SPRUIG3C January   2018  – August 2019 TDA4VM , TDA4VM-Q1

 

  1.   Read This First
    1.     About This Manual
    2.     Related Documentation
    3.     Trademarks
  2. 1Overview and Scope
    1. 1.1 Comparing VCOP and C7000
    2. 1.2 About this Document
      1. 1.2.1 Documentation Conventions
    3. 1.3 Output Format
    4. 1.4 Data Types
      1. 1.4.1 40-bit Incompatibilities
      2. 1.4.2 40-Bit Detection in Host Emulation Mode
    5. 1.5 SIMD Width
    6. 1.6 VCOP Virtual Machine
  3. 2Kernel API
    1. 2.1 Overview
    2. 2.2 Parameter Block
      1. 2.2.1 Tvals Structure
      2. 2.2.2 Pblock Manipulation
  4. 3Loop Control
    1. 3.1 Overview
    2. 3.2 Loop Control and Nested Loops
    3. 3.3 Repeat Loops
    4. 3.4 Compound Conditions
    5. 3.5 Early Exit
  5. 4Addressing
    1. 4.1 Overview
    2. 4.2 Streaming Engines
    3. 4.3 Streaming Address Generators
    4. 4.4 Indexed Addressing
    5. 4.5 Circular Addressing
  6. 5Operations
    1. 5.1 Load Operations
    2. 5.2 Store Operations
      1. 5.2.1 Predicated Stores
      2. 5.2.2 Scatter and Transposing Stores
      3. 5.2.3 Optimization of OFFSET_NP1-Based Transpose
      4. 5.2.4 Rounding Stores
      5. 5.2.5 Saturating Stores
    3. 5.3 Arithmetic Operations
      1. 5.3.1 Vector Compares
      2. 5.3.2 Multiplication with Rounding, Truncation, or Left Shift
    4. 5.4 Lookup and Histogram Table Operations
      1. 5.4.1 Determination of Table Size
      2. 5.4.2 Table Configuration
      3. 5.4.3 Copy-in Operation
      4. 5.4.4 Copy-out Operation
      5. 5.4.5 Index Adjustment from Non-zero Agen
      6. 5.4.6 Lookup Operation
      7. 5.4.7 Histogram Update Operation
      8. 5.4.8 16-Way Lookup and Histogram
  7. 6Performance
    1. 6.1 Overview
    2. 6.2 Compiler Requirements
    3. 6.3 Automatic Performance Profiling
    4. 6.4 Performance Options
  8.   A Warnings and Notes
    1.     A.1 Compatibility Warnings
    2.     A.2 Efficiency Warnings

Overview

The collective design goal of the C7x ISA and the migration tool is to achieve cycle parity with VCOP on Kernel-C kernels when translated to C7x. The actual performance of a given kernel depends on a variety of factors:

  • VCOP features used by the kernel
  • how well the C7x ISA specifically covers those features
  • the efficiency of the translation generated by the migration tool and virtual machine
  • the ability of the C7x C compiler to generate efficient code from the translated code (including the virtual machine)
  • outer loop code limiting the use of NLC

Of these, only the ISA itself is relatively constant.

The most significant performance issues arise from the use of LHT (lookup and histogram) operations due to the overhead of copying the table into and out of L1D, the use of OFFSET_NP1 and PDDA parallel scattering stores, and collating stores which are not well-supported on C7x.

Having said that, for many kernels the goal of cycle parity is already achieved with current tools. We have established the following general expectations:

  • On average, kernels will execute on C7x with a cycles-to-cycles efficiency of about 0.7x vs VCOP.
  • For kernels that can use 16-way SIMD, this doubles to about 1.4x.