[R-pkg-devel] using portable simd instructions

I tried that but I found the interface awkward and there was really no
performance bonus. It was in the early phase of experimentation and I
didn't save it, so it could very well be that I got the compiler
settings wrong and simd was not used. But if that was the case, there
would still be the problem of using the correct compiler settings
cross platform.

Op wo 27 mrt 2024 om 14:44 schreef Serguei Sokol <serguei.sokol at gmail.com>:

Le 26/03/2024 ? 15:51, Tomas Kalibera a ?crit :

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.

Talking about libraries, may be the
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/experimental/simd will do the job?

Best,
Serguei.

   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