[R-pkg-devel] using portable simd instructions
On 3/26/24 10:53, jesse koops wrote:
Hello R-package-devel,
I recently got inspired by the rcppsimdjson package to try out simd
registers. It works fantastic on my computer but I struggle to find
information on how to make it portable. It doesn't help in this case
that R and Rcpp make including Cpp code so easy that I have never had
to learn about cmake and compiler flags. I would appreciate any help,
including of the type: "go read instructions at ...".
I use RcppArmadillo and Rcpp. I currenlty include the following header:
#include <immintrin.h>
The functions in immintrin that I use are:
_mm256_loadu_pd
_mm256_set1_pd
_mm256_mul_pd
_mm256_fmadd_pd
_mm256_storeu_pd
and I define up to four __m256d registers. From information found
online (not sure where anymore) I constructed the following makevars
file:
CXX_STD = CXX14
PKG_CPPFLAGS = -I../inst/include -mfma -msse4.2 -mavx
PKG_CXXFLAGS = $(SHLIB_OPENMP_CXXFLAGS)
PKG_LIBS = $(SHLIB_OPENMP_CXXFLAGS) $(LAPACK_LIBS) $(BLAS_LIBS) $(FLIBS)
(I also use openmp, that has always worked fine, I just included all
lines for completeness) Rcheck gives me two notes:
? using R version 4.3.2 (2023-10-31 ucrt)
? using platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32 (64-bit)
? R was compiled by
gcc.exe (GCC) 12.3.0
GNU Fortran (GCC) 12.3.0
? checking compilation flags used ... NOTE
Compilation used the following non-portable flag(s):
'-mavx' '-mfma' '-msse4.2'
? checking C++ specification ... NOTE
Specified C++14: please drop specification unless essential
But as far as I understand, the flags are necessary, at least in GCC.
How can I make this portable and CRAN-acceptable?
I think it the best way for portability is to use a higher-level library that already has done the low-level business of maintaining multiple versions of the code (with multiple instruction sets) and choosing one appropriate for the current CPU. It could be say LAPACK, BLAS, openmp, depending of the problem at hand. In some cases, code can be rewritten so that the compiler can vectorize it better, using the level of vectorized instructions that have been enabled. Unconditionally using GCC-specific or architecture-specific options in packages would certainly not be portable. Even on Windows, R is now used also with clang and on aarch64, so one should not assume a concrete compiler and architecture. Please note also that GCC on Windows has a bug due to which AVX2 instructions cannot be used reliably - the compiler doesn't always properly align local variables on the stack when emitting these. See [1,2] for more information. Best Tomas [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-windows/2024q1/000113.html [2] https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=54412
kind regards, Jesse
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