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Subject: Re: Another memory latency test

Author: J. Wesley Cleveland

Date: 12:58:00 07/22/03

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On July 22, 2003 at 14:27:45, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>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?

The *only* effect of the code I added is to ensure that the depth-preferred part
of the hash table is put into cache, so any speedup in HashProbe is due to not
having a cache (and ATB) miss.

>
>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%.

At 1M nodes/sec, the time for 1 node is (obviously) 1 usec. The latency for one
cache miss is about 150 nsec. This implies that if you have *one* cache miss
every 4 nodes, you will spend 3% on that single random access memory read.
Apparently, caching works very well for crafty, except for HashProbe( ;).

Again, my figures are on my slow machine. Your machine is ~6x faster, while your
memory latency is not much better, so I suspect the figures will be much worse
on your machine. You may want to test this for yourself.

>
>>>
>>>
>>>{
>>>  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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