(From the proceedings of the International Conference on Supercomputing, July 1997, Vienna, Austria)
Jeff Bilmes
,
Krste Asanovic,
Chee-Whye Chin,
Jim Demmel
{bilmes,krste,cheewhye,demmel}@cs.berkeley.edu
CS Division, University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA, 94720
International Computer Science Institute
Berkeley CA, 94704
Modern microprocessors can achieve high performance on linear algebra kernels but this currently requires extensive machine-specific hand tuning. We have developed a methodology whereby near-peak performance on a wide range of systems can be achieved automatically for such routines. First, by analyzing current machines and C compilers, we've developed guidelines for writing Portable, High-Performance, ANSI C (PHiPAC, pronounced ``fee-pack''). Second, rather than code by hand, we produce parameterized code generators. Third, we write search scripts that find the best parameters for a given system. We report on a BLAS GEMM compatible multi-level cache-blocked matrix multiply generator which produces code that achieves around 90% of peak on the Sparcstation-20/61, IBM RS/6000-590, HP 712/80i, SGI Power Challenge R8k, and SGI Octane R10k, and over 80% of peak on the SGI Indigo R4k. The resulting routines are competitive with vendor-optimized BLAS GEMMs.
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