REMAP

REMAP is an advanced form of Vector "Structure Packing" that provides hardware-level support for commonly-used nested loop patterns that would otherwise require full inline loop unrolling. For more general reordering an Indexed REMAP mode is available (a RISC-paradigm abstracted analog to xxperm).

REMAP allows the usual sequential vector loop 0..VL-1 to be "reshaped" (re-mapped) from a linear form to a 2D or 3D transposed form, or "offset" to permit arbitrary access to elements, independently on each Vector src or dest register. Up to four separate independent REMAPs may be applied to the registers of any instruction.

A normal Vector Add (no Element-width Overrides):

   for i in range(VL):
     GPR[RT+i] <= GPR[RA+i] + GPR[RB+i];

A Hardware-assisted REMAP Vector Add:

   for i in range(VL):
     GPR[RT+remap1(i)] <= GPR[RA+remap2(i)] + GPR[RB+remap3(i)];

Aside from Indexed REMAP this is entirely Hardware-accelerated reordering and consequently not costly in terms of register access for the Indices. It will however place a burden on Multi-Issue systems but no more than if the equivalent Scalar instructions were explicitly loop-unrolled without SVP64, and some advanced implementations may even find the Deterministic nature of the Scheduling to be easier on resources.

Hardware note: in its general form, REMAP is quite expensive to set up, and on some implementations may introduce latency, so should realistically be used only where it is worthwhile. Given that even with latency the fact that up to 127 operations can be Deterministically issued (from a single instruction) it should be clear that REMAP should not be dismissed for possible latency alone. Commonly-used patterns such as Matrix Multiply, DCT and FFT have helper instruction options which make REMAP easier to use.

There are five types of REMAP:

  • Matrix, also known as 2D and 3D reshaping, can perform in-place Matrix transpose and rotate. The Shapes are set up for an "Outer Product" Matrix Multiply (a future variant may introduce Inner Product).
  • FFT/DCT, with full triple-loop in-place support: limited to Power-2 RADIX
  • Indexing, for any general-purpose reordering, also includes limited 2D reshaping as well as Element "offsetting".
  • Parallel Reduction, for scheduling a sequence of operations in a Deterministic fashion, in a way that may be parallelised, to reduce a Vector down to a single value.
  • Parallel Prefix Sum, implemented as a work-efficient Schedule, has several key Computer Science uses. Again Prefix Sum is 100% Deterministic.

Best implemented on top of a Multi-Issue Out-of-Order Micro-architecture, REMAP Schedules are 100% Deterministic including Indexing and are designed to be incorporated in between the Decode and Issue phases, directly into Register Hazard Management.

As long as the SVSHAPE SPRs are not written to directly, Hardware may treat REMAP as 100% Deterministic: all REMAP Management instructions take static operands (no dynamic register operands) with the exception of Indexed Mode, and even then Architectural State is permitted to assume that the Indices are cacheable from the point at which the svindex instruction is executed.

Further details on the Deterministic Precise-Interruptible algorithms used in these Schedules is found in the appendix.

Future specification note: future versions of the REMAP Management instructions will extend to EXT1xx Prefixed variants. This will overcome some of the limitations present in the 32-bit variants of the REMAP Management instructions that at present require direct writing to SVSHAPE0-3 SPRs. Additional REMAP Modes may also be introduced at that time.

Determining Register Hazards (hphint)

For high-performance (Multi-Issue, Out-of-Order) systems it is critical to be able to statically determine the extent of Vectors in order to allocate pre-emptive Hazard protection. The next task is to eliminate masked-out elements using predicate bits, freeing up the associated Hazards.

For non-REMAP situations VL is sufficient to ascertain early Hazard coverage, and with SVSTATE being a high priority cached quantity at the same level of MSR and PC this is not a problem.

The problems come when REMAP is enabled. Indexed REMAP must instead use MAXVL as the earliest (simplest) batch-level Hazard Reservation indicator (after taking element-width overriding on the Index source into consideration), but Matrix, FFT and Parallel Reduction must all use completely different schemes. The reason is that VL is used to step through the total number of operations, not the number of registers. The "Saving Grace" is that all of the REMAP Schedules are 100% Deterministic.

Advance-notice Parallel computation and subsequent cacheing of all of these complex Deterministic REMAP Schedules is strongly recommended, thus allowing clear and precise multi-issue batched Hazard coverage to be deployed, even for Indexed Mode. This is only possible for Indexed due to the strict guidelines given to Programmers.

In short, there exists solutions to the problem of Hazard Management, with varying degrees of refinement possible at correspondingly increasing levels of complexity in hardware.

A reminder: when Rc=1 each result register (element) has an associated co-result CR Field (one per result element). Thus above when determining the Write-Hazards for result registers the corresponding Write-Hazards for the corresponding associated co-result CR Field must not be forgotten, including when Predication is used.

Horizontal-Parallelism Hint

To help further in reducing Hazards, SVSTATE.hphint is an indicator to hardware of how many elements are 100% fully independent. Hardware is permitted to assume that groups of elements up to hphint in size need not have Register (or Memory) Hazards created between them, including when hphint > VL, which greatly aids simplification of Multi-Issue implementations.

If care is not taken in setting hphint correctly it may wreak havoc. For example Matrix Outer Product relies on the innermost loop computations being independent. If hphint is set to greater than the Outer Product depth then data corruption is guaranteed to occur.

Likewise on FFTs it is assumed that each layer of the RADIX2 triple-loop is independent, but that there is strict inter-layer Register Hazards. Therefore if hphint is set to greater than the RADIX2 width of the FFT, data corruption is guaranteed.

Thus the key message is that setting hphint requires in-depth knowledge of the REMAP Algorithm Schedules, given in the Appendix.

REMAP area of SVSTATE SPR

The following bits of the SVSTATE SPR are used for REMAP:

    |32:33|34:35|36:37|38:39|40:41| 42:46 | 62     |
    | --  | --  | --  | --  | --  | ----- | ------ |
    |mi0  |mi1  |mi2  |mo0  |mo1  | SVme  | RMpst  |

mi0-2 and mo0-1 each select SVSHAPE0-3 to apply to a given register. mi0-2 apply to RA, RB, RC respectively, as input registers, and likewise mo0-1 apply to output registers (RT/FRT, RS/FRS) respectively. SVme is 5 bits (one for each of mi0-2/mo0-1) and indicates whether the SVSHAPE is actively applied or not, and if so, to which registers.

  • bit 4 of SVme indicates if mi0 is applied to source RA / FRA / BA / BFA / RT / FRT
  • bit 3 of SVme indicates if mi1 is applied to source RB / FRB / BB
  • bit 2 of SVme indicates if mi2 is applied to source RC / FRC / BC
  • bit 1 of SVme indicates if mo0 is applied to result RT / FRT / BT / BF
  • bit 0 of SVme indicates if mo1 is applied to result Effective Address / FRS / RS (LD/ST-with-update has an implicit 2nd write register, RA)

The "persistence" bit if set will result in all Active REMAPs being applied indefinitely.


\newpage{}

svremap instruction

SVRM-Form:

0 6 11 13 15 17 19 21 22:25 26:31
PO SVme mi0 mi1 mi2 mo0 mo1 pst rsvd XO
  • svremap SVme,mi0,mi1,mi2,mo0,mo1,pst

Pseudo-code:

    # registers RA RB RC RT EA/FRS SVSHAPE0-3 indices
    SVSTATE[32:33] <- mi0
    SVSTATE[34:35] <- mi1
    SVSTATE[36:37] <- mi2
    SVSTATE[38:39] <- mo0
    SVSTATE[40:41] <- mo1
    # enable bit for RA RB RC RT EA/FRS
    SVSTATE[42:46] <- SVme
    # persistence bit (applies to more than one instruction)
    SVSTATE[62] <- pst

Special Registers Altered:

    SVSTATE

svremap establishes the connection between registers and SVSHAPE SPRs. The bitmask SVme determines which registers have a REMAP applied, and mi0-mo1 determine which shape is applied to an activated register. the pst bit if cleared indicated that the REMAP operation shall only apply to the immediately-following instruction. If set then REMAP remains permanently enabled until such time as it is explicitly disabled, either by setvl setting a new MAXVL, or with another svremap instruction. svindex and svshape2 are also capable of setting or clearing persistence, as well as partially covering a subset of the capability of svremap to set register-to-SVSHAPE relationships.

Programmer's Note: applying non-persistent svremap to an instruction that has no REMAP enabled or is a Scalar operation will obviously have no effect but the bits 32 to 46 will at least have been set in SVSTATE. This may prove useful when using svindex or svshape2.

Hardware Architectural Note: when persistence is not set it is critically important to treat the svremap and the immediately-following SVP64 instruction as an indivisible fused operation. No state is stored in the SVSTATE SPR in order to allow continuation should an Interrupt occur between the two instructions. Thus, Interrupts must be prohibited from occurring or other workaround deployed. When persistence is set this issue is moot.

It is critical to note that if persistence is clear then svremap is the only way to activate REMAP on any given (following) instruction. If persistence is set however then all SVP64 instructions go through REMAP as long as SVme is non-zero.


\newpage{}

SHAPE Remapping SPRs

There are four "shape" SPRs, SHAPE0-3, 32-bits in each, which have the same format. It is possible to write directly to these SPRs but it is recommended to use the Management instructions svshape, svshape2 or svindex.

When SHAPE is set entirely to zeros, remapping is disabled: the register's elements are a linear (1D) vector.

0:5 6:11 12:17 18:20 21:23 24:27 28:29 30:31 Mode
xdimsz ydimsz zdimsz permute invxyz offset skip 0b00 Matrix
xdimsz ydimsz SVGPR 11/ sk1/invxy offset elwidth 0b00 Indexed
xdimsz mode zdimsz submode2 invxyz offset submode 0b01 DCT/FFT
rsvd rsvd xdimsz rsvd invxyz offset submode 0b10 Red/Sum
0b11 rsvd

mode (combined with permute when mode=0b00) sets different general behaviours: straight matrix multiply, FFT, DCT, Reduction or Prefix-Sum.

  • mode=0b00 with permute != 0b110/0b111 sets straight Matrix Mode
  • mode=0b00 with permute = 0b110/0b111 sets Indexed Mode
  • mode=0b01 sets "FFT/DCT" mode and activates submodes
  • mode=0b10 sets "Parallel Reduction or Prefix-Sum" Schedules.

Architectural Resource Allocation note: the four SVSHAPE SPRs are best allocated sequentially and contiguously in order that sv.mtspr may be used to manipulate (save/restore) them. This is safe to do directly as long as SVSTATE.SVme=0

Parallel Reduction / Prefix-Sum Mode

Creates the Schedules for Parallel Tree Reduction and Prefix-Sum

  • submode=0b00 selects the left operand index for Reduction
  • submode=0b01 selects the right operand index for Reduction
  • submode=0b10 selects the left operand index for Prefix-Sum
  • submode=0b11 selects the right operand index for Prefix-Sum

  • When bit 0 of invxyz is set, the order of the indices in the inner for-loop are reversed. This has the side-effect of placing the final reduced result in the last-predicated element. It also has the indirect side-effect of swapping the source registers: Left-operand index numbers will always exceed Right-operand indices. When clear, the reduced result will be in the first-predicated element, and Left-operand indices will always be less than Right-operand ones.

  • When bit 1 of invxyz is set, the order of the outer loop step is inverted: stepping begins at the nearest power-of two to half of the vector length and reduces by half each time. When clear the step will begin at 2 and double on each inner loop.

Parallel Prefix Sum

This is a work-efficient Parallel Schedule that for example produces Trangular or Factorial number sequences. Half of the Prefix Sum Schedule is near-identical to Parallel Reduction. Whilst the Arithmetic mapreduce Mode (/mr) may achieve the same end-result, implementations may only implement Mapreduce in serial form (or give the appearance to Programmers of the same). The Parallel Prefix Schedule is required to be implemented in such a way that its Deterministic Schedule may be parallelised. Like the Reduction Schedule it is 100% Deterministic and consequently may be used with non-commutative operations. The Schedule Algorithm may be found in the appendix

Parallel Reduction

Vector Reduce Mode issues a deterministic tree-reduction schedule to the underlying micro-architecture. Like Scalar reduction, the "Scalar Base" (Power ISA v3.0B) operation is leveraged, unmodified, to give the appearance and effect of Reduction. Parallel Reduction is not limited to Power-of-two but is limited as usual by the total number of element operations (127) as well as available register file size.

In Horizontal-First Mode, Vector-result reduction requires the destination to be a Vector, which will be used to store intermediary results, in order to achieve a correct final result.

Given that the tree-reduction schedule is deterministic, Interrupts and exceptions can therefore also be precise. The final result will be in the first non-predicate-masked-out destination element, but due again to the deterministic schedule programmers may find uses for the intermediate results, even for non-commutative Defined Word-instruction operations. Additionally, because the intermediate results are always written out it is possible to service Precise Interrupts without affecting latency (a common limitation of Vector ISAs implementing explicit Parallel Reduction instructions, because their Architectural State cannot hold the partial results).

When Rc=1 a corresponding Vector of co-resultant CRs is also created. No special action is taken: the result and its CR Field are stored "as usual" exactly as all other SVP64 Rc=1 operations.

Note that the Schedule only makes sense on top of certain instructions: X-Form with a Register Profile of RT,RA,RB is fine because two sources and the destination are all the same type. Like Scalar Reduction, nothing is prohibited: the results of execution on an unsuitable instruction may simply not make sense. With care, even 3-input instructions (madd, fmadd, ternlogi) may be used, and whilst it is down to the Programmer to walk through the process the Programmer can be confident that the Parallel-Reduction is guaranteed 100% Deterministic.

Critical to note regarding use of Parallel-Reduction REMAP is that, exactly as with all REMAP Modes, the svshape instruction requests a certain Vector Length (number of elements to reduce) and then sets VL and MAXVL at the number of operations needed to be carried out. Thus, equally as importantly, like Matrix REMAP the total number of operations is restricted to 127. Any Parallel-Reduction requiring more operations will need to be done manually in batches (hierarchical recursive Reduction).

Also important to note is that the Deterministic Schedule is arranged so that some implementations may parallelise it (as long as doing so respects Program Order and Register Hazards). Performance (speed) of any given implementation is neither strictly defined or guaranteed. As with the Vulkan(tm) Specification, strict compliance is paramount whilst performance is at the discretion of Implementors.

Parallel-Reduction with Predication

To avoid breaking the strict RISC-paradigm, keeping the Issue-Schedule completely separate from the actual element-level (scalar) operations, Move operations are not included in the Schedule. This means that the Schedule leaves the final (scalar) result in the first-non-masked element of the Vector used. With the predicate mask being dynamic (but deterministic) at a superficial glance it seems this result could be anywhere.

If that result is needed to be moved to a (single) scalar register then a follow-up sv.mv/sm=predicate rt, *ra instruction will be needed to get it, where the predicate is the exact same predicate used in the prior Parallel-Reduction instruction.

  • If there was only a single bit in the predicate then the result will not have moved or been altered from the source vector prior to the Reduction
  • If there was more than one bit the result will be in the first element with a predicate bit set.

In either case the result is in the element with the first bit set in the predicate mask. Thus, no move/copy within the Reduction itself was needed.

Programmer's Note: For some hardware implementations the vector-to-scalar copy may be a slow operation, as may the Predicated Parallel Reduction itself. It may be better to perform a pre-copy of the values, compressing them (VREDUCE-style) into a contiguous block, which will guarantee that the result goes into the very first element of the destination vector, in which case clearly no follow-up predicated vector-to-scalar MV operation is needed. A VREDUCE effect is achieved by setting just a source predicate mask on Twin-Predicated operations.

Usage conditions

The simplest usage is to perform an overwrite, specifying all three register operands the same.

    svshape parallelreduce, 6
    sv.add *8, *8, *8

The Reduction Schedule will issue the Parallel Tree Reduction spanning registers 8 through 13, by adjusting the offsets to RT, RA and RB as necessary (see "Parallel Reduction algorithm" in a later section).

A non-overwrite is possible as well but just as with the overwrite version, only those destination elements necessary for storing intermediary computations will be written to: the remaining elements will not be overwritten and will not be zero'd.

    svshape parallelreduce, 6
    sv.add *0, *8, *8

However it is critical to note that if the source and destination are not the same then the trick of using a follow-up vector-scalar MV will not work.

Sub-Vector Horizontal Reduction

To achieve Sub-Vector Horizontal Reduction, Pack/Unpack should be enabled, which will turn the Schedule around such that issuing of the Scalar Defined Word-instructions is done with SUBVL looping as the inner loop not the outer loop. Rc=1 with Sub-Vectors (SUBVL=2,3,4) is UNDEFINED behaviour.

Programmer's Note: Overwrite Parallel Reduction with Sub-Vectors will clearly result in data corruption. It may be best to perform a Pack/Unpack Transposing copy of the data first

FFT/DCT mode

submode2=0 is for FFT. For FFT submode the following schedules may be selected:

  • submode=0b00 selects the j offset of the innermost for-loop of Tukey-Cooley
  • submode=0b10 selects the j+halfsize offset of the innermost for-loop of Tukey-Cooley
  • submode=0b11 selects the k of exptable (which coefficient)

When submode2 is 1 or 2, for DCT inner butterfly submode the following schedules may be selected. When submode2 is 1, additional bit-reversing is also performed.

  • submode=0b00 selects the j offset of the innermost for-loop, in-place
  • submode=0b010 selects the j+halfsize offset of the innermost for-loop, in reverse-order, in-place
  • submode=0b10 selects the ci count of the innermost for-loop, useful for calculating the cosine coefficient
  • submode=0b11 selects the size offset of the outermost for-loop, useful for the cosine coefficient cos(ci + 0.5) * pi / size

When submode2 is 3 or 4, for DCT outer butterfly submode the following schedules may be selected. When submode is 3, additional bit-reversing is also performed.

  • submode=0b00 selects the j offset of the innermost for-loop,
  • submode=0b01 selects the j+1 offset of the innermost for-loop,

zdimsz is used as an in-place "Stride", particularly useful for column-based in-place DCT/FFT.

Matrix Mode

In Matrix Mode, skip allows dimensions to be skipped from being included in the resultant output index. This allows sequences to be repeated: 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 2 ... or in the case of skip=0b11 this results in modulo 0 1 2 0 1 2 ...

  • skip=0b00 indicates no dimensions to be skipped
  • skip=0b01 sets "skip 1st dimension"
  • skip=0b10 sets "skip 2nd dimension"
  • skip=0b11 sets "skip 3rd dimension"

invxyz will invert the start index of each of x, y or z. If invxyz[0] is zero then x-dimensional counting begins from 0 and increments, otherwise it begins from xdimsz-1 and iterates down to zero. Likewise for y and z.

offset will have the effect of offsetting the result by offset elements:

    for i in 0..VL-1:
        GPR(RT + remap(i) + SVSHAPE.offset) = ....

This appears redundant because the register RT could simply be changed by a compiler, until element width overrides are introduced. Also bear in mind that unlike a static compiler SVSHAPE.offset may be set dynamically at runtime.

xdimsz, ydimsz and zdimsz are offset by 1, such that a value of 0 indicates that the array dimensionality for that dimension is 1. any dimension not intended to be used must have its value set to 0 (dimensionality of 1). A value of xdimsz=2 would indicate that in the first dimension there are 3 elements in the array. For example, to create a 2D array X,Y of dimensionality X=3 and Y=2, set xdimsz=2, ydimsz=1 and zdimsz=0

The format of the array is therefore as follows:

    array[xdimsz+1][ydimsz+1][zdimsz+1]

However whilst illustrative of the dimensionality, that does not take the "permute" setting into account. "permute" may be any one of six values (0-5, with values of 6 and 7 indicating "Indexed" Mode). The table below shows how the permutation dimensionality order works:

permute order array format
000 0,1,2 (xdim+1)(ydim+1)(zdim+1)
001 0,2,1 (xdim+1)(zdim+1)(ydim+1)
010 1,0,2 (ydim+1)(xdim+1)(zdim+1)
011 1,2,0 (ydim+1)(zdim+1)(xdim+1)
100 2,0,1 (zdim+1)(xdim+1)(ydim+1)
101 2,1,0 (zdim+1)(ydim+1)(xdim+1)
110 0,1 Indexed (xdim+1)(ydim+1)
111 1,0 Indexed (ydim+1)(xdim+1)

In other words, the "permute" option changes the order in which nested for-loops over the array would be done. See executable python reference code for further details.

Note: permute=0b110 and permute=0b111 enable Indexed REMAP Mode, described below

With all these options it is possible to support in-place transpose, in-place rotate, Matrix Multiply and Convolutions, without being limited to Power-of-Two dimension sizes.

Limitations and caveats

Limitations of Matrix REMAP are that the Vector Length (VL) is currently restricted to 127: up to 127 FMAs (or other operation) may be performed in total. Also given that it is in-registers only at present some care has to be taken on regfile resource utilisation. However it is perfectly possible to utilise Matrix REMAP to perform the three inner-most "kernel" loops of the usual 6-level "Tiled" large Matrix Multiply, without the usual difficulties associated with SIMD.

Also the svshape instruction only provides access to part of the Matrix REMAP capability. Rotation and mirroring need to be done by programming the SVSHAPE SPRs directly, which can take a lot more instructions. Future versions of SVP64 will provide more comprehensive capacity and mitigate the need to write direct to the SVSHAPE SPRs.

Additionally there is not yet a way to set Matrix sizes from registers with svshape: this was an intentional decision to simplify Hardware, that may be corrected in a future version of SVP64. The limitation may presently be overcome by direct programming of the SVSHAPE SPRs.

Hardware Architectural note: with the Scheduling applying as a Phase between Decode and Issue in a Deterministic fashion the Register Hazards may be easily computed and a standard Out-of-Order Micro-Architecture exploited to good effect. Even an In-Order system may observe that for large Outer Product Schedules there will be no stalls, but if the Matrices are particularly small size an In-Order system would have to stall, just as it would if the operations were loop-unrolled without Simple-V. Thus: regardless of the Micro-Architecture the Hardware Engineer should first consider how best to process the exact same equivalent loop-unrolled instruction stream. Once solved Matrix REMAP will fit naturally.

Indexed Mode

Indexed Mode activates reading of the element indices from the GPR and includes optional limited 2D reordering. In its simplest form (without elwidth overrides or other modes):

    def index_remap(i):
        return GPR((SVSHAPE.SVGPR<<1)+i) + SVSHAPE.offset

    for i in 0..VL-1:
        element_result = ....
        GPR(RT + indexed_remap(i)) = element_result

With element-width overrides included, and using the pseudocode from the SVP64 appendix elwidth section this becomes:

    def index_remap(i):
        svreg = SVSHAPE.SVGPR << 1
        srcwid = elwid_to_bitwidth(SVSHAPE.elwid)
        offs = SVSHAPE.offset
        return get_polymorphed_reg(svreg, srcwid, i) + offs

    for i in 0..VL-1:
        element_result = ....
        rt_idx = indexed_remap(i)
        set_polymorphed_reg(RT, destwid, rt_idx, element_result)

Matrix-style reordering still applies to the indices, except limited to up to 2 Dimensions (X,Y). Ordering is therefore limited to (X,Y) or (Y,X) for in-place Transposition. Only one dimension may optionally be skipped. Inversion of either X or Y or both is possible (2D mirroring). Pseudocode for Indexed Mode (including elwidth overrides) may be written in terms of Matrix Mode, specifically purposed to ensure that the 3rd dimension (Z) has no effect:

    def index_remap(ISHAPE, i):
        MSHAPE.skip   = 0b0 || ISHAPE.sk1
        MSHAPE.invxyz = 0b0 || ISHAPE.invxy
        MSHAPE.xdimsz = ISHAPE.xdimsz
        MSHAPE.ydimsz = ISHAPE.ydimsz
        MSHAPE.zdimsz = 0 # disabled
        if ISHAPE.permute = 0b110 # 0,1
           MSHAPE.permute = 0b000 # 0,1,2
        if ISHAPE.permute = 0b111 # 1,0
           MSHAPE.permute = 0b010 # 1,0,2
        el_idx = remap_matrix(MSHAPE, i)
        svreg = ISHAPE.SVGPR << 1
        srcwid = elwid_to_bitwidth(ISHAPE.elwid)
        offs = ISHAPE.offset
        return get_polymorphed_reg(svreg, srcwid, el_idx) + offs

The most important observation above is that the Matrix-style remapping occurs first and the Index lookup second. Thus it becomes possible to perform in-place Transpose of Indices which may have been costly to set up or costly to duplicate (waste register file space). In other words: it is fine for two or more SVSHAPEs to simultaneously use the same Indices (use the same GPRs), even if one SVSHAPE has different 2D dimensions and ordering from the others.

Caveats and Limitations

The purpose of Indexing is to provide a generalised version of Vector ISA "Permute" instructions, such as VSX vperm. The Indexing is abstracted out and may be applied to much more than an element move/copy, and is not limited for example to the number of bytes that can fit into a VSX register. Indexing may be applied to LD/ST (even on Indexed LD/ST instructions such as sv.lbzx), arithmetic operations, extsw: there is no artificial limit.

The only major caveat is that the registers to be used as Indices must not be modified by any instruction after Indexed Mode is established, and neither must MAXVL be altered. Additionally, no register used as an Index may exceed MAXVL-1.

Failure to observe these conditions results in UNDEFINED behaviour. These conditions allow a Read-After-Write (RAW) Hazard to be created on the entire range of Indices to be subsequently used, but a corresponding Write-After-Read Hazard by any instruction that modifies the Indices does not have to be created. Given the large number of registers involved in Indexing this is a huge resource saving and reduction in micro-architectural complexity. MAXVL is likewise included in the RAW Hazards because it is involved in calculating how many registers are to be considered Indices.

With these Hazard Mitigations in place, high-performance implementations may read-cache the Indices at the point where a given svindex instruction is called (or SVSHAPE SPRs - and MAXVL - directly altered) by issuing background GPR register file reads whilst other instructions are being issued and executed.

Indexed REMAP does not prevent conflicts (overlapping destinations), which on a superficial analysis may be perceived to be a problem, until it is recalled that, firstly, Simple-V is designed specifically to require Program Order to be respected, and that Matrix, DCT and FFT all already critically depend on overlapping Reads/Writes: Matrix uses overlapping registers as accumulators. Thus the Register Hazard Management needed by Indexed REMAP has to be in place anyway.

Programmer's Note: hphint may be used to help hardware identify parallelism opportunities but it is critical to remember that the groupings are by FLOOR(step/MAXVL) not FLOOR(REMAP(step)/MAXVL).

The cost compared to Matrix and other REMAPs (and Pack/Unpack) is clearly that of the additional reading of the GPRs to be used as Indices, plus the setup cost associated with creating those same Indices. If any Deterministic REMAP can cover the required task, clearly it is adviseable to use it instead.

Programmer's note: some algorithms may require skipping of Indices exceeding VL-1, not MAXVL-1. This may be achieved programmatically by performing an sv.cmp *BF,*RA,RB where RA is the same GPRs used in the Indexed REMAP, and RB contains the value of VL returned from setvl. The resultant CR Fields may then be used as Predicate Masks to exclude those operations with an Index exceeding VL-1.


\newpage{}

svshape instruction

SVM-Form

svshape SVxd,SVyd,SVzd,SVRM,vf
0:5 6:10 11:15 16:20 21:24 25 26:31 name
PO SVxd SVyd SVzd SVRM vf XO svshape

See appendix for svshape pseudocode

Special Registers Altered:

    SVSTATE, SVSHAPE0-3

svshape is a convenience instruction that reduces instruction count for common usage patterns, particularly Matrix, DCT and FFT. It sets up (overwrites) all required SVSHAPE SPRs and also modifies SVSTATE including VL and MAXVL. Using svshape therefore does not also require setvl.

Fields:

  • SVxd - SV REMAP "xdim" (X-dimension)
  • SVyd - SV REMAP "ydim" (Y-dimension, sometimes used for sub-mode selection)
  • SVzd - SV REMAP "zdim" (Z-dimension)
  • SVRM - SV REMAP Mode (0b00000 for Matrix, 0b00001 for FFT etc.)
  • vf - sets "Vertical-First" mode
  • XO - standard 6-bit XO field

Note: SVxd, SVyz and SVzd are all stored "off-by-one". In the assembler mnemonic the values 1-32 are stored in binary as 0b00000..0b11111

There are 12 REMAP Modes (2 Modes are RESERVED for svshape2, 2 Modes are RESERVED)

SVRM Remap Mode description
0b0000 Matrix 1/2/3D
0b0001 FFT Butterfly
0b0010 reserved for Matrix Outer Product
0b0011 DCT Outer butterfly
0b0100 DCT Inner butterfly, on-the-fly (Vertical-First Mode)
0b0101 DCT COS table index generation
0b0110 DCT half-swap
0b0111 Parallel Reduction and Prefix Sum
0b1000 reserved for svshape2
0b1001 reserved for svshape2
0b1010 reserved
0b1011 iDCT Outer butterfly
0b1100 iDCT Inner butterfly, on-the-fly (Vertical-First Mode)
0b1101 iDCT COS table index generation
0b1110 iDCT half-swap
0b1111 FFT half-swap

Examples showing how all of these Modes operate exists in the online SVP64 unit tests. Explaining these Modes further in detail is beyond the scope of this document.

In Indexed Mode, there are only 5 bits available to specify the GPR to use, out of 128 GPRs (7 bit numbering). Therefore, only the top 5 bits are given in the SVxd field: the bottom two implicit bits will be zero (SVxd || 0b00).

svshape has limited applicability due to being a 32-bit instruction. The full capability of SVSHAPE SPRs may be accessed by directly writing to SVSHAPE0-3 with mtspr. Circumstances include Matrices with dimensions larger than 32, and in-place Transpose. Potentially a future instruction may extend the capability here.

Programmer's Note: Parallel Reduction Mode is selected by setting SVRM=7,SVyd=1. Prefix Sum Mode is selected by setting SVRM=7,SVyd=3:

    # Vector length of 8.
    svshape 8, 3, 1, 0x7, 0
    # activate SVSHAPE0 (prefix-sum lhs) for RA
    # activate SVSHAPE1 (prefix-sum rhs) for RT and RB
    svremap 7, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0
    sv.add *10, *10, *10

Architectural Resource Allocation note: the SVRM field is carefully crafted to allocate two Modes, corresponding to bits 21-23 within the instruction being set to the value 0b100, to svshape2 (not svshape). These two Modes are considered "RESERVED" within the context of svshape but it is absolutely critical to allocate the exact same pattern in XO for both instructions in bits 26-31.


\newpage{}

svindex instruction

SVI-Form

0:5 6:10 11:15 16:20 21:25 26:31 Form
PO SVG rmm SVd ew/yx/mm/sk XO SVI-Form
  • svindex SVG,rmm,SVd,ew,SVyx,mm,sk

See appendix for svindex pseudocode

Special Registers Altered:

    SVSTATE, SVSHAPE0-3

svindex is a convenience instruction that reduces instruction count for Indexed REMAP Mode. It sets up (overwrites) all required SVSHAPE SPRs and unlike svshape can modify the REMAP area of the SVSTATE SPR as well, including setting persistence. The relevant SPRs may be directly programmed with mtspr however it is laborious to do so: svindex saves instructions covering much of Indexed REMAP capability.

Fields:

  • SVd - SV REMAP x/y dim
  • rmm - REMAP mask: sets remap mi0-2/mo0-1 and SVSHAPEs, controlled by mm
  • ew - sets element width override on the Indices
  • SVG - GPR SVG<<2 to be used for Indexing
  • yx - 2D reordering to be used if yx=1
  • mm - mask mode. determines how rmm is interpreted.
  • sk - Dimension skipping enabled

Note: SVd, like SVxd, SVyz and SVzd of svshape, are all stored "off-by-one". In the assembler mnemonic the values 1-32 are stored in binary as 0b00000..0b11111.

Note: when yx=1,sk=0 the second dimension is calculated as CEIL(MAXVL/SVd).

When mm=0:

  • rmm, like REMAP.SVme, has bit 0 correspond to mi0, bit 1 to mi1, bit 2 to mi2, bit 3 to mo0 and bit 4 to mi1
  • all SVSHAPEs and the REMAP parts of SVSHAPE are first reset (initialised to zero)
  • for each bit set in the 5-bit rmm, in order, the first as-yet-unset SVSHAPE will be updated with the other operands in the instruction, and the REMAP SPR set.
  • If all 5 bits of rmm are set then both mi0 and mo1 use SVSHAPE0.
  • SVSTATE persistence bit is cleared
  • No other alterations to SVSTATE are carried out

Example 1: if rmm=0b00110 then SVSHAPE0 and SVSHAPE1 are set up, and the REMAP SPR set so that mi1 uses SVSHAPE0 and mi2 uses mi2. REMAP.SVme is also set to 0b00110, REMAP.mi1=0 (SVSHAPE0) and REMAP.mi2=1 (SVSHAPE1)

Example 2: if rmm=0b10001 then again SVSHAPE0 and SVSHAPE1 are set up, but the REMAP SPR is set so that mi0 uses SVSHAPE0 and mo1 uses SVSHAPE1. REMAP.SVme=0b10001, REMAP.mi0=0, REMAP.mo1=1

Rough algorithmic form:

    marray = [mi0, mi1, mi2, mo0, mo1]
    idx = 0
    for bit = 0 to 4:
        if not rmm[bit]: continue
        setup(SVSHAPE[idx])
        SVSTATE{marray[bit]} = idx
        idx = (idx+1) modulo 4

When mm=1:

  • bits 0-2 (MSB0 numbering) of rmm indicate an index selecting mi0-mo1
  • bits 3-4 (MSB0 numbering) of rmm indicate which SVSHAPE 0-3 shall be updated
  • only the selected SVSHAPE is overwritten
  • only the relevant bits in the REMAP area of SVSTATE are updated
  • REMAP persistence bit is set.

Example 1: if rmm=0b01110 then bits 0-2 (MSB0) are 0b011 and bits 3-4 are 0b10. thus, mo0 is selected and SVSHAPE2 to be updated. REMAP.SVme[3] will be set high and REMAP.mo0 set to 2 (SVSHAPE2).

Example 2: if rmm=0b10011 then bits 0-2 (MSB0) are 0b100 and bits 3-4 are 0b11. thus, mo1 is selected and SVSHAPE3 to be updated. REMAP.SVme[4] will be set high and REMAP.mo1 set to 3 (SVSHAPE3).

Rough algorithmic form:

    marray = [mi0, mi1, mi2, mo0, mo1]
    bit = rmm[0:2]
    idx = rmm[3:4]
    setup(SVSHAPE[idx])
    SVSTATE{marray[bit]} = idx
    SVSTATE.pst = 1

In essence, mm=0 is intended for use to set as much of the REMAP State SPRs as practical with a single instruction, whilst mm=1 is intended to be a little more refined.

Usage guidelines

  • Disable 2D mapping: to only perform Indexing without reordering use SVd=1,sk=0,yx=0 (or set SVd to a value larger or equal to VL)
  • Modulo 1D mapping: to perform Indexing cycling through the first N Indices use SVd=N,sk=0,yx=0 where VL>N. There is no requirement to set VL equal to a multiple of N.
  • Modulo 2D transposed: SVd=M,sk=0,yx=1, sets xdim=M,ydim=CEIL(MAXVL/M).

Beyond these mappings it becomes necessary to write directly to the SVSTATE SPRs manually.


\newpage{}

svshape2 (offset-priority)

SVM2-Form

0:5 6:9 10 11:15 16:20 21:24 25 26:31 Form
PO offs yx rmm SVd 100/mm sk XO SVM2-Form
  • svshape2 offs,yx,rmm,SVd,sk,mm

See appendix for svshape2 pseudocode

Special Registers Altered:

    SVSTATE, SVSHAPE0-3

svshape2 is an additional convenience instruction that prioritises setting SVSHAPE.offset. Its primary purpose is for use when element-width overrides are used. It has identical capabilities to svindex in terms of both options (skip, etc.) and ability to activate REMAP (rmm, mask mode) but unlike svindex it does not set GPR REMAP: only a 1D or 2D svshape, and unlike svshape it can set an arbitrary SVSHAPE.offset immediate.

One of the limitations of Simple-V is that Vector elements start on the boundary of the Scalar regfile, which is fine when element-width overrides are not needed. If the starting point of a Vector with smaller elwidths must begin in the middle of a register, normally there would be no way to do so except through costly LD/ST. SVSHAPE.offset caters for this scenario and svshape2 makes it easier to access.

Operand Fields:

  • offs (4 bits) - unsigned offset
  • yx (1 bit) - swap XY to YX
  • SVd dimension size
  • rmm REMAP mask
  • mm mask mode
  • sk (1 bit) skips 1st dimension if set

Dimensions are calculated exactly as svindex. rmm and mm are as per svindex.

Programmer's Note: offsets for svshape2 may be specified in the range 0-15. Given that the principle of Simple-V is to fit on top of byte-addressable register files and that GPR and FPR are 64-bit (8 bytes) it should be clear that the offset may, when elwidth=8, begin an element-level operation starting element zero at any arbitrary byte. On cursory examination attempting to go beyond the range 0-7 seems unnecessary given that the next GPR or FPR is an alias for an offset in the range 8-15. Thus by simply increasing the starting Vector point of the operation to the next register it can be seen that the offset of 0-7 would be sufficient. Unfortunately however some operations are EXTRA2-encoded it is not possible to increase the GPR/FPR register number by one, because EXTRA2-encoding of GPR/FPR Vector numbers are restricted to even numbering. For CR Fields the EXTRA2 encoding is even more sparse. The additional offset range (8-15) helps overcome these limitations.

Hardware Implementor's note: with the offsets only being immediates and with register numbering being entirely immediate as well it is possible to correctly compute Register Hazards without requiring reading the contents of any SPRs. If however there are instructions that have directly written to the SVSTATE or SVSHAPE SPRs and those instructions are still in-flight then this position is clearly invalid. This is why Programmers are strongly discouraged from directly writing to these SPRs.

Architectural Resource Allocation note: this instruction shares the space of svshape. Therefore it is critical that the two instructions, svshape and svshape2 have the exact same XO in bits 26 thru 31. It is also critical that for svshape2, bit 21 of XO is a 1, bit 22 of XO is a 0, and bit 23 of XO is a 0.


\newpage{}