perf: prefetch counts[] ahead in the AVX2 percentile scan (follow-up to #138)#139
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perf: prefetch counts[] ahead in the AVX2 percentile scan (follow-up to #138)#139fcostaoliveira wants to merge 2 commits into
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July 1, 2026 10:48
…ator get_value_from_idx_up_to_count_avx2 summed 4 int64/iter and did a horizontal reduction + 2x _mm_extract_epi64 + target-cross branch every 4 elements. Accumulate 16 int64/iter (4x256) in a vector register and reduce to a scalar block sum once per 16, so the costly GPR extracts and the early-exit branch run 4x less often. Scalar fallback and uint64 overflow hardening unchanged; percentile results bit-identical. clx1 (Cascade Lake), core-pinned, same-session A/B: hdr_value_at_percentile +137% (gcc 0.16->0.38 Mq/s) / +144% (clang 0.18->0.44 Mq/s). Read sink byte-identical.
The widened AVX2 percentile scan is memory-load-latency bound over the ~10s-of-KB counts[] array. Prefetch 4 iterations (512 B) ahead with _MM_HINT_T0 to hide L2/L3 latency. Read throughput (hdr_value_at_percentile), same-session core-pinned A/B: Cascade Lake (Xeon Gold 6248): gcc +8%, clang neutral Granite Rapids: gcc +7.7%, clang +5.7% Write path unaffected (control flat on both); percentile results bit-identical. Stacked on perf/avx2-percentile-scan-widen16 (PR HdrHistogram#138).
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…µarch data HdrHistogram/HdrHistogram_c#139 (fcostaoliveira:perf/avx2-scan-prefetch -> HdrHistogram:main, +19/-7, 2 commits, MERGEABLE). Clearly labeled stacked-on-#138; reduces to the one-line prefetch once #138 lands. Logs (EXPERIMENTS/SUMMARY/README/memory) synced.
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Summary
Software-prefetch
counts[]ahead of the AVX2 percentile scan(
get_value_from_idx_up_to_count_avx2) to hide L2/L3 load latency:After the vector-accumulator widening, the scan is load-latency bound streaming the
~10s-of-KB
counts[]array, so an explicit prefetch a few iterations ahead helps.Benchmark
test/hdr_percentile_bench—hdr_value_at_percentilethroughput, core-pinned, measuredbase (this repo's AVX2 scan) vs +prefetch back-to-back in the same session, on two Intel
microarchitectures and both compilers:
gcc is consistently ~+8%; clang ranges neutral → +5.7% and never regresses. The write path
(
hdr_histogram_perf) is a flat control on both µarchs (this change only touches the read scan).The prefetch distance (64) is a reasonable default and could be tuned further per target.
Steps to reproduce
Correctness
_mm_prefetchis a non-faulting hint — no bounds/UB implications, no change to the values read.ctestgreen (gcc and clang); the benchmarksinkis byte-identical to base(
17401860284404480), i.e. every percentile query returns exactly the same value.