The effect of code alignment in timing main loops in assembly

Question

Let's say I have the following main loop

.L2:
    vmulps          ymm1, ymm2, [rdi+rax]
    vaddps          ymm1, ymm1, [rsi+rax]
    vmovaps         [rdx+rax], ymm1
    add             rax, 32
    jne             .L2

The way I would time this is to put it in another long loop like this

;align 32              
.L1:
    mov             rax, rcx
    neg             rax
align 32
.L2:
    vmulps          ymm1, ymm2, [rdi+rax]
    vaddps          ymm1, ymm1, [rsi+rax]
    vmovaps         [rdx+rax], ymm1
    add             rax, 32
    jne             .L2
    sub             r8d, 1                 ; r8 contains a large integer
    jnz             .L1

What I'm finding is that the alignment I choose can have a significant effect on the timing (up to +-10%). It's not clear to me how to choose the code alignment. There are three places I can think of where I might want to align the code

1. At the entry to the function (see e.g. triad_fma_asm_repeat in the code below)
2. At the start of the outer loop (.L1 above) which repeats my main loop
3. At the start of my main loop (.L2 above).

Another things I have found is that if I put another routine in my source file that changing one instruction (e.g. removing an instruction) can have a significant effect on the timing of the next function even when they are independent functions. I have even seen this in the past affect a routine in another object file.

I have read section 11.5 "Alignment of code" in Agner Fog's optimizing assembly manual but it's still not clear to me the best way to align my code for testing performance. He give an example, 11.5, of timing an inner loop which I don't really follow.

Currently getting the highest performance from my code is a game of guessing different values and locations of alignment.

I would like to know if there is an intelligent method to choose the alignment? Should I align the inner and outerloop? Just the inner loop? The entry to the function as well? Do using short or long NOPs matter?

I'm mostly interested in Haswell, followed by SNB/IVB, and then Core2.

---

I have tried both NASM and YASM and have discovered that this is one area where they differ significantly. NASM only inserts one byte NOP instructions where YASM inserts multi-byte NOP. For example by aligning both the the inner and outer loop above to 32 bytes NASM inserted 20 NOP (0x90) instructions where as YASM inserted the following (from objdump)

  2c:   66 66 66 66 66 66 2e    data16 data16 data16 data16 data16 nopw  %cs:0x0(%rax,%rax,1)
  33:   0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 
  3a:   00 
  3b:   0f 1f 44 00 00          nopl   0x0(%rax,%rax,1)

So far I have not observed a significant difference in performance with this. It appears that it's alignment that matters not the instruction length. But Agner writes in the aligning code section:

It is more efficient to use longer instructions that do nothing than to use a lot of single-byte NOP's.

---

If you want to play with the alignment and see the effects yourself bellow you can find both the assembly and C code I use. Replace double frequency = 3.6 with the effective frequency of your CPU. You may want to disable turbo.

;nasm/yasm -f elf64 align_asm.asm`
global triad_fma_asm_repeat
;RDI x, RSI y, RDX z, RCX n, R8 repeat
;z[i] = y[i] + 3.14159*x[i]
pi: dd 3.14159

section .text
align 16
triad_fma_asm_repeat:

    shl             rcx, 2
    add             rdi, rcx
    add             rsi, rcx
    add             rdx, rcx
    vbroadcastss    ymm2, [rel pi]
    ;neg                rcx

;align 32
.L1:
    mov             rax, rcx
    neg             rax
align 32
.L2:
    vmulps          ymm1, ymm2, [rdi+rax]
    vaddps          ymm1, ymm1, [rsi+rax]
    vmovaps         [rdx+rax], ymm1
    add             rax, 32
    jne             .L2
    sub             r8d, 1
    jnz             .L1
    vzeroupper
    ret

global triad_fma_store_asm_repeat
;RDI x, RSI y, RDX z, RCX n, R8 repeat
;z[i] = y[i] + 3.14159*x[i]

align 16
    triad_fma_store_asm_repeat:
    shl             rcx, 2
    add             rcx, rdx
    sub             rdi, rdx
    sub             rsi, rdx
    vbroadcastss    ymm2, [rel pi]

;align 32
.L1:
    mov             r9, rdx
align 32
.L2:
    vmulps          ymm1, ymm2, [rdi+r9]
    vaddps          ymm1, ymm1, [rsi+r9]
    vmovaps         [r9], ymm1
    add             r9, 32
    cmp             r9, rcx
    jne             .L2
    sub             r8d, 1
    jnz             .L1
    vzeroupper
    ret

Here is the C code I use to call the assembly routines and time them

//gcc -std=gnu99 -O3        -mavx align.c -lgomp align_asm.o -o align_avx
//gcc -std=gnu99 -O3 -mfma -mavx2 align.c -lgomp align_asm.o -o align_fma
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <omp.h>

float triad_fma_asm_repeat(float *x, float *y, float *z, const int n, int repeat);
float triad_fma_store_asm_repeat(float *x, float *y, float *z, const int n, int repeat);

float triad_fma_repeat(float *x, float *y, float *z, const int n, int repeat)
{
    float k = 3.14159f;
    int r;
    for(r=0; r<repeat; r++) {
        int i;
        __m256 k4 = _mm256_set1_ps(k);
        for(i=0; i<n; i+=8) {
            _mm256_store_ps(&z[i], _mm256_add_ps(_mm256_load_ps(&x[i]), _mm256_mul_ps(k4, _mm256_load_ps(&y[i]))));
        }
    }
}

int main (void )
{
    int bytes_per_cycle = 0;
    double frequency = 3.6;
    #if (defined(__FMA__))
    bytes_per_cycle = 96;
    #elif (defined(__AVX__))
    bytes_per_cycle = 48;
    #else
    bytes_per_cycle = 24;
    #endif
    double peak = frequency*bytes_per_cycle;

    const int n =2048;

    float* z2 = (float*)_mm_malloc(sizeof(float)*n, 64);
    char *mem = (char*)_mm_malloc(1<<18,4096);
    char *a = mem;
    char *b = a+n*sizeof(float);
    char *c = b+n*sizeof(float);

    float *x = (float*)a;
    float *y = (float*)b;
    float *z = (float*)c;

    for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {
        x[i] = 1.0f*i;
        y[i] = 1.0f*i;
        z[i] = 0;
    }
    int repeat = 1000000;    
    triad_fma_repeat(x,y,z2,n,repeat);   

    while(1) {
        double dtime, rate;

        memset(z, 0, n*sizeof(float));
        dtime = -omp_get_wtime();
        triad_fma_asm_repeat(x,y,z,n,repeat);
        dtime += omp_get_wtime();
        rate = 3.0*1E-9*sizeof(float)*n*repeat/dtime;
        printf("t1     rate %6.2f GB/s, efficency %6.2f%%, error %d\n", rate, 100*rate/peak, memcmp(z,z2, sizeof(float)*n));

        memset(z, 0, n*sizeof(float));
        dtime = -omp_get_wtime();
        triad_fma_store_asm_repeat(x,y,z,n,repeat);
        dtime += omp_get_wtime();
        rate = 3.0*1E-9*sizeof(float)*n*repeat/dtime;
        printf("t2     rate %6.2f GB/s, efficency %6.2f%%, error %d\n", rate, 100*rate/peak, memcmp(z,z2, sizeof(float)*n));

        puts("");
    }
}

---

I'm bothered by the following statement in the NASM manual

A final caveat: ALIGN and ALIGNB work relative to the beginning of the section, not the beginning of the address space in the final executable. Aligning to a 16-byte boundary when the section you're in is only guaranteed to be aligned to a 4-byte boundary, for example, is a waste of effort. Again, NASM does not check that the section's alignment characteristics are sensible for the use of ALIGN or ALIGNB.

I'm not sure the code segment is getting an absolute 32-byte aligned address or only a relative one.

Answer 1

Regarding your last question about relative (within-section) alignment and absolute (in memory at runtime) - you don't have to worry too much. Just below the section of the manual you quoted which warns about ALIGN not checking the section alignment, you have this:

Both ALIGN and ALIGNB do call SECTALIGN macro implicitly. See section 4.11.13 for details.

So basically ALIGN doesn't check that the alignment is sensible, but it does call the SECTALIGN macro so that the alignment will be sensible. In particular, all the implicit SECTALIGN calls should insure that the section is aligned to the largest alignment specified by any align call.

The warning about ALIGN not checking then probably only applies to more obscure cases, e.g., when assembling into formats that don't support section alignment, when specifying an alignment larger than that supported by a section, or when SECTALIGN OFF has been called to disable SECTALIGN.