AVX2 slower than SSE on Haswell

Question

I have the following code (normal, SSE and AVX):

int testSSE(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
    int result[4] __attribute__((aligned(16))) = {0};
    __m128i vresult = _mm_set1_epi32(0);
    __m128i v1, v2, vmax;

    for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k += 4) {
        v1 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & lhs[k]);
        v2 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & ghs[k]);
        vmax = _mm_add_epi32(v1, v2);
        vresult = _mm_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
    }
    _mm_store_si128((__m128i *) result, vresult);
    int mymax = result[0];
    for (int k = 1; k < 4; k++) {
        if (result[k] > mymax) {
            mymax = result[k];
        }
    }
    return mymax;
}

 int testAVX(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
    int result[8] __attribute__((aligned(32))) = {0};
    __m256i vresult = _mm256_set1_epi32(0);
    __m256i v1, v2, vmax;

    for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k += 8) {
        v1 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & ghs[ k]);
        v2 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & lhs[k]);
        vmax = _mm256_add_epi32(v1, v2);
        vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
    }
    _mm256_store_si256((__m256i *) result, vresult);
    int mymax = result[0];
    for (int k = 1; k < 8; k++) {
        if (result[k] > mymax) {
            mymax = result[k];
        }
    }
    return mymax;
}

int testNormal(const aligned_vector & ghs, const aligned_vector & lhs) {
    int max = 0;
    int tempMax;
    for (int k = 0; k < ghs.size(); k++) {
        tempMax = lhs[k] + ghs[k];
        if (max < tempMax) {
            max = tempMax;
        }
    }
    return max;
}

All these functions are tested with the following code:

void alignTestSSE() {
    aligned_vector lhs;
    aligned_vector ghs;

    int mySize = 4096;
    int FinalResult;
    int nofTestCases = 1000;
    double time, time1, time2, time3;
    vector<int> lhs2;
    vector<int> ghs2;

    lhs.resize(mySize);
    ghs.resize(mySize);
    lhs2.resize(mySize);
    ghs2.resize(mySize);

    srand(1);
    for (int k = 0; k < mySize; k++) {
        lhs[k] = randomNodeID(1000000);
        lhs2[k] = lhs[k];
        ghs[k] = randomNodeID(1000000);
        ghs2[k] = ghs[k];
    }
    /* Warming UP */
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs);
    }

    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs);
    }

    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs);
    }

    cout << "===========================" << endl;
    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs);
    }
    time = timestamp() - time;
    time1 = time;
    cout << "SSE took " << time << " s" << endl;
    cout << "SSE Result: " << FinalResult << endl;

    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs);
    }
    time = timestamp() - time;
    time3 = time;
    cout << "AVX took " << time << " s" << endl;
    cout << "AVX Result: " << FinalResult << endl;



    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        FinalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs);
    }
    time = timestamp() - time;
    cout << "Normal took " << time << " s" << endl;
    cout << "Normal Result: " << FinalResult << endl;
    cout << "SpeedUP SSE= " << time / time1 << " s" << endl;
    cout << "SpeedUP AVX= " << time / time3 << " s" << endl;
    cout << "===========================" << endl;
    ghs.clear();
    lhs.clear();
}

Where

inline double timestamp() {
    struct timeval tp;
    gettimeofday(&tp, NULL);
    return double(tp.tv_sec) + tp.tv_usec / 1000000.;
}

And

typedef vector<int, aligned_allocator<int, sizeof (int)> > aligned_vector;

is an aligned vector using the AlignedAllocator of https://gist.github.com/donny-dont/1471329

I have an intel-i7 haswell 4771, and latest Ubuntu 14.04 64bit and gcc 4.8.2. Everything is up-to-date. I compiled with -march=native -mtune=native -O3 -m64.

Results are:

SSE took 0.000375986 s
SSE Result: 1982689
AVX took 0.000459909 s
AVX Result: 1982689
Normal took 0.00315714 s
Normal Result: 1982689
SpeedUP SSE= 8.39696 s
SpeedUP AVX= 6.8647 s

Which shows that the exact same code is 22% slower on AVX2 than SSE. Am I doing something wrong or is this normal behavior?

Answer 1

I converted your code to more vanilla C++ (plain arrays, no vectors, etc), cleaned it up and tested it with auto-vectorization disabled and got reasonable results:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

#include <sys/time.h>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstdint>

#include <immintrin.h>

inline double timestamp() {
    struct timeval tp;
    gettimeofday(&tp, NULL);
    return double(tp.tv_sec) + tp.tv_usec / 1000000.;
}

int testSSE(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
    int result[4] __attribute__((aligned(16))) = {0};
    __m128i vresult = _mm_set1_epi32(0);
    __m128i v1, v2, vmax;

    for (int k = 0; k < n; k += 4) {
        v1 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & lhs[k]);
        v2 = _mm_load_si128((__m128i *) & ghs[k]);
        vmax = _mm_add_epi32(v1, v2);
        vresult = _mm_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
    }
    _mm_store_si128((__m128i *) result, vresult);
    int mymax = result[0];
    for (int k = 1; k < 4; k++) {
        if (result[k] > mymax) {
            mymax = result[k];
        }
    }
    return mymax;
}

int testAVX(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
    int result[8] __attribute__((aligned(32))) = {0};
    __m256i vresult = _mm256_set1_epi32(0);
    __m256i v1, v2, vmax;

    for (int k = 0; k < n; k += 8) {
        v1 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & ghs[k]);
        v2 = _mm256_load_si256((__m256i *) & lhs[k]);
        vmax = _mm256_add_epi32(v1, v2);
        vresult = _mm256_max_epi32(vresult, vmax);
    }
    _mm256_store_si256((__m256i *) result, vresult);
    int mymax = result[0];
    for (int k = 1; k < 8; k++) {
        if (result[k] > mymax) {
            mymax = result[k];
        }
    }
    return mymax;
}

int testNormal(const int32_t * ghs, const int32_t * lhs, size_t n) {
    int max = 0;
    int tempMax;
    for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
        tempMax = lhs[k] + ghs[k];
        if (max < tempMax) {
            max = tempMax;
        }
    }
    return max;
}

void alignTestSSE() {

    int n = 4096;
    int normalResult, sseResult, avxResult;
    int nofTestCases = 1000;
    double time, normalTime, sseTime, avxTime;

    int lhs[n] __attribute__ ((aligned(32)));
    int ghs[n] __attribute__ ((aligned(32)));

    for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
        lhs[k] = arc4random();
        ghs[k] = arc4random();
    }

    /* Warming UP */
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        normalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs, n);
    }

    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        sseResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs, n);
    }

    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        avxResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs, n);
    }

    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        normalResult = testNormal(lhs, ghs, n);
    }
    normalTime = timestamp() - time;

    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        sseResult = testSSE(lhs, ghs, n);
    }
    sseTime = timestamp() - time;

    time = timestamp();
    for (int k = 0; k < nofTestCases; k++) {
        avxResult = testAVX(lhs, ghs, n);
    }
    avxTime = timestamp() - time;

    cout << "===========================" << endl;
    cout << "Normal took " << normalTime << " s" << endl;
    cout << "Normal Result: " << normalResult << endl;
    cout << "SSE took " << sseTime << " s" << endl;
    cout << "SSE Result: " << sseResult << endl;
    cout << "AVX took " << avxTime << " s" << endl;
    cout << "AVX Result: " << avxResult << endl;
    cout << "SpeedUP SSE= " << normalTime / sseTime << endl;
    cout << "SpeedUP AVX= " << normalTime / avxTime << endl;
    cout << "===========================" << endl;

}

int main()
{
    alignTestSSE();
    return 0;
}

Test:

$ clang++ -Wall -mavx2 -O3 -fno-vectorize SO_avx.cpp && ./a.out
===========================
Normal took 0.00324106 s
Normal Result: 2143749391
SSE took 0.000527859 s
SSE Result: 2143749391
AVX took 0.000221968 s
AVX Result: 2143749391
SpeedUP SSE= 6.14002
SpeedUP AVX= 14.6015
===========================

I suggest you try the above code, with -fno-vectorize (or -fno-tree-vectorize if using g++), and see if you get similar results. If you do then you can work backwards towards your original code to see where the inconsistency might be coming from.