Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 11:27:45 07/22/03
Go up one level in this thread
On July 22, 2003 at 12:28:39, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>On July 22, 2003 at 08:07:18, Gerd Isenberg wrote:
>
>>On July 21, 2003 at 15:35:17, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>>
>>>On July 18, 2003 at 23:45:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 18, 2003 at 21:58:18, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On July 18, 2003 at 21:17:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On July 18, 2003 at 15:21:35, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On July 17, 2003 at 18:25:51, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>On July 17, 2003 at 17:35:33, Dieter Buerssner wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>[snip]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>I cannot find any randomness in the reads of lm-bench (I downloaded latest
>>>>>>>>>stable source today, not the experimental version, available, too). If it would
>>>>>>>>>do random reads, it would have no way to avoid the problem with the TLBs you
>>>>>>>>>explained.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>4M pages solves it for at least 250mb worth of RAM. But then again, _no_ chess
>>>>>>>>program depends on purely random memory accesses to blow out the TLB. The only
>>>>>>>>truly random accesses I do are the regular hashing and pawn hashing, which
>>>>>>>>both total to significantly less than the total nodes I search. Which means
>>>>>>>>the TLB penalty is not even 1% of my total run time. Probably closer to
>>>>>>>>.01% - .05%.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I ignore that.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Why do you think it is that low? I get ~20-30% of nodes have hash probes with
>>>>>>>crafty.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Look at the code.
>>>>>I not only looked at the code. I *instrumented it*. I won't have complete
>>>>>results until Monday, but it appears that crafty spends 3-5% of its total time
>>>>>inside hashprobe on my (slow) machine and a prefetch could reduce that by about
>>>>>half.
>>>>>
>>>>>>Crafty probes memory _once_ for a hash probe. That
>>>>>>introduces a memory access penalty once per node in the basic search,
>>>>>>less than once per node in the q-search (I only probe phash there and I
>>>>>>don't probe it but about 25% of the q-search nodes I visit).
>>>>>
>>>>>If you had read whai I wrote, you would see I said crafty does a hash probe
>>>>>20-30% of its total nodes.
>>>>
>>>>OK. I clearly mis-read what you meant. the 20-30% was eye-catching as that
>>>>is a pretty common hash hit percentage as well...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>As a result, you get less than one probe per node searched. A node searched
>>>>>>requires something on the order of 3000-5000 instructions. What percentage
>>>>>>of that 3K-5K instruction timing is that single hash probe? Almost zero.
>>>>>
>>>>>Except that a fast machine may do these 3-5K instructions in <1usec. A cache
>>>>>miss + a TLB miss may take 300-400 ns. I would not call 30% almost 0.
>>>>
>>>>You are missing my point. In the position(s) you tested, you saw 20-30%
>>>>hash probes. That means one probe for every 3-5 nodes. At 1M nodes
>>>>per second, that is 200K-300K probes per second. If you measure the
>>>>time spent in searching a single node, multiply that by 3-5X, then compare
>>>>that to the hash probe time, the time spent probing the hash table is low.
>>>>
>>>>Note that your 5% is _not_ the total time used to probe the table. It is
>>>>the time to probe the table, and do it _twice_ although the second probe
>>>>doesn't have any memory access penalty associated with it in most cases.
>>>>
>>>>So a big percent of that 5% is doing the actual work done in HashProbe(),
>>>>rather than being all memory access penalty...
>>>
>>>I ran some tests on my slow (450 Mhz) machine. Hash was set to 192Mb. The test
>>>was 21 middle-game positions and ran for nearly 1 hour. Crafty got between 125k
>>>and 230k nps. Crafty spent 3.6% of total time in HashProbe. I added the
>>>following code just before the call to RepetitionCheck() in search.c (slightly
>>>modified from the code in hash.c). Note that the code is basically a no-op as
>>>all variables are local.
>>>
>>>{
>>> static BITBOARD word1;
>>> BITBOARD temp_hashkey;
>>> HASH_ENTRY *htable;
>>>/*
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>| |
>>>| first, compute the initial hash address and choose |
>>>| which hash table (based on color) to probe. |
>>>| |
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>*/
>>>
>>> temp_hashkey=(wtm) ? HashKey : ~HashKey;
>>> htable=trans_ref_a+((int) temp_hashkey&hash_maska);
>>> word1=htable->word1;
>>>}
>>>
>>>Now crafty spends 2.8% of its time in HashProbe.
>>
>>Hi Wesley,
>>
>>that's interesting, it seems that preloading decreases the hash-latency.
>>May be prefetching with Athlons's/Opteron's/P4's PREFETCHNTA, (bypassing
>>L2-Cache) is even better.
>>
>>Gerd
>
>I'm sure it would be better. My code doesn't make it run any faster, it just
>shows that the delay due to memory access is significant.
>
Can you tell me how you conclude this?
IE there are two parts in HashProbe();
1. probe "depth-preferred table".
2. probe "always-store" table".
You are assuming that of the total 3.6% done in HashProbe(), that .8% is
done in the always-store code. Which means that .8% is done in the depth-
preferred table, and the remaining time is memory latency.
I don't think that is the explanation.
Suppose _many_ hits occur in the depth-preferred table. Then you won't be
probing the always-store table at those positions. And your .8% assumption
is not so safe to make. Unless you run huge searches with a small table,
this effect will distort any possible conclusions.
No way a single random access memory read is 3% of the total time spent
doing a node. There are way too many _other_ random-access reads done in
crafty to make that possible. The total time would go over 100%.
>>
>>
>>{
>> static BITBOARD word1;
>> BITBOARD temp_hashkey;
>> HASH_ENTRY *htable;
>>/*
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>| |
>>| first, compute the initial hash address and choose |
>>| which hash table (based on color) to probe. |
>>| |
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>*/
>>
>> temp_hashkey=(wtm) ? HashKey : ~HashKey;
>> htable=trans_ref_a+((int) temp_hashkey&hash_maska);
>>#ifdef _DOPREFETCH
>> __asm mov eax, [htable]; // get the pointer
>> __asm PREFETCHNTA [eax]; // fetch to L1-cache, bypassing L2-Cache
>>#else
>> word1=htable->word1;
>>#endif
>>}
>>
>>some additional notes from:
>>
>>"AMD Athlon™ Processor x86 Code Optimization Guide"
>>
>>Prefetching versus Preloading
>>
>>In code that uses the block prefetch technique as described in
>>“Optimizing Main Memory Performance for Large Arrays” on page 66, a standard
>>load instruction is the best way to prefetch data. But in other situations, load
>>instructions may be able to mimic the functionality of prefetch instructions,
>>but they do not offer the same performance advantage.Prefetch instructions only
>>update the cache line in the L1/L2 cache and do not update an architectural
>>register. This uses one less register compared to a load instruction. Prefetch
>>instructions also do not cause
>>normal instruction retirement to stall. Another benefit of prefetching versus
>>preloading is that the prefetching instructions can retire even if the load data
>>has not arrived yet. A regular load used for preloading will stall the machine
>>if it gets to the bottom of the fixed-issue reorder buffer (part of the
>>Instruction Control Unit) and the load data has not arrived yet. The load is
>>"blocking" whereas the prefetch is "non-blocking."
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