Details:
- Added language to docs/Multithreading.md cautioning the reader about
the nuances of setting multithreading parameters via the manual and
automatic ways simultaneously, and also about how these parameters
behave when multithreading is disabled at configure-time. These
changes are an attempt to address the issues that arose in issue #362.
Thanks to Jérémie du Boisberranger for his feedback on this topic.
- CREDITS file update.
Details:
- Inserted brief disclaimers about default disabled multithreading
and default single-threadedness to BuildSystem.md along with links to
the Multithreading.md document. Thanks to Jeff Diamond for suggesting
these additions.
- Trivial reword of sentence regarding automatically-detected
architectures.
Details:
- Added section titled "Reproduction" to both Performance.md and
PerformanceSmall.md that briefly nudges the motivated reader in the
right direction if he/she wishes to run the same performance
benchmarks used to produce the graphs shown in those documents.
Thanks to Dave Love for making this suggestion.
Details:
- Corrected links in contents section of docs/PerformanceSmall.md,
which were erroneously directing readers to the corresponding
sections of docs/Performance.md.
Details:
- Spell out the hack given to me by Sameer Agarwal in order to get Eigen
to build with -march=native (which is critically important for Eigen)
in docs/Performance.md and docs/PerformanceSmall.md.
Details:
- Added the page size, as returned via 'getconf -a | grep PAGE_SIZE',
and the location of the performance drivers to docs/Performance.md
(test/3) and docs/PerformanceSmall.md (test/sup). Thanks to Dave
Love for suggesting these additions in #325.
Details:
- Updated the BLASFEO performance graphs shown in PerformanceSmall.md
using a new commit of BLASFEO (2c9f312); updated PerformanceSmall.md
accordingly.
- Updated test/sup/octave/plot_l3sup_perf.m so that the .m files
containing the mpnpkp results do not need to be preprocessed in order
to plot half the problem size range (ie: up to 400 instead of the
800 range of the other shape cases).
- Trivial updates to runme.m.
Details:
- Updated the graphs linked in PerformanceSmall.md with BLASFEO results,
and added documenting language accordingly.
- Updated scripts in test/sup/octave to plot BLASFEO data.
- Minor tweak to language re: how OpenBLAS was configured for
docs/Performance.md.
Details:
- Added a new markdown document, docs/PerformanceSmall.md, which
publishes new performance graphs for Kaby Lake and Epyc showcasing
the new BLIS sup (small/skinny/unpacked) framework logic and kernels.
For now, only single-threaded dgemm performance is shown.
- Reorganized graphs in docs/graphs into docs/graphs/large, with new
graphs being placed in docs/graphs/sup.
- Updates to scripts in test/sup/octave, mostly to allow decent output
in both GNU octave and Matlab.
- Updated README.md to mention and refer to the new PerformanceSmall.md
document.
Details:
- Documented the BLIS environment variables that were set
(e.g. BLIS_JC_NT, BLIS_IC_NT, BLIS_JR_NT) for each machine and
threading configuration in order to achieve the parallelism reported
on in docs/Performance.md.
Details:
- Changed the default installation prefix from $HOME/lib to /usr/local.
- Modified the way configure internally handles the prefix, libdir,
includedir, and sharedir (and also added an --exec-prefix option).
The defaults to these variables are set as follows:
prefix: /usr/local
exec_prefix: ${prefix}
libdir: ${exec_prefix}/lib
includedir: ${prefix}/include
sharedir: ${prefix}/share
The key change, aside from the addition of exec_prefix and its use to
define the default to libdir, is that the variables are substituted
into config.mk with quoting that delays evaluation, meaning the
substituted values may contain unevaluated references to other
variables (namely, ${prefix} and ${exec_prefix}). This more closely
follows GNU conventions, including those used by GNU autoconf, and
also allows make to override any one of the variables *after*
configure has already been run (e.g. during 'make install').
- Updates to build/config.mk.in pursuant to above changes.
- Updates to output of 'configure --help' pursuant to above changes.
- Updated docs/BuildSystem.md to reflect the new default installation
prefix, as well as mention EXECPREFIX and SHAREDIR.
- Changed the definitions of the UNINSTALL_OLD_* variables in the
top-level Makefile to use $(wildcard ...) instead of 'find'. This
was motivated by the new way of handling prefix and friends, which
leads to the 'find' command being run on /usr/local (by default),
which can take a while almost never yielding any benefit (since the
user will very rarely use the uninstall-old targets).
- Removed periods from the end of descriptive output statements (i.e.,
non-verbose output) since those statements often end with file or
directory paths, which get confusing to read when puctuated by a
period.
- Trival change to 'make showconfig' output.
- Removed my name from 'configure --help'. (Many have contributed to it
over the years.)
- In configure script, changed the default state of threading_model
variable from 'no' to 'off' to match that of debug_type, where there
are similarly more than two valid states. ('no' is still accepted
if given via the --enable-debug= option, though it will be
standardized to 'off' prior to config.mk being written out.)
- Minor variable name change in flatten-headers.py that was intended for
32812ff.
- CREDITS file update.
Details:
- Updated the level-3 performance graphs in docs/graphs with new Eigen
results, this time using a development version cloned from their git
mirror on March 27, 2019 (version 3.3.90). Performance is improved
over 3.3.7, though still noticeably short of BLIS/MKL in most cases.
- Very minor updates to docs/Performance.md and matlab scripts in
test/3/matlab.
Details:
- Updated the Haswell, SkylakeX, and Epyc performance graphs in
docs/graphs to report on Eigen implementations, where applicable.
Specifically, Eigen implements all level-3 operations sequentially,
however, of those operations it only provides multithreaded gemm.
Thus, mt results for symm/hemm, syrk/herk, trmm, and trsm are
omitted. Thanks to Sameer Agarwal for his help configuring and
using Eigen.
- Updated docs/Performance.md to note the new implementation tested.
- CREDITS file update.
Details:
- Modified bli_blas.h so that:
- By default, if the BLAS layer is enabled at configure-time, BLAS
prototypes are also enabled within blis.h;
- But if the user #defines BLIS_DISABLE_BLAS_DEFS prior to including
blis.h, BLAS prototypes are skipped over entirely so that, for
example, the application or some other header pulled in by the
application may prototype the BLAS functions without causing any
duplication.
- Updated docs/BuildSystem.md to document the feature above, and
related text.
Details:
- Added targets to test/3/Makefile that link against a BLAS library
build by Eigen. It appears, however, that Eigen's BLAS library does
not support multithreading. (It may be that multithreading is only
available when using the native C++ APIs.)
- Updated runme.sh with a few Eigen-related tweaks.
- Minor tweaks to docs/Performance.md.
Details:
- Added a new markdown document, docs/Performance.md, which reports
performance of a representative set of level-3 operations across a
variety of hardware architectures, comparing BLIS to OpenBLAS and a
vendor library (MKL on Intel/AMD, ARMPL on ARM). Performance graphs,
in pdf and png formats, reside in docs/graphs.
- Updated README.md to link to new Performance.md document.
- Minor updates to CREDITS, docs/Multithreading.md.
- Minor updates to matlab scripts in test/3/matlab.
Details:
- Made extra explicit the fact that: (a) multithreading in BLIS is
disabled by default; and (b) even with multithreading enabled, the
user must specify multithreading at runtime in order to observe
parallelism. Thanks to M. Zhou for suggesting these clarifications
in #292.
- Also made explicit that only the environment variable and global
runtime API methods are available when using the BLAS API. If the
user wishes to use the local runtime API (specify multithreading on
a per-call basis), one of the native BLIS APIs must be used.
Details:
- Changed all occurrances of
micro-kernel -> microkernel
macro-kernel -> macrokernel
micro-panel -> micropanel
in all markdown documents in 'docs' directory. This change is being
made since we've reached the point in adoption and acceptance of
BLIS's insights where words such as "microkernel" are no longer new,
and therefore now merit being unhyphenated.
- Updated "Implementation Notes" sections of KernelsHowTo.md, which
still contained references to nonexistent cpp macros such as
BLIS_DEFAULT_MR_? and BLIS_PACKDIM_MR_?.
- Added 'run-fast' and 'check-fast' targets to testsuite/Makefile.
- Minor updates to Testsuite.md, including suggesting use of
'make check' and 'make check-fast' when running from the local
testsuite directory.
- Added a comment to top-level Makefile explaining the purpose behind
the TESTSUITE_WRAPPER variable, which at first glance appears to serve
no purpose.
Details:
- Relax version blacklisting of python3 to allow 3.4 or later instead
of 3.5 or later. Thanks to Dave Love for pointing out that 3.4 was
sufficient for the purpose of BLIS's build system. (It should be
noted that we're not sure which, if any, python3 versions prior to
3.4 are insufficient, and that the only thing stopping us from
determining this is the fact that these earlier versions of python3
are not readily available for us to test with.)
- Updated docs/BuildSystem.md to be explicit about current python2 vs
python3 version requirements.
Details:
- Fixed an issue with specifying threading globally at runtime via
bli_thread_set_num_threads() (the automatic way) or via
bli_thread_set_ways() (the manual way), with bli_thread_init_rntm()
also affected. These functions were not calling bli_init_once() prior
to acting, and therefore their effects on the global rntm_t structure
were being wiped out by the eventual call to bli_init_once(), by some
other BLIS function. Thanks to Ali Emre Gülcü for reporting the
behavior associated with this bug.
- Added additional content to docs/Multithreading.md covering topics of
choosing between OpenMP and pthreads, and specifying affinity via
OpenMP.
- CREDITS file update.
Details:
- Updated docs/Testsuite.md to include mention of the new mixed-domain
and mixed-precision settings, including descriptions.
- Updated docs/MixedDatatypes.md to include a brief section on running
the testsuite to exercise mixed-datatype functionality, which mostly
amounts to a link to the Testsuite.md document.
- Minor verbiage change to testsuite output to correct a misleading
label associated with the value returned by the query function
bli_info_get_simd_num_registers(). (The function does not return the
number of SIMD registers present in the hardware, but rather a maximum
assumed value for the purposes of allocating temporary microtile
workspace on the function stack.)
