have higher
throughput than the CPU decoders.
-max-configs-per-opcode=<value>
Specify the maximum configurations that can be generated for
each opcode. By default this is 1, meaning that we assume that
a single measurement is enough to characterize an opcode. This
might not be true of all instructions: for example, the
performance characteristics of the LEA instruction on X86
depends on the value of assigned registers and immediates.
Setting a value of -max-configs-per-opcode larger than 1 allows
llvm-exegesis to explore more configurations to discover if some
register or immediate assignments lead to different performance
characteristics.
-benchmarks-file=</path/to/file>
File to read (analysis mode) or write
(latency/uops/inverse_throughput modes) benchmark results. "-"
uses stdin/stdout.
-analysis-clusters-output-file=</path/to/file>
If provided, write the analysis clusters as CSV to this file.
"-" prints to stdout. By default, this analysis is not run.
-analysis-inconsistencies-output-file=</path/to/file>
If non-empty, write inconsistencies found during analysis to
this file. - prints to stdout. By default, this analysis is not
run.
-analysis-clustering=[dbscan,naive]
Specify the clustering algorithm to use. By default DBSCAN will
be used. Naive clustering algorithm is better for doing further
work on the -analysis-inconsistencies-output-file= output, it
will create one cluster per opcode, and check that the cluster
is stable (all points are neighbours).
-analysis-numpoints=<dbscan numPoints parameter>
Specify the numPoints parameters to be used for DBSCAN
clustering (analysis mode, DBSCAN only).
-analysis-clustering-epsilon=<dbscan epsilon parameter>
Specify the epsilon parameter used for clustering of benchmark
points (analysis mode).
-analysis-inconsistency-epsilon=<epsilon>
Specify the epsilon parameter used for detection of when the
cluster is different from the LLVM schedule profile values
(analysis mode).
-analysis-display-unstable-clusters
If there is more than one benchmark for an opcode, said
benchmarks may end up not being clustered into the same cluster
if the measured performance characteristics are different. by
default all such opcodes are filtered out. This flag will
instead show only such unstable opcodes.
this CPU. This is useful when creating new sched models (the
host CPU is unknown to LLVM).
--dump-object-to-disk=true
By default, llvm-exegesis will dump the generated code to a
temporary file to enable code inspection. You may disable it to
speed up the execution and save disk space.
EXIT STATUS
llvm-exegesis returns 0 on success. Otherwise, an error message is
printed to standard error, and the tool returns a non 0 value.
AUTHOR
Maintained by the LLVM Team (https://llvm.org/).
COPYRIGHT
2003-2023, LLVM Project
15 2023-12-15 LLVM-EXEGESIS(1)