Re: Popcount optimization using AVX512

On Tue, Apr 02, 2024 at 01:09:57AM +0300, Ants Aasma wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Apr 2024 at 00:31, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 02, 2024 at 12:11:59AM +0300, Ants Aasma wrote:
>> > What about using the masking capabilities of AVX-512 to handle the
>> > tail in the same code path? Masked out portions of a load instruction
>> > will not generate an exception. To allow byte level granularity
>> > masking, -mavx512bw is needed. Based on wikipedia this will only
>> > disable this fast path on Knights Mill (Xeon Phi), in all other cases
>> > VPOPCNTQ implies availability of BW.
>>
>> Sounds promising.  IMHO we should really be sure that these kinds of loads
>> won't generate segfaults and the like due to the masked-out portions.  I
>> searched around a little bit but haven't found anything that seemed
>> definitive.
> 
> Interestingly the Intel software developer manual is not exactly
> crystal clear on how memory faults with masks work, but volume 2A
> chapter 2.8 [1] does specify that MOVDQU8 is of exception class E4.nb
> that supports memory fault suppression on page fault.

Perhaps Paul or Akash could chime in here...

-- 
Nathan Bossart
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