Re: [Intel-gfx] [PATCH v5] drm/i915: Add IOCTL Param to control data port coherency.
On 2018-07-13 12:40, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote: On 12/07/2018 16:10, Tomasz Lis wrote: The patch adds a parameter to control the data port coherency functionality on a per-context level. When the IOCTL is called, a command to switch data port coherency state is added to the ordered list. All prior requests are executed on old coherency settings, and all exec requests after the IOCTL will use new settings. Rationale: The OpenCL driver develpers requested a functionality to control cache coherency at data port level. Keeping the coherency at that level is disabled by default due to its performance costs. OpenCL driver is planning to enable it for a small subset of submissions, when such functionality is required. Below are answers to basic question explaining background of the functionality and reasoning for the proposed implementation: 1. Why do we need a coherency enable/disable switch for memory that is shared between CPU and GEN (GPU)? Memory coherency between CPU and GEN, while being a great feature that enables CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER OCL capability on Intel GEN architecture, adds overhead related to tracking (snooping) memory inside different cache units (L1$, L2$, L3$, LLC$, etc.). At the same time, minority of modern OCL applications actually use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER (and hence require memory coherency between CPU and GPU). The goal of coherency enable/disable switch is to remove overhead of memory coherency when memory coherency is not needed. 2. Why do we need a global coherency switch? In order to support I/O commands from within EUs (Execution Units), Intel GEN ISA (GEN Instruction Set Assembly) contains dedicated "send" instructions. These send instructions provide several addressing models. One of these addressing models (named "stateless") provides most flexible I/O using plain virtual addresses (as opposed to buffer_handle+offset models). This "stateless" model is similar to regular memory load/store operations available on typical CPUs. Since this model provides I/O using arbitrary virtual addresses, it enables algorithmic designs that are based on pointer-to-pointer (e.g. buffer of pointers) concepts. For instance, it allows creating tree-like data structures such as: | NODE1 | | uint64_t data | +| | NODE* | NODE*| ++---+ / \ / \ | NODE2 | | NODE3 | | uint64_t data | | uint64_t data | +| +| | NODE* | NODE*| | NODE* | NODE*| ++---+ ++---+ Please note that pointers inside such structures can point to memory locations in different OCL allocations - e.g. NODE1 and NODE2 can reside in one OCL allocation while NODE3 resides in a completely separate OCL allocation. Additionally, such pointers can be shared with CPU (i.e. using SVM - Shared Virtual Memory feature). Using pointers from different allocations doesn't affect the stateless addressing model which even allows scattered reading from different allocations at the same time (i.e. by utilizing SIMD-nature of send instructions). When it comes to coherency programming, send instructions in stateless model can be encoded (at ISA level) to either use or disable coherency. However, for generic OCL applications (such as example with tree-like data structure), OCL compiler is not able to determine origin of memory pointed to by an arbitrary pointer - i.e. is not able to track given pointer back to a specific allocation. As such, it's not able to decide whether coherency is needed or not for specific pointer (or for specific I/O instruction). As a result, compiler encodes all stateless sends as coherent (doing otherwise would lead to functional issues resulting from data corruption). Please note that it would be possible to workaround this (e.g. based on allocations map and pointer bounds checking prior to each I/O instruction) but the performance cost of such workaround would be many times greater than the cost of keeping coherency always enabled. As such, enabling/disabling memory coherency at GEN ISA level is not feasible and alternative method is needed. Such alternative solution is to have a global coherency switch that allows disabling coherency for single (though entire) GPU submission. This is beneficial because this way we: * can enable (and pay for) coherency only in submissions that actually need coherency (submissions that use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER resources) * don't care about coherency at GEN ISA granularity (no performance impact) 3. Will coherency switch be used frequently? There are scenarios that will require frequent toggling
Re: [Intel-gfx] [PATCH v5] drm/i915: Add IOCTL Param to control data port coherency.
On 12/07/2018 16:10, Tomasz Lis wrote: The patch adds a parameter to control the data port coherency functionality on a per-context level. When the IOCTL is called, a command to switch data port coherency state is added to the ordered list. All prior requests are executed on old coherency settings, and all exec requests after the IOCTL will use new settings. Rationale: The OpenCL driver develpers requested a functionality to control cache coherency at data port level. Keeping the coherency at that level is disabled by default due to its performance costs. OpenCL driver is planning to enable it for a small subset of submissions, when such functionality is required. Below are answers to basic question explaining background of the functionality and reasoning for the proposed implementation: 1. Why do we need a coherency enable/disable switch for memory that is shared between CPU and GEN (GPU)? Memory coherency between CPU and GEN, while being a great feature that enables CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER OCL capability on Intel GEN architecture, adds overhead related to tracking (snooping) memory inside different cache units (L1$, L2$, L3$, LLC$, etc.). At the same time, minority of modern OCL applications actually use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER (and hence require memory coherency between CPU and GPU). The goal of coherency enable/disable switch is to remove overhead of memory coherency when memory coherency is not needed. 2. Why do we need a global coherency switch? In order to support I/O commands from within EUs (Execution Units), Intel GEN ISA (GEN Instruction Set Assembly) contains dedicated "send" instructions. These send instructions provide several addressing models. One of these addressing models (named "stateless") provides most flexible I/O using plain virtual addresses (as opposed to buffer_handle+offset models). This "stateless" model is similar to regular memory load/store operations available on typical CPUs. Since this model provides I/O using arbitrary virtual addresses, it enables algorithmic designs that are based on pointer-to-pointer (e.g. buffer of pointers) concepts. For instance, it allows creating tree-like data structures such as: | NODE1 | | uint64_t data | +| | NODE* | NODE*| ++---+ / \ /\ | NODE2 || NODE3 | | uint64_t data || uint64_t data | +|+| | NODE* | NODE*|| NODE* | NODE*| ++---+++---+ Please note that pointers inside such structures can point to memory locations in different OCL allocations - e.g. NODE1 and NODE2 can reside in one OCL allocation while NODE3 resides in a completely separate OCL allocation. Additionally, such pointers can be shared with CPU (i.e. using SVM - Shared Virtual Memory feature). Using pointers from different allocations doesn't affect the stateless addressing model which even allows scattered reading from different allocations at the same time (i.e. by utilizing SIMD-nature of send instructions). When it comes to coherency programming, send instructions in stateless model can be encoded (at ISA level) to either use or disable coherency. However, for generic OCL applications (such as example with tree-like data structure), OCL compiler is not able to determine origin of memory pointed to by an arbitrary pointer - i.e. is not able to track given pointer back to a specific allocation. As such, it's not able to decide whether coherency is needed or not for specific pointer (or for specific I/O instruction). As a result, compiler encodes all stateless sends as coherent (doing otherwise would lead to functional issues resulting from data corruption). Please note that it would be possible to workaround this (e.g. based on allocations map and pointer bounds checking prior to each I/O instruction) but the performance cost of such workaround would be many times greater than the cost of keeping coherency always enabled. As such, enabling/disabling memory coherency at GEN ISA level is not feasible and alternative method is needed. Such alternative solution is to have a global coherency switch that allows disabling coherency for single (though entire) GPU submission. This is beneficial because this way we: * can enable (and pay for) coherency only in submissions that actually need coherency (submissions that use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER resources) * don't care about coherency at GEN ISA granularity (no performance impact) 3. Will coherency switch be used frequently? There are scenarios that will require frequent toggling of the coherency switch. E.g. an application has two OCL compute kernels: kern_master and
[Intel-gfx] [PATCH v5] drm/i915: Add IOCTL Param to control data port coherency.
The patch adds a parameter to control the data port coherency functionality on a per-context level. When the IOCTL is called, a command to switch data port coherency state is added to the ordered list. All prior requests are executed on old coherency settings, and all exec requests after the IOCTL will use new settings. Rationale: The OpenCL driver develpers requested a functionality to control cache coherency at data port level. Keeping the coherency at that level is disabled by default due to its performance costs. OpenCL driver is planning to enable it for a small subset of submissions, when such functionality is required. Below are answers to basic question explaining background of the functionality and reasoning for the proposed implementation: 1. Why do we need a coherency enable/disable switch for memory that is shared between CPU and GEN (GPU)? Memory coherency between CPU and GEN, while being a great feature that enables CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER OCL capability on Intel GEN architecture, adds overhead related to tracking (snooping) memory inside different cache units (L1$, L2$, L3$, LLC$, etc.). At the same time, minority of modern OCL applications actually use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER (and hence require memory coherency between CPU and GPU). The goal of coherency enable/disable switch is to remove overhead of memory coherency when memory coherency is not needed. 2. Why do we need a global coherency switch? In order to support I/O commands from within EUs (Execution Units), Intel GEN ISA (GEN Instruction Set Assembly) contains dedicated "send" instructions. These send instructions provide several addressing models. One of these addressing models (named "stateless") provides most flexible I/O using plain virtual addresses (as opposed to buffer_handle+offset models). This "stateless" model is similar to regular memory load/store operations available on typical CPUs. Since this model provides I/O using arbitrary virtual addresses, it enables algorithmic designs that are based on pointer-to-pointer (e.g. buffer of pointers) concepts. For instance, it allows creating tree-like data structures such as: | NODE1 | | uint64_t data | +| | NODE* | NODE*| ++---+ / \ /\ | NODE2 || NODE3 | | uint64_t data || uint64_t data | +|+| | NODE* | NODE*|| NODE* | NODE*| ++---+++---+ Please note that pointers inside such structures can point to memory locations in different OCL allocations - e.g. NODE1 and NODE2 can reside in one OCL allocation while NODE3 resides in a completely separate OCL allocation. Additionally, such pointers can be shared with CPU (i.e. using SVM - Shared Virtual Memory feature). Using pointers from different allocations doesn't affect the stateless addressing model which even allows scattered reading from different allocations at the same time (i.e. by utilizing SIMD-nature of send instructions). When it comes to coherency programming, send instructions in stateless model can be encoded (at ISA level) to either use or disable coherency. However, for generic OCL applications (such as example with tree-like data structure), OCL compiler is not able to determine origin of memory pointed to by an arbitrary pointer - i.e. is not able to track given pointer back to a specific allocation. As such, it's not able to decide whether coherency is needed or not for specific pointer (or for specific I/O instruction). As a result, compiler encodes all stateless sends as coherent (doing otherwise would lead to functional issues resulting from data corruption). Please note that it would be possible to workaround this (e.g. based on allocations map and pointer bounds checking prior to each I/O instruction) but the performance cost of such workaround would be many times greater than the cost of keeping coherency always enabled. As such, enabling/disabling memory coherency at GEN ISA level is not feasible and alternative method is needed. Such alternative solution is to have a global coherency switch that allows disabling coherency for single (though entire) GPU submission. This is beneficial because this way we: * can enable (and pay for) coherency only in submissions that actually need coherency (submissions that use CL_MEM_SVM_FINE_GRAIN_BUFFER resources) * don't care about coherency at GEN ISA granularity (no performance impact) 3. Will coherency switch be used frequently? There are scenarios that will require frequent toggling of the coherency switch. E.g. an application has two OCL compute kernels: kern_master and kern_worker. kern_master uses, concurrently with CPU, some fine
