164 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
164 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
FFmpeg & evaluating performance on the PowerPC Architecture HOWTO
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(c) 2003-2004 Romain Dolbeau <romain@dolbeau.org>
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I - Introduction
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The PowerPC architecture and its SIMD extension AltiVec offer some
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interesting tools to evaluate performance and improve the code.
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This document tries to explain how to use those tools with FFmpeg.
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The architecture itself offers two ways to evaluate the performance of
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a given piece of code:
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1) The Time Base Registers (TBL)
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2) The Performance Monitor Counter Registers (PMC)
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The first ones are always available, always active, but they're not very
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accurate: the registers increment by one every four *bus* cycles. On
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my 667 Mhz tiBook (ppc7450), this means once every twenty *processor*
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cycles. So we won't use that.
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The PMC are much more useful: not only can they report cycle-accurate
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timing, but they can also be used to monitor many other parameters,
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such as the number of AltiVec stalls for every kind of instruction,
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or instruction cache misses. The downside is that not all processors
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support the PMC (all G3, all G4 and the 970 do support them), and
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they're inactive by default - you need to activate them with a
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dedicated tool. Also, the number of available PMC depends on the
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procesor: the various 604 have 2, the various 75x (aka. G3) have 4,
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and the various 74xx (aka G4) have 6.
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*WARNING*: The PowerPC 970 is not very well documented, and its PMC
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registers are 64 bits wide. To properly notify the code, you *must*
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tune for the 970 (using --tune=970), or the code will assume 32 bit
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registers.
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II - Enabling FFmpeg PowerPC performance support
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This needs to be done by hand. First, you need to configure FFmpeg as
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usual, but add the "--powerpc-perf-enable" option. For instance:
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#####
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./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ffmpeg-cvs --cc=gcc-3.3 --tune=7450 --powerpc-perf-enable
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#####
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This will configure FFmpeg to install inside /usr/local/ffmpeg-cvs,
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compiling with gcc-3.3 (you should try to use this one or a newer
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gcc), and tuning for the PowerPC 7450 (i.e. the newer G4; as a rule of
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thumb, those at 550Mhz and more). It will also enable the PMC.
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You may also edit the file "config.h" to enable the following line:
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#####
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// #define ALTIVEC_USE_REFERENCE_C_CODE 1
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#####
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If you enable this line, then the code will not make use of AltiVec,
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but will use the reference C code instead. This is useful to compare
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performance between two versions of the code.
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Also, the number of enabled PMC is defined in "libavcodec/ppc/dsputil_ppc.h":
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#####
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#define POWERPC_NUM_PMC_ENABLED 4
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#####
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If you have a G4 CPU, you can enable all 6 PMC. DO NOT enable more
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PMC than available on your CPU!
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Then, simply compile FFmpeg as usual (make && make install).
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III - Using FFmpeg PowerPC performance support
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This FFmeg can be used exactly as usual. But before exiting, FFmpeg
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will dump a per-function report that looks like this:
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#####
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PowerPC performance report
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Values are from the PMC registers, and represent whatever the
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registers are set to record.
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc1):
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min: 231
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max: 1339867
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avg: 558.25 (255302)
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc2):
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min: 93
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max: 2164
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avg: 267.31 (255302)
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc3):
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min: 72
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max: 1987
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avg: 276.20 (255302)
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(...)
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#####
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In this example, PMC1 was set to record CPU cycles, PMC2 was set to
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record AltiVec Permute Stall Cycles, and PMC3 was set to record AltiVec
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Issue Stalls.
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The function "gmc1_altivec" was monitored 255302 times, and the
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minimum execution time was 231 processor cycles. The max and average
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aren't much use, as it's very likely the OS interrupted execution for
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reasons of its own :-(
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With the exact same settings and source file, but using the reference C
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code we get:
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#####
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PowerPC performance report
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Values are from the PMC registers, and represent whatever the
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registers are set to record.
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc1):
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min: 592
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max: 2532235
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avg: 962.88 (255302)
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc2):
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min: 0
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max: 33
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avg: 0.00 (255302)
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Function "gmc1_altivec" (pmc3):
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min: 0
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max: 350
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avg: 0.03 (255302)
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(...)
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#####
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592 cycles, so the fastest AltiVec execution is about 2.5x faster than
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the fastest C execution in this example. It's not perfect but it's not
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bad (well I wrote this function so I can't say otherwise :-).
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Once you have that kind of report, you can try to improve things by
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finding what goes wrong and fixing it; in the example above, one
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should try to diminish the number of AltiVec stalls, as this *may*
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improve performance.
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IV) Enabling the PMC in Mac OS X
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This is easy. Use "Monster" and "monster". Those tools come from
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Apple's CHUD package, and can be found hidden in the developer web
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site & FTP site. "MONster" is the graphical application, use it to
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generate a config file specifying what each register should
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monitor. Then use the command-line application "monster" to use that
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config file, and enjoy the results.
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Note that "MONster" can be used for many other things, but it's
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documented by Apple, it's not my subject.
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V) Enabling the PMC on Linux
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I don't know how to do it, sorry :-) Any idea very much welcome.
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--
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Romain Dolbeau
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<romain@dolbeau.org>
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