Table Of ContentAdding Automatic Parallelization to Faust
YannOrlarey and StephaneLetz and DominiqueFober
Grame,CentreNationaldeCreationMusicale
9rueduGaret,BP1185
69202LyonCedex01
France,
{orlarey,letz,fober}@grame.fr
Abstract 2 Faustoverview
In this section we give a brief overview of Faust with
Faust 0.9.9.5 introduces new compilation options to do auto-
someexamplesofcode.
matic parallelization of code using OpenMP. This paper ex-
plains how the automatic parallelization is done and presents
A Faust program describes a signal processor, some-
somebenchmarks.
thing that transforms some input signals and produces
someoutputsignals.Theprogrammingmodelusedcom-
binesafunctionalprogrammingapproachwithablock-
Keywords
diagram syntax. The functional programming approach
providesanaturalframeworkforsignalprocessing. Dig-
italsignalsaremodeledasdiscretefunctionsoftime,and
Faust,OpenMP,Parallelism
signalprocessorsassecondorderfunctionsthatoperate
on them. Moreover Faust’s block-diagram composition
operators, used to combine signal processors together,
1 Introduction
fitinthesamepictureasthirdorderfunctions.
TheFaustcompilertranslatesFaustprogramsintoequiv-
Faust is a programming language for real-time signal
alent C++ programs. It uses several optimization tech-
processing and synthesis designed from scratch to be a
niquesinordertogeneratethemostefficientcode. The
compiled language. Being efficiently compiled allows
resultingcodecanusuallycompetewith,andsometimes
Fausttoprovideaviablehigh-levelalternativetoC/C++
outperform, DSP code directly written in C/C++. It is
to develop high-performance signal processing applica-
alsoself-containedanddoesn’tdependonanyDSPrun-
tions,librariesoraudioplug-ins.
timelibrary.
Until recently the computation code generated by the
Thanks to specific architecture files, a single Faust pro-
compiler was organized quite traditionally as a single
gram can be used to produce code for a variety of plat-
sample processing loop. This scheme works very well
forms and plug-in formats. These architecture files act
butitdoesn’ttakeadvantagesofmulticorearchitectures.
as wrappers and describe the interactions with the host
Moreoveritcangeneratecodethatexceedstheautovec-
audioandGUIsystem. Currentlymorethan10architec-
torizationcapabilitiesofcurrentC++compilers.
tures are supported (see Table 1) and new ones can be
We have recently extended the compiler with two new easilyadded.
schemes: thevectorandtheparallelschemes. Thevec-
tor scheme simplifies the autovectorization work of the alsa-gtk.cpp ALSAapplication+GTK
alsa-qt.cpp ALSAapplication+QT4
C++ compiler by splitting the sample processing loop
jack-gtk.cpp JACKapplication+GTK
intoseveralsimplerloops. Theparallelschemeanalyzes
jack-qt.cpp JACKapplication+QT4
thedependenciesbetweentheseloopsandaddOpenMP
ca-qt.cpp CoreAudioapplication+QT4
pragmastoindicatethosethatcanbecomputedinparal-
ladspa.cpp LADSPAplug-in
lel.
max-msp.cpp MaxMSPplug-in
supercollider.cpp Supercolliderplug-in
Thesenewschemescanproduceinterestingperformance
vst.cpp VSTplug-in
improvements. The goal of the paper is to present
q.cpp Qlanguageplug-in
these new compilation schemes and to provide some
benchmarks comparing their performances. The paper Table1: SomearchitecturefilesavailableforFaust
is organized as follow : the next section will give a
briefoverviewofFaustlanguage, Thethirdsectionwill Inthefollowingsubsectionswegiveashortandinformal
present the three code generation schemes and the last introduction to the language through the example of a
section will introduce the benchmarks used and the re- simple noise generator. Interested readers can refer to
sultsobtained. [1]foramorecompletedescription.
2.1 Asimplenoisegenerator efficientcodeisnottocompiletheblockdiagramitself,
butwhatitcomputes.
A Faust program describes a signal processor by
combining primitive operations on signals (like Driven by the semantic rules of the language the com-
+,−,∗,/,√,sin,cos,...)usinganalgebraofhighlevel piler starts by propagating symbolic signals into the
blockdiagram,inordertodiscoverhoweachoutputsig-
composition operators [2] (see Table 2). You can think
nalcanbeexpressedasafunctionoftheinputsignals.
of these composition operators as a generalization of
mathematicalfunctioncompositionf ◦g.
These resulting signal expressions are then simplified
and normalized, and common subexpressions are fac-
f ∼ g recursivecomposition
torized. Finally these expressions are translated into a
f , g parallelcomposition
f : g sequentialcomposition selfcontainedC++classthatimplementsalltherequired
f <: g splitcomposition computation.
f :> g mergecomposition
Tocompileournoisegeneratorexampleweusethefol-
Table2: Thefivehighlevelblock-diagramcomposition lowingcommand:
operatorsusedinFaust
$ faust noise.dsp
AFaustprogramisorganizedasasetofdefinitionswith ThiscommandgeneratesthefollowingC++codeonthe
at least one for the keyword process (the equivalent of standardoutput:
maininC).
class mydsp : public dsp {
Ournoisegeneratorexamplenoise.dsponlyinvolves private:
int iRec0[2];
three very simple definitions. But it also shows some
float fslider0;
specificaspectsofthelanguage: public:
static void metadata(Meta* m) {
random = +(12345) ~ *(1103515245); }
noise = random/2147483647.0;
process = noise * vslider("noise", 0, 0, virtual int getNumInputs() { return 0; }
100, 0.1)/100;
virtual int getNumOutputs() { return 1; }
static void classInit(int samplingFreq) {
}
The first definition describes a (pseudo) random num-
virtual void instanceInit(int samplingFreq)
bergenerator. Eachnewrandomnumberiscomputedby
{
multiplyingthepreviousoneby1103515245andadding fSamplingFreq = samplingFreq;
totheresult12345. for (int i=0; i<2; i++) iRec0[i] = 0;
fslider0 = 0.0f;
The expression +(12345) denotes the operation of }
virtual void init(int samplingFreq)
adding 12345 to a signal. It is an example of a com-
{
mon technique in functional programming called par-
classInit(samplingFreq);
tial application: the binary operation + is here pro- instanceInit(samplingFreq);
vided with only one of its arguments. In the same way }
*(1103515245)denotesthemultiplicationofasignalby virtual void buildUserInterface(UI* interface)
{
1103515245.
interface->openVerticalBox("noise");
interface->declare(&fslider0, "style"
The two resulting operations are recursively composed
, "knob");
using the ∼ operator. This operator connects in a feed- interface->addVerticalSlider("noise",
back loop the output of +(12345) to the input of &fslider0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 0.1f);
*(1103515245) (with an implicit 1-sample delay) interface->closeBox();
and the output of *(1103515245) to the input of }
virtual void compute (int count,
+(12345).
float** input,
float** output)
Theseconddefinitiontransformstherandomsignalinto
{
anoisesignalbyscalingitbetween-1.0and+1.0. float fSlow0 = (4.656613e-12f * fslider0);
float* output0 = output[0];
Finally, the definition of process adds a simple user in- for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
terfacetocontroltheproductionofthesound. Thenoise iRec0[0] = 12345+1103515245*iRec0[1];
signalismultipliedbythevaluedeliveredbyasliderto output0[i] = fSlow0*iRec0[0];
// post processing
controlitsvolume.
iRec0[1] = iRec0[0];
}
2.2 Invokingthecompiler }
};
The role of the compiler is to translate Faust programs
intoequivalentC++programs. Thekeyideatogenerate The generated class contains seven methods.
Among these methods getNumInputs() and
getNumOutputs() return the number of input
and output signals required by our signal processor.
init() initializes the internal state of the signal pro-
cessor. buildUserInterface() can be seen as a
listofhighlevelcommands,independentofanytoolkit,
to build the user interface. The method compute()
does the actual signal processing. It takes 3 arguments:
the number of frames to compute, the addresses of the
input buffers and the addresses of the output buffers,
andcomputestheoutputsamplesaccordingtotheinput
samples.
2.3 Generatingafullapplication
Thefaustcommandacceptsseveraloptionstocontrol
the generated code. Two of them are widely used. The
Figure2: Graphicblock-diagramofthenoisegenerator
option -o outputfile specifies the output file to be used
producedwiththe-svgoption
instead of the standard output. The option -a architec-
turefiledefinesthearchitecturefileusedtowrapthegen-
erateC++class. 0.9.9.5. Then we will present the vector generation of
codewherethecodeisorganizedintoseveralloopsthat
For example the command faust -a
operates on vectors, and finally the parallel generation
jack-qt.cpp -o noise.cpp noise.dsp
of code where these vector loops are parallelized using
generates a full jack application using QT4.4 as a
OpenMPdirectives.
graphictoolkit. Thefigure1isascreenshotofournoise
applicationrunning.
3.1 Preliminarysteps
Before reaching the stage of the C++ code generation,
theFaustcompilerhavetocarryonseveralstepsthatwe
describebrieflyhere.
3.1.1 Parsingsourcefiles
The first one is to recursively parse all the source
Figure 1: Screenshot of the noise example generated
files involved. Each source file contains a set of def-
withthejack-qt.cpparchitecture
initions and possibly some import directives for other
source files. The result of this phase is a list of
2.4 Generatingablock-diagram definitions : [(name = definition ),(name =
1 1 2
definition ),...]. This list is actually a set, as redefi-
2
Anotherinterestingoptionis-svgthatgeneratesoneor nitionsofsymbolsarenotallowed.
moreSVGgraphicfilesthatrepresenttheblock-diagram
oftheprogramasinFigure2. 3.1.2 Evaluatingblock-diagrams
Itisinterestingtonotethedifferencebetweentheblock Amongthenamesdefinedtheremustbeprocess,theana-
diagram and the generated C++ code. The block dia-
logofmaininC/C++.Thisdefinitionhastobeevaluated
graminvolvesoneaddition,twomultiplicationsandtwo
asFaustallowsalgorithmicblock-diagramdefinitions.
divisions.ThegeneratedC++programonlyinvolvesone
additionandtwomultiplicationspersamples. Thecom- Forexamplethealgorithmicdefinition:
piler was able to optimize the code by factorizing and
reorganizingtheoperations. Listing1: exampleofalgorithmicdefinition
foo(n) = *(10+n);
As already said, the key idea here is not to compile the
process = par(i,3, foo(i));
blockdiagramitself,butwhatitcomputes.
willbetranslatedinaflatblock-diagramdescriptionthat
3 Codegeneration containsonlyprimitiveblocks:
process = (_,10:*),(_,11:*),(_,12:*);
InthissectionwedescribehowtheFaustcompilergener-
atesitscode. Wewillfirstintroducethesocalledscalar
generationofcodewhichwastheonlyoneuntilversion Thisdescriptionissaidtobeinnormalform.
3.1.3 Discoveringthemathematicalequations 3.1.5 Occurrenceanalysis
Faustdoesn’tcompileablock-diagramdirectly. Itusesa The role of this last preparation phase is to an-
phaseofsymbolicpropagationtofirstdiscoveritsmath- alyze in which context each subexpression is
ematical semantic (what it computes). The principle is used and to discover common subexpressions.
to propagate symbolic signals through the inputs of the If an expensive common subexpression is dis-
block-diagraminordertoget,attheotherend,themath- covered, an assignment to a cache variable
ematicalequationofeachoutputsignal. float fTemp = <common subexpression code>;
is generated, and the cache variable fTemp is used in
These equations are then normalized so that different its enclosing expressions. Otherwise the subexpression
block-diagrams, but computing mathematically equiva- codeisusedin-lined.
lentsignals,resultinthesameoutputequations.
Theoccurrenceanalysisproceedsbyatop-downvisitof
Hereisaverysimpleexamplewheretheinputsignalis the signal expression. The first time a subexpression is
dividedby2andthendelayedby10samples: visited,itisannotatedwithacounter. Thenexttime,the
counterwillbeincreasedanditsvisitskipped.
process = /(2) : @(10);
Subexpressions with several occurrences are candidates
to be cached in variables. However in some circum-
This is equivalent to having the input signal first multi-
stancesexpressionswithasingleoccurrenceneedalsoto
pliedby2,thendelayedby7samples,thendividedby4
becachediftheyoccurinafastercontext.Forexamplea
andthendelayedby3samples.
constantexpressionoccurringinalowspeeduserinter-
process = *(2) : @(7) : /(4): @(3); face expression or a user interface expression occurring
inahighspeedaudioexpressionwillgenerallyrequired
tobecached.
Bothleadtothefollowingsignalequation:
ItisonlyafterthisphasethatthegenerationoftheC++
Y(t)=0.5∗X(t−10) codecanstart.
3.2 ScalarCodegeneration
Faustappliesseveralrulestosimplifyandnormalizeout-
put signal equations. For example one of theses rules ThegenerationoftheC++codeismadebypopulatinga
saysthatitisbettertomultiplyasignalbyaconstantaf- klassobject(representingaC++class),withstringsrep-
teradelaythanbefore.Itgivesthecompilermoreoppor- resenting C++ declarations and lines of code. In scalar
tunitiestoshareandreusethesamedelayline. Another modetheselinesofcodeareorganizedinasinglesam-
rule says that two consecutive delays can be combined plecomputationloop, whiletheycanbesplittedinsev-
intoasingleone. eralloopswiththenewvectorandparallelschemes.
Thecodegenerationreliesbasicallyontwofunctions: a
3.1.4 Typingthemathematicalequations
translationfunction[[]]thattranslateasignalexpression
The next phase is to assign types to the resulting signal intoastringofC++code,andacachefunctionC()that
equations. This will not only help the compiler to de- checksifavariableisneeded.
tect errors but also to generate the most efficient code.
We don’t have the space to go in too much details but
Severalaspectsareconsidered:
hereisthetranslationrulefortheadditionoftwosignal
expressions:
1. thenatureofthesignal: integeroffloat.
[[E ]]→S
1 1
2. interval of values of the signal : the minimum and [[E ]]→S
2 2
maximumvaluesthatasignalcantake
[[E +E ]]→C((cid:48)(cid:48)(S +S )(cid:48)(cid:48))
1 2 1 2
3. thecomputationtimeofthesignal:thesignalcanbe
It says that to compile the addition of two signals we
computedatcompilationtime,atinitializationtime
compile each of these signals and concat the resulting
oratexecutiontime.
stringswitha+signinbetween. Thestringobtainedis
4. the speed of the signal : constant signals are com- passedtothecachefunctionthatwillcheckiftheexpres-
puted only once, low speed user interface signals sionissharedornot.
arecomputedonceforeveryblockofsamples,high
speedaudiosignalsarecomputedeverysamples. Let say that the string passed to the cache func-
tion C() is (input0[i] + input1[i]). If the ex-
5. parallelism of the signal : true if the samples of pression is shared, the cache function will allo-
the signal can be computed in parallel, false when cate a fresh variable name fTemp0, add the line of
thesignalhaverecursivedependenciesrequiringits code float fTemp0 = (input0[i] + input1[i]); to
samplestobecomputedsequentially. the klass object and return fTemp0 as a string to be
used when compiling enclosing expressions. If the ex- The vector code generation is activated by passing the
pression is not shared it will simply return the string --vectorize(or-vec)optiontotheFaustcompiler.Two
(input0[i] + input1[i])unmodified. additional options are available : --vec-size <n> con-
trols the size of the vector (by default 32 samples) and
Toillustratethis,letstaketwosimpleexamples.Thefirst
--loop-variant 0/1 gives some additional control on
oneconvertastereosignalintoamonosignalbyadding
theloops.
thetwoinputsignals:
Toillustratethedifferencebetweenscalarcodeandvec-
process = +;
tor code, let’s take the computation of the RMS (Root
Mean Square) value of a signal. Here is the Faust code
Inthiscase(input0[i] + input1[i])isnotsharedand thatcomputestheRootMeanSquareofaslidingwindow
thegeneratedC++codeisthefollowing: of1000samples:
virtual void compute (int count, // Root Mean Square of n consecutive samples
float** input, RMS(n) = square : mean(n) : sqrt ;
float** output)
// Square of a signal
{
float* input0 = input[0]; square(x) = x * x ;
float* input1 = input[1];
float* output0 = output[0]; // Mean of n consecutive samples of a signal
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) { // (uses fixpoint to avoid the accumulation of
// rounding errors)
output0[i] = (input0[i] + input1[i]);
mean(n) = float2fix : integrate(n) :
}
fix2float : /(n);
}
// Sliding sum of n consecutive samples
integrate(n,x) = x - x@n : +~_ ;
Butwhenthesumofthetwoinputsignalsisduplicated
ontwooutputsignalsasin:
// Convertion between float and fix point
float2fix(x) = int(x*(1<<20));
process = + <: _,_;
fix2float(x) = float(x)/(1<<20);
// Root Mean Square of 1000 consecutive samples
then(input0[i] + input1[i])willbecachedinatem- process = RMS(1000) ;
poraryvariable:
virtual void compute (int count, The compute() method generated in scalar mode is the
float** input, following:
float** output)
{ virtual void compute (int count,
float* input0 = input[0]; float** input,
float* input1 = input[1]; float** output)
float* output0 = output[0]; {
float* output1 = output[1]; float* input0 = input[0];
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) { float* output0 = output[0];
float fTemp0 = (input0[i] + input1[i]); for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
output0[i] = fTemp0; float fTemp0 = input0[i];
output1[i] = fTemp0; int iTemp1 = int(1048576*fTemp0*fTemp0);
} iVec0[IOTA&1023] = iTemp1;
} iRec0[0] = ((iVec0[IOTA&1023] + iRec0[1])
- iVec0[(IOTA-1000)&1023]);
output0[i] = sqrtf(9.536744e-10f *
float(iRec0[0]));
3.3 VectorCodegeneration
// post processing
iRec0[1] = iRec0[0];
Modern C++ compiler are able to do autovectorization, IOTA = IOTA+1;
that is to use SIMD instructions to speedup the code. }
}
These instructions can typically operate in parallel on
short vectors of 4 simple precision floating point num-
bers thus leading to a theoretical speedup of x4. Au- The-vecoptionleadstothefollowingreorganizationof
tovectorizationofC/C+programsisadifficulttask. Cur- thecode:
rent compilers are very sensitive to the way the code is
virtual void compute (int fullcount,
arranged. In particular too complex loops can prevent
float** input,
autovectorization. Thegoalofthenewvectorcodegen- float** output)
eration is to rearrange the C++ code in a way that fa- {
cilitates the autovectorization job of the C++ compiler. int iRec0_tmp[32+4];
Insteadofgeneratingasinglesamplecomputationloop, int* iRec0 = &iRec0_tmp[4];
for (int index=0; index<fullcount; index+=32)
it splits the computation into several simpler loops that
{
communicatesbyvectors. int count = min (32, fullcount-index);
float* input0 = &input[0][index]; The result is a directed graph in which each node is a
float* output0 = &output[0][index]; computationloop.Thisgraphisstoredintheklassobject
for (int i=0; i<4; i++) andatopologicalsortisappliedtoitbeforeprintingthe
iRec0_tmp[i]=iRec0_perm[i];
code.
// SECTION : 1
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
iYec0[(iYec0_idx+i)&2047] =
3.4 ParallelCodegeneration
int(1048576*input0[i]*input0[i]);
}
// SECTION : 2 The parallel code generation is activated by passing the
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) { --openMP(or-omp)optiontotheFaustcompiler. Itim-
iRec0[i] = ((iYec0[i] + iRec0[i-1]) - plies the -vec options as the parallel code generation is
iYec0[(iYec0_idx+i-1000)&2047]);
built on top of the vector code generation by inserting
}
appropriateOpenMPdirectivesintheC++code.
// SECTION : 3
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
output0[i] = sqrtf((9.536744e-10f * 3.4.1 TheOpenMPAPI
float(iRec0[i])));
}
// SECTION : 4 m
iYec0_idx = (iYec0_idx+count)&2047; as
foriR(eicn0t_peir=m0[;i]i=<i4R;eci0+_+t)mp[count+i]; ter thre
a
} d
}
# fork
p
ra
g
m
While the second version of the code is more complex a
o
it turn out to be much easier to vectorize efficiently by m
p
the C++ compiler. Using Intel icc 11.0, with the ex- pa
ra
act same compilation options : -O3 -xHost -ftz llel join
-fno-alias -fp-model fast=2, the scalar ver-
sionleadstoathroughputperformanceof129.144MB/s,
while the vector version achieves 359.548 MB/s, a
speedupofx2.8!
fork
#
p
ra
g
m
a
o
m
p
parallel code generator pa
ra
(OpenMP directives) lle join
l
vector code generator
(loop separation)
Figure4: OpenMPisbasedonafork-joinmodel
OpenMP (http://wwww.openmp.org) is a well estab-
scalar code generator lished API that is used to explicitly define direct multi-
threaded, shared memory parallelism. It is based on a
fork-joinmodelofparallelism(seefigure4). Parallelre-
gionsaredelimitedbyusingthe#pragma omp parallel
construct. Attheentranceofaparallelregionateamof
parallel threads is activated. The code within a parallel
regionisexecutedbyeachthreadoftheparallelteamun-
Figure3: Faust’sstackofcodegenerators
tiltheendoftheregion.
The vector code generation is built on top of the scalar
#pragma omp parallel
codegeneration(seefigure3). Everytimeanexpression
{
needs to be compiled, the compiler checks to see if it // the code here is executed simultaneously by
needs to be in a separate loop or not. It applies some // every thread of the parallel team
simple rules for that. Expressions that are shared (and ...
}
arecomplexenough)aregoodcandidatestobecompiled
in a separate loop, as well as recursive expressions and
expressionsusedindelaylines. In order not to have every thread doing redundantly
the exact same work, OpemMP provides specific work- 3.4.3 Exampleofparallelcode
sharingdirectives. Forexample#pragma omp sections
allowstobreaktheworkintoseparate,discretesections. To illustrate how Faust utilises the OpenMP directives,
Eachsectionbeingexecutedbyonethread: hereisaverysimpleexample,two1-polefiltersinparal-
lelconnectedtoanadder(seefigure5thecorresponding
#pragma omp parallel
block-diagram):
{
#pragma omp sections filter(c) = *(1-c) : + ~ *(c);
{ process = filter(0.9), filter(0.9) : +;
#pragma omp section
{
// job 1
}
#pragma omp section
{
// job 2
}
...
}
...
}
3.4.2 AddingOpenMPdirectives
As already said the parallel code generation is built on
top of the vector code generation. The graph of loops
produced by the vector code generator is topologically
sortedinordertodetecttheloopsthatcanbecomputed
inparallel. ThefirstsetL containstheloopsthatdon’t
0
dependofanyotherloops,thesetL containstheloops
1 Figure5: twofiltersinparallelconnectedtoanadder
thatonlydependofloopsofL ,etc..
0
Thecorrespondingcompute()methodobtainedusingthe
As all the loops of a given set L can be computed in
n -ompoptionisthefollowing:
parallel,thecompilerwillgenerateasectionsconstruct
withasectionforeachloop.
virtual void compute (int fullcount,
#pragma omp sections
float** input,
{
float** output)
#pragma omp section
{
for (...) {
float fRec0_tmp[32+4];
// Loop 1
float fRec1_tmp[32+4];
}
float* fRec0 = &fRec0_tmp[4];
#pragma omp section
float* fRec1 = &fRec1_tmp[4];
for (...) {
#pragma omp parallel firstprivate(fRec0,fRec1)
// Loop 2
{
}
for (int index = 0; index < fullcount;
...
index += 32)
}
{
int count = min (32, fullcount-index);
Ifagivensetconstainsonlyoneloop,thenthecompiler float* input0 = &input[0][index];
float* input1 = &input[1][index];
checkstoseeiftheloopcanbeparallelized(norecursive float* output0 = &output[0][index];
dependencies) or not. If it can be parallelized, it gener- #pragma omp single
ates: {
for (int i=0; i<4; i++)
#pragma omp for fRec0_tmp[i]=fRec0_perm[i];
for (...) { for (int i=0; i<4; i++)
// Loop code fRec1_tmp[i]=fRec1_perm[i];
} }
// SECTION : 1
#pragma omp sections
otherwiseitgeneratesasingleconstructsothatonlyone {
threadwillexecutetheloop: #pragma omp section
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
#pragma omp single fRec0[i] = ((0.1f * input1[i])
for (...) { + (0.9f * fRec0[i-1]));
// Loop code }
} #pragma omp section
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
fRec1[i] = ((0.1f * input0[i]) 4 Benchmarks
+ (0.9f * fRec1[i-1]));
}
Tocomparetheperformancesofthesethreetypesofcode
}
generationinarealisticsituationwehaveimplementeda
// SECTION : 2
#pragma omp for specialalsa-gtk-bench.cpparchitecturefilethatmeasures
for (int i=0; i<count; i++) { thedurationofthecompute()method.Hereisafragment
output0[i] = (fRec1[i] + fRec0[i]); ofthisarchitecturefile:
}
// SECTION : 3 while(running) {
#pragma omp single audio.read();
{ STARTMESURE
for (int i=0; i<4; i++) DSP.compute(audio.buffering(),
fRec0_perm[i]=fRec0_tmp[count+i]; audio.inputSoftChannels(),
for (int i=0; i<4; i++) audio.outputSoftChannels()
fRec1_perm[i]=fRec1_tmp[count+i]; );
} STOPMESURE
} audio.write();
} running = mesure <= (KMESURE + KSKIP);
} }
Thiscodeappealsforsomecomments: The methodology is the following. The duration of the
computemethodismeasuredbyreadingtheTSC(Time
StampCounter)register. Atotalof128+2048measures
1. The parallel construct #pragma omp parallel is
aremadebyrun. Thefirst128measuresareconsidered
the fundamental construct that starts parallel exe-
awarm-upperiodandareskipped. Themedianvalueof
cution. Thenumberofparallelthreadsisgenerally
thefollowing2048measuresiscomputed. Thismedian
thenumberofCPUcoresbutitcanbecontrolledin
value,expressedinprocessorscycles,isfirstconvertedin
severalways.
aduration,andtheninnumberofbytesproducedpersec-
2. variables external to the parallel region are shared ond considering the audio buffer size (in our test 2048)
by default. The firstprivate(fRec0,fRec1) andthenumberofoutputchannels.
clauseindicatesthateachthreadshouldhaveitspri-
vatecopyoffRec0andfRec1.Thereasonisthatac- This throughput performance is a good indicator. The
cessingsharedvariablesrequiresanindirectionand memorybandwidthisastronglimitingfactorfortoday’s
isveryinefficientcomparedtoprivatecopies. processors,andithastobesharedamongtheprocessors.
Inotherwords,onaSMPmachinearealtimeaudiopro-
3. The top level loop for (int index = 0;...)...
gram can never go faster than the memory bandwidth.
isexecutedbyallthreadssimultaneously. Thesub-
Andifasequentialprogramalreadyutilisesalltheavail-
sequentwork-sharingdirectivesinsidetheloopwill
able memory bandwidth, there is no room for improve-
indicatehowtheworkmustbesharedbetweenthe
ment. In this case a parallel version can only perform
threads.
worth.
4. Pleasenotethatanimpliedbarrierexistsattheend
ofeachwork-sharingregion. Allthreadsmusthave 4.1 Machinesandcompilersused
executed the barrier before any of them can con-
tinue. In order to compare the scalar code generation with the
5. The work-sharing directive #pragma omp single new vector and parallel code generation we have com-
indicates that this first section will be executed by piledwithFaust0.9.9.5b2aseriesoftestinthreediffer-
onlyonethread(anyofthem). entversions. Thefollowingcommandswereused:
6. Thework-sharingdirective#pragma omp sections
- scal : faust -a alsa-gtk-bench.cpp
indicates that each corresponding
test.dsp -o test.cpp
#pragma omp section, here our two filters,
willbeexecutedinparallel. - vec : faust -a alsa-gtk-bench.cpp
-vec -vs 3968 test.dsp -o test.cpp
7. Theloopconstruct#pragma omp forspecifiesthat
theiterationsoftheassociatedloopwillbeexecuted - par : faust -a alsa-gtk-bench.cpp
inparallel. Theiterationsofthelooparedistributed -omp -vs 3968 test.dsp -o test.cpp
acrosstheparallelthreads. Forexampleifwehave
two threads the first one can compute indices be- We have also used two different C++ compilers, GNU
tween0andcount/2andtheotherbetweencount/2 GCCandIntelICC:
andcount.
8. Finally#pragma omp singleinsection3indicates - GCC version 4.3.2 with options : -O3
that this last section will be executed by only one -march=native -mfpmath=sse
thread(anyofthem). -msse -msse2 -msse3 -ffast-math
-ftree-vectorize. ( -fopenmp added for
8000
OpenMP). VAIO
XPS
- ICCversion11.0.074withoptions: -O3 -xHost 7000 MAC
-ftz -fno-alias -fp-model fast=2.
(-openmpisaddedforOpenMP). 6000
Allthetestswererunonthreedifferentmachines: s 5000
B/
M
- vaio : a Sony Vaio SZ3VP laptop, with an Intel put 4000
h
T7400 dual core processor at 2167 MHz, 2GB of ug
o
Ram, running an Ubuntu 7.10 distribution with a Tr 3000
2.6.22-15-generickernel.
- xps:aDellXPSmachinewithanIntelQ9300quad 2000
core processor at 2500 MHz, 4GB of Ram, run-
ning an Ubuntu 8.10 distribution with a 2.6.22-15- 1000
generickernel.
0
- macpro : an Apple Macpro with two Intel Xeon
gcc.scal gcc.vec gcc.par icc.scal icc.vec icc.par
X5365quadcoreprocessorsat3000MHz,2GBof
Compilation option
Ram, running an Ubuntu 8.10 distribution with a
2.6.27-12-generickernel
Figure6: Copy1.dspbenchmark
4.2 Benchmark: copy1.dsp
5000
scal
Thegoalofthisfirsttestistomeasurethememoryband- 4500 vec
par
width. We use a very simple Faust program copy1.dsp
thatsimplycopiestheinputsignaltotheoutputsignal: 4000
process = _; 3500
s
B/ 3000
The results we have obtained are summarized figure 6. M
Thehorizontalaxescorrespondstothethreefaustcom- put 2500
pilationschemes:scalar,vectorandparallel,combined gh
u
with thetwo C++compilers : gcc and icc. Thevertical o 2000
Tr
axesisthethroughput:howmanybytesofsampleseach
1500
testedprogramisabletoproducepersecond(higherval-
uesarethebetter).
1000
It is interesting to note how catastrophic are the perfor-
500
mances of the parallel versions. The scalar and vector
versions are quite similar with a little advantage to the 0
scalarversion. Thecodegeneratedbyiccperformsbet- 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
ter. ThememorybandwidthoftheMacproisdisappoint- Run
ing specially considering that it has to be shared by 8
cores. Figure 7: Stability of measures (copy1 on macpro, icc
version)
How stable are these measures ? Figure 7 compares
the performances of copy1 (compiled with icc) on the
Despite the fact that freeverb has a limited amount of
Macpro on 5 different runs. As we can see the stability
parallelism,iccgivesquiteconvincingresultswitharea-
isreasonablygood.
sonablespeeduponvectorandparallelcodeontheVaio
andtheXPSmachines. Itisalsointerestingtonotethat
4.3 Benchmark: freeverb.dsp
onparallelversionthe83GHzcoresofthemacprowere
slowerthan42.5GhzcoresoftheXPS!
The second test is freeverb.dsp, a Faust implementation
oftheFreeverb(thesourcecanbefoundintheFaustdis-
tribution). 4.4 Benchmark: karplus32.dsp
Theresultsaregivenfigure8. Heregccgivesverygood Karplus32.dsp is a generalized version of Karplus-
results in scalar code and outperforms icc in 2 of the 3 Strongalgorithmwith32slightlydetunedstringsinpar-
cases. Buttheperformancesofgccarestillverypooron allel(thesourcecanbefoundintheFaustdistribution).
vectorandparallelcode. Figure9givestheresults. Againexcellentperformances
100 vol = *( vslider("fader", 0, -60, 4, 0.1)
VAIO : db2linear : smooth(0.99) );
XPS
90
MAC mute = *(1 - checkbox("mute"));
80
vumeter(x) = attach(x, env(x) :
vbargraph("",0,1))
70
with {
B/s 60 env = abs:min(0.99):max ~ -(1.0/SR);
M };
hput 50 pan = _ <: *(sqrt(1-c)), *(sqrt(c))
ug with {
Tro 40 c = ( nentry("pan",0,-8,8,1)-8)/-16 :
smooth(0.99 );
30 };
20 voice(v) = vgroup("voice %v",
mute :
10 hgroup("", vol : vumeter) :
pan );
0
gcc.scal gcc.vec gcc.par icc.scal icc.vec icc.par stereo = hgroup("stereo out", vol, vol);
Compilation option
process = hgroup("mixer",
par(i,8,voice(i)) :> stereo);
Figure8: Freeverb.dspbenchmark
Theresultsoffigure10showarealbenefitforthevector-
of gcc in scalar mode. Good progression of the perfor-
ized version with a speedup exceeding x2 on the 3 ma-
mances in vector mode as well as in parallel mode for
chines. Thereisalsoapositiveimpactoftheparalleliza-
icc.
tion even if more limited. As usual gcc delivers good
scalar code but poor results on vectorized and OpenMP
80
VAIO code.
XPS
70 MAC
120
VAIO
60 XPS
MAC
100
s 50
B/
M
put 40 80
h s
g B/
ou M
Tr 30 put 60
h
g
20 ou
Tr
40
10
0 20
gcc.scal gcc.vec gcc.par icc.scal icc.vec icc.par
Compilation option
0
gcc.scal gcc.vec gcc.par icc.scal icc.vec icc.par
Figure9: Karplus32.dspbenchmark
Compilation option
4.5 Benchmark: mixer.dsp Figure10: mixer.dspbenchmark
Thisistheimplementationofasimple8channelsmixer.
Eachchannelhasamutebutton,avolumecontrolindB, 4.6 Benchmark: fdelay8.dsp
avumeterandastereopancontrol. Themixerhasalsoa
volumecontrolofthestereooutput. This test implements an 8-channels fractional delay.
EachchannelhasavolumecontrolindBaswellasade-
import("music.lib");
lay control in fractions of samples. The interpolation is
basedonafifth-orderLagrangeinterpolationfromJulius
smooth(c) = *(1-c) : +~*(c);
Smith’sFaustfilterlibrary.
