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authorDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 09:22:09 +0000
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+# Efficient and performance-portable vector software
+
+[//]: # (placeholder, do not remove)
+
+Highway is a C++ library that provides portable SIMD/vector intrinsics.
+
+## Why
+
+We are passionate about high-performance software. We see major untapped
+potential in CPUs (servers, mobile, desktops). Highway is for engineers who want
+to reliably and economically push the boundaries of what is possible in
+software.
+
+## How
+
+CPUs provide SIMD/vector instructions that apply the same operation to multiple
+data items. This can reduce energy usage e.g. *fivefold* because fewer
+instructions are executed. We also often see *5-10x* speedups.
+
+Highway makes SIMD/vector programming practical and workable according to these
+guiding principles:
+
+**Does what you expect**: Highway is a C++ library with carefully-chosen
+functions that map well to CPU instructions without extensive compiler
+transformations. The resulting code is more predictable and robust to code
+changes/compiler updates than autovectorization.
+
+**Works on widely-used platforms**: Highway supports four architectures; the
+same application code can target eight instruction sets, including those with
+'scalable' vectors (size unknown at compile time). Highway only requires C++11
+and supports four families of compilers. If you would like to use Highway on
+other platforms, please raise an issue.
+
+**Flexible to deploy**: Applications using Highway can run on heterogeneous
+clouds or client devices, choosing the best available instruction set at
+runtime. Alternatively, developers may choose to target a single instruction set
+without any runtime overhead. In both cases, the application code is the same
+except for swapping `HWY_STATIC_DISPATCH` with `HWY_DYNAMIC_DISPATCH` plus one
+line of code.
+
+**Suitable for a variety of domains**: Highway provides an extensive set of
+operations, used for image processing (floating-point), compression, video
+analysis, linear algebra, cryptography, sorting and random generation. We
+recognise that new use-cases may require additional ops and are happy to add
+them where it makes sense (e.g. no performance cliffs on some architectures). If
+you would like to discuss, please file an issue.
+
+**Rewards data-parallel design**: Highway provides tools such as Gather,
+MaskedLoad, and FixedTag to enable speedups for legacy data structures. However,
+the biggest gains are unlocked by designing algorithms and data structures for
+scalable vectors. Helpful techniques include batching, structure-of-array
+layouts, and aligned/padded allocations.
+
+## Examples
+
+Online demos using Compiler Explorer:
+
+- [multiple targets with dynamic dispatch](https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/zP7MYe9Yf)
+ (recommended)
+- [single target using -m flags](https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/rGnjMevKG)
+
+Projects using Highway: (to add yours, feel free to raise an issue or contact us
+via the below email)
+
+* [iresearch database index](https://github.com/iresearch-toolkit/iresearch/blob/e7638e7a4b99136ca41f82be6edccf01351a7223/core/utils/simd_utils.hpp)
+* [JPEG XL image codec](https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl)
+* [Grok JPEG 2000 image codec](https://github.com/GrokImageCompression/grok)
+* [vectorized Quicksort](https://github.com/google/highway/tree/master/hwy/contrib/sort) ([paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.05982))
+
+## Current status
+
+### Targets
+
+Supported targets: scalar, S-SSE3, SSE4, AVX2, AVX-512, AVX3_DL (~Icelake,
+requires opt-in by defining `HWY_WANT_AVX3_DL`), NEON (ARMv7 and v8), SVE, SVE2,
+WASM SIMD, RISC-V V.
+
+`HWY_WASM_EMU256` is a 2x unrolled version of wasm128 and is enabled if
+`HWY_WANT_WASM2` is defined. This will remain supported until it is potentially
+superseded by a future version of WASM.
+
+SVE was initially tested using farm_sve (see acknowledgments).
+
+### Versioning
+
+Highway releases aim to follow the semver.org system (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH),
+incrementing MINOR after backward-compatible additions and PATCH after
+backward-compatible fixes. We recommend using releases (rather than the Git tip)
+because they are tested more extensively, see below.
+
+The current version 1.0 signals an increased focus on backwards compatibility.
+Applications using documented functionality will remain compatible with future
+updates that have the same major version number.
+
+### Testing
+
+Continuous integration tests build with a recent version of Clang (running on
+native x86, or QEMU for RVV and ARM) and MSVC 2019 (v19.28, running on native
+x86).
+
+Before releases, we also test on x86 with Clang and GCC, and ARMv7/8 via GCC
+cross-compile. See the [testing process](g3doc/release_testing_process.md) for
+details.
+
+### Related modules
+
+The `contrib` directory contains SIMD-related utilities: an image class with
+aligned rows, a math library (16 functions already implemented, mostly
+trigonometry), and functions for computing dot products and sorting.
+
+## Installation
+
+This project uses CMake to generate and build. In a Debian-based system you can
+install it via:
+
+```bash
+sudo apt install cmake
+```
+
+Highway's unit tests use [googletest](https://github.com/google/googletest).
+By default, Highway's CMake downloads this dependency at configuration time.
+You can disable this by setting the `HWY_SYSTEM_GTEST` CMake variable to ON and
+installing gtest separately:
+
+```bash
+sudo apt install libgtest-dev
+```
+
+To build Highway as a shared or static library (depending on BUILD_SHARED_LIBS),
+the standard CMake workflow can be used:
+
+```bash
+mkdir -p build && cd build
+cmake ..
+make -j && make test
+```
+
+Or you can run `run_tests.sh` (`run_tests.bat` on Windows).
+
+Bazel is also supported for building, but it is not as widely used/tested.
+
+When building for Arm v7, a limitation of current compilers requires you to add
+`-DHWY_CMAKE_ARM7:BOOL=ON` to the CMake command line; see #834 and #1032. We
+understand that work is underway to remove this limitation.
+
+## Quick start
+
+You can use the `benchmark` inside examples/ as a starting point.
+
+A [quick-reference page](g3doc/quick_reference.md) briefly lists all operations
+and their parameters, and the [instruction_matrix](g3doc/instruction_matrix.pdf)
+indicates the number of instructions per operation.
+
+The [FAQ](g3doc/faq.md) answers questions about portability, API design and
+where to find more information.
+
+We recommend using full SIMD vectors whenever possible for maximum performance
+portability. To obtain them, pass a `ScalableTag<float>` (or equivalently
+`HWY_FULL(float)`) tag to functions such as `Zero/Set/Load`. There are two
+alternatives for use-cases requiring an upper bound on the lanes:
+
+- For up to `N` lanes, specify `CappedTag<T, N>` or the equivalent
+ `HWY_CAPPED(T, N)`. The actual number of lanes will be `N` rounded down to
+ the nearest power of two, such as 4 if `N` is 5, or 8 if `N` is 8. This is
+ useful for data structures such as a narrow matrix. A loop is still required
+ because vectors may actually have fewer than `N` lanes.
+
+- For exactly a power of two `N` lanes, specify `FixedTag<T, N>`. The largest
+ supported `N` depends on the target, but is guaranteed to be at least
+ `16/sizeof(T)`.
+
+Due to ADL restrictions, user code calling Highway ops must either:
+* Reside inside `namespace hwy { namespace HWY_NAMESPACE {`; or
+* prefix each op with an alias such as `namespace hn = hwy::HWY_NAMESPACE;
+ hn::Add()`; or
+* add using-declarations for each op used: `using hwy::HWY_NAMESPACE::Add;`.
+
+Additionally, each function that calls Highway ops (such as `Load`) must either
+be prefixed with `HWY_ATTR`, OR reside between `HWY_BEFORE_NAMESPACE()` and
+`HWY_AFTER_NAMESPACE()`. Lambda functions currently require `HWY_ATTR` before
+their opening brace.
+
+The entry points into code using Highway differ slightly depending on whether
+they use static or dynamic dispatch.
+
+* For static dispatch, `HWY_TARGET` will be the best available target among
+ `HWY_BASELINE_TARGETS`, i.e. those allowed for use by the compiler (see
+ [quick-reference](g3doc/quick_reference.md)). Functions inside
+ `HWY_NAMESPACE` can be called using `HWY_STATIC_DISPATCH(func)(args)` within
+ the same module they are defined in. You can call the function from other
+ modules by wrapping it in a regular function and declaring the regular
+ function in a header.
+
+* For dynamic dispatch, a table of function pointers is generated via the
+ `HWY_EXPORT` macro that is used by `HWY_DYNAMIC_DISPATCH(func)(args)` to
+ call the best function pointer for the current CPU's supported targets. A
+ module is automatically compiled for each target in `HWY_TARGETS` (see
+ [quick-reference](g3doc/quick_reference.md)) if `HWY_TARGET_INCLUDE` is
+ defined and `foreach_target.h` is included.
+
+When using dynamic dispatch, `foreach_target.h` is included from translation
+units (.cc files), not headers. Headers containing vector code shared between
+several translation units require a special include guard, for example the
+following taken from `examples/skeleton-inl.h`:
+
+```
+#if defined(HIGHWAY_HWY_EXAMPLES_SKELETON_INL_H_) == defined(HWY_TARGET_TOGGLE)
+#ifdef HIGHWAY_HWY_EXAMPLES_SKELETON_INL_H_
+#undef HIGHWAY_HWY_EXAMPLES_SKELETON_INL_H_
+#else
+#define HIGHWAY_HWY_EXAMPLES_SKELETON_INL_H_
+#endif
+
+#include "hwy/highway.h"
+// Your vector code
+#endif
+```
+
+By convention, we name such headers `-inl.h` because their contents (often
+function templates) are usually inlined.
+
+## Compiler flags
+
+Applications should be compiled with optimizations enabled - without inlining,
+SIMD code may slow down by factors of 10 to 100. For clang and GCC, `-O2` is
+generally sufficient.
+
+For MSVC, we recommend compiling with `/Gv` to allow non-inlined functions to
+pass vector arguments in registers. If intending to use the AVX2 target together
+with half-width vectors (e.g. for `PromoteTo`), it is also important to compile
+with `/arch:AVX2`. This seems to be the only way to generate VEX-encoded SSE4
+instructions on MSVC. Otherwise, mixing VEX-encoded AVX2 instructions and
+non-VEX SSE4 may cause severe performance degradation. Unfortunately, the
+resulting binary will then require AVX2. Note that no such flag is needed for
+clang and GCC because they support target-specific attributes, which we use to
+ensure proper VEX code generation for AVX2 targets.
+
+## Strip-mining loops
+
+To vectorize a loop, "strip-mining" transforms it into an outer loop and inner
+loop with number of iterations matching the preferred vector width.
+
+In this section, let `T` denote the element type, `d = ScalableTag<T>`, `count`
+the number of elements to process, and `N = Lanes(d)` the number of lanes in a
+full vector. Assume the loop body is given as a function `template<bool partial,
+class D> void LoopBody(D d, size_t index, size_t max_n)`.
+
+Highway offers several ways to express loops where `N` need not divide `count`:
+
+* Ensure all inputs/outputs are padded. Then the loop is simply
+
+ ```
+ for (size_t i = 0; i < count; i += N) LoopBody<false>(d, i, 0);
+ ```
+ Here, the template parameter and second function argument are not needed.
+
+ This is the preferred option, unless `N` is in the thousands and vector
+ operations are pipelined with long latencies. This was the case for
+ supercomputers in the 90s, but nowadays ALUs are cheap and we see most
+ implementations split vectors into 1, 2 or 4 parts, so there is little cost
+ to processing entire vectors even if we do not need all their lanes. Indeed
+ this avoids the (potentially large) cost of predication or partial
+ loads/stores on older targets, and does not duplicate code.
+
+* Use the `Transform*` functions in hwy/contrib/algo/transform-inl.h. This
+ takes care of the loop and remainder handling and you simply define a
+ generic lambda function (C++14) or functor which receives the current vector
+ from the input/output array, plus optionally vectors from up to two extra
+ input arrays, and returns the value to write to the input/output array.
+
+ Here is an example implementing the BLAS function SAXPY (`alpha * x + y`):
+
+ ```
+ Transform1(d, x, n, y, [](auto d, const auto v, const auto v1) HWY_ATTR {
+ return MulAdd(Set(d, alpha), v, v1);
+ });
+ ```
+
+* Process whole vectors as above, followed by a scalar loop:
+
+ ```
+ size_t i = 0;
+ for (; i + N <= count; i += N) LoopBody<false>(d, i, 0);
+ for (; i < count; ++i) LoopBody<false>(CappedTag<T, 1>(), i, 0);
+ ```
+ The template parameter and second function arguments are again not needed.
+
+ This avoids duplicating code, and is reasonable if `count` is large.
+ If `count` is small, the second loop may be slower than the next option.
+
+* Process whole vectors as above, followed by a single call to a modified
+ `LoopBody` with masking:
+
+ ```
+ size_t i = 0;
+ for (; i + N <= count; i += N) {
+ LoopBody<false>(d, i, 0);
+ }
+ if (i < count) {
+ LoopBody<true>(d, i, count - i);
+ }
+ ```
+ Now the template parameter and third function argument can be used inside
+ `LoopBody` to non-atomically 'blend' the first `num_remaining` lanes of `v`
+ with the previous contents of memory at subsequent locations:
+ `BlendedStore(v, FirstN(d, num_remaining), d, pointer);`. Similarly,
+ `MaskedLoad(FirstN(d, num_remaining), d, pointer)` loads the first
+ `num_remaining` elements and returns zero in other lanes.
+
+ This is a good default when it is infeasible to ensure vectors are padded,
+ but is only safe `#if !HWY_MEM_OPS_MIGHT_FAULT`!
+ In contrast to the scalar loop, only a single final iteration is needed.
+ The increased code size from two loop bodies is expected to be worthwhile
+ because it avoids the cost of masking in all but the final iteration.
+
+## Additional resources
+
+* [Highway introduction (slides)](g3doc/highway_intro.pdf)
+* [Overview of instructions per operation on different architectures](g3doc/instruction_matrix.pdf)
+* [Design philosophy and comparison](g3doc/design_philosophy.md)
+* [Implementation details](g3doc/impl_details.md)
+
+## Acknowledgments
+
+We have used [farm-sve](https://gitlab.inria.fr/bramas/farm-sve) by Berenger
+Bramas; it has proved useful for checking the SVE port on an x86 development
+machine.
+
+This is not an officially supported Google product.
+Contact: janwas@google.com