> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pengfei Li <[email protected]>
> Sent: 29 June 2026 09:31
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: [email protected]; Tamar Christina <[email protected]>;
> [email protected]; Alex Coplan <[email protected]>;
> [email protected]; Pengfei Li <[email protected]>
> Subject: [PATCH] AArch64: Cap suggested unroll factor for small known-niters
> loops
>
> The AArch64 backend can suggest an unroll factor to the vectorizer in
> order to expose more ILP. However, in some cases the suggested value is
> larger than needed. For the test cases added by this patch, the AArch64
> backend suggests an unroll factor of 4, but the loops only need 1 or 2
> SVE vector iterations respectively to cover their 10 or 20 scalar
> iterations.
>
> This patch caps the suggested unroll factor with CEIL (niters, VF) for
> small known-niters loops. CEIL is used rather than truncating division
> so that the completely unrolled vector loop still covers all scalar
> iterations. Reducing the unroll factor below the number of required
> vector iterations could require a separate epilogue loop and lead to
> worse code generation.
>
> Bootstrapped and tested on aarch64-linux-gnu.
>
OK.
The testcase also shows an unrelated missed optimizations:
When Adv. SIMD it's a case where V4QI would have helped, but aside from that
the scalar epilogue does
.L2:
ldrb w2, [x0, x3]
ldrb w4, [x1, x3]
add x3, x3, 1
subs w2, w2, w4
csneg w2, w2, w2, pl
fmov s30, w2
add v31.2s, v31.2s, v30.2s
cmp x3, 20
bne .L2
fmov w0, s31
ret
so it's doing a register transfer to just do a scalar add, this slows down the
scalar code a lot. For some reason reload thinks it's cheaper to do the transfer
inside the loop rather than outside. This is likely because of the PHI that
takes
the reduction value from the main loop into the epilog.
We should check out RTX costs here.. but that's unrelated to the patch
Thanks,
Tamar
> gcc/ChangeLog:
>
> * config/aarch64/aarch64.cc
> (aarch64_vector_costs::determine_suggested_unroll_factor): Add a
> loop_vec_info parameter.
> (determine_suggested_unroll_factor): Cap the suggested unroll for
> small-niters loops.
> (aarch64_vector_costs::finish_cost): Pass loop_vinfo to
> determine_suggested_unroll_factor.
>
> gcc/testsuite/ChangeLog:
>
> * gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c: New test.
> * gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c: New test.
> ---
> gcc/config/aarch64/aarch64.cc | 18 +++++++++++++++---
> .../gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c | 17 +++++++++++++++++
> .../gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c | 17 +++++++++++++++++
> 3 files changed, 49 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> create mode 100644 gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c
> create mode 100644 gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c
>
> diff --git a/gcc/config/aarch64/aarch64.cc b/gcc/config/aarch64/aarch64.cc
> index 124e6dc37cc..6246c8846f9 100644
> --- a/gcc/config/aarch64/aarch64.cc
> +++ b/gcc/config/aarch64/aarch64.cc
> @@ -17462,7 +17462,7 @@ private:
> unsigned int adjust_body_cost (loop_vec_info, const aarch64_vector_costs
> *,
> unsigned int);
> bool prefer_unrolled_loop () const;
> - unsigned int determine_suggested_unroll_factor ();
> + unsigned int determine_suggested_unroll_factor (loop_vec_info
> loop_vinfo);
>
> /* True if we have performed one-time initialization based on the
> vec_info. */
> @@ -19024,7 +19024,8 @@ adjust_body_cost_sve (const
> aarch64_vec_op_count *ops,
> }
>
> unsigned int
> -aarch64_vector_costs::determine_suggested_unroll_factor ()
> +aarch64_vector_costs::
> +determine_suggested_unroll_factor (loop_vec_info loop_vinfo)
> {
> bool sve = m_vec_flags & VEC_ANY_SVE;
> /* If we are trying to unroll an Advanced SIMD main loop that contains
> @@ -19081,6 +19082,16 @@
> aarch64_vector_costs::determine_suggested_unroll_factor ()
> max_unroll_factor = MAX (max_unroll_factor, unroll_factor);
> }
>
> + /* For known iteration loops, cap suggested unroll factor to avoid
> redundant
> + unrolled chunks. Use CEIL rather than truncating division to make sure
> + the completely unrolled vector loop covers all scalar iterations. */
> + if (LOOP_VINFO_NITERS_KNOWN_P (loop_vinfo))
> + {
> + unsigned int niters = LOOP_VINFO_INT_NITERS (loop_vinfo);
> + unsigned int estimated_vf = vect_vf_for_cost (loop_vinfo);
> + max_unroll_factor = MIN (max_unroll_factor, CEIL (niters,
> estimated_vf));
> + }
> +
> /* Make sure unroll factor is power of 2. */
> return 1 << ceil_log2 (max_unroll_factor);
> }
> @@ -19272,7 +19283,8 @@ aarch64_vector_costs::finish_cost (const
> vector_costs *uncast_scalar_costs)
> {
> m_costs[vect_body] = adjust_body_cost (loop_vinfo, scalar_costs,
> m_costs[vect_body]);
> - m_suggested_unroll_factor = determine_suggested_unroll_factor ();
> + m_suggested_unroll_factor
> + = determine_suggested_unroll_factor (loop_vinfo);
>
> /* For gather and scatters there's an additional overhead for the first
> iteration. For low count loops they're not beneficial so model the
> diff --git a/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c
> b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c
> new file mode 100644
> index 00000000000..8548f504db0
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-1.c
> @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
> +/* Check that the loop is not unrolled. */
> +/* { dg-do compile } */
> +/* { dg-options "-O2 -mtune=neoverse-v2 -mautovec-preference=sve-only" }
> */
> +
> +#include <stdint.h>
> +#include <stdlib.h>
> +
> +int
> +foo (uint8_t *p1, uint8_t *p2)
> +{
> + int sum = 0;
> + for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
> + sum += abs (p1[i] - p2[i]);
> + return sum;
> +}
> +
> +/* { dg-final { scan-assembler-not {\tld1b\t[^\n]*, mul vl} } } */
> diff --git a/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c
> b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c
> new file mode 100644
> index 00000000000..e5f8c457d30
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/gcc/testsuite/gcc.target/aarch64/sve/vect-unroll-2.c
> @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
> +/* Check that the loop is unrolled by 2 rather than 4 for small niters. */
> +/* { dg-do compile } */
> +/* { dg-options "-O2 -mtune=neoverse-v2 -mautovec-preference=sve-only" }
> */
> +
> +#include <stdint.h>
> +#include <stdlib.h>
> +
> +int
> +foo (uint8_t *p1, uint8_t *p2)
> +{
> + int sum = 0;
> + for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
> + sum += abs (p1[i] - p2[i]);
> + return sum;
> +}
> +
> +/* { dg-final { scan-assembler-times {\tld1b\t[^\n]*, mul vl} 2 } } */
> --
> 2.43.0