[gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Michał Górny]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 390 bytes --]

Hello, everyone.

I have the pleasure of announcing that after the long period of split
maintenance, we are forming an united LLVM project [1] to maintain all
of LLVM packages in Gentoo and work on establishing improved support for
a healthy, gcc-free ecosystem.

[1]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:LLVM

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny
<http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 949 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Ian Bloss]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 522 bytes --]

Woot! Don't tell Stallman lol.

On Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 09:22 Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> I have the pleasure of announcing that after the long period of split
> maintenance, we are forming an united LLVM project [1] to maintain all
> of LLVM packages in Gentoo and work on establishing improved support for
> a healthy, gcc-free ecosystem.
>
> [1]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:LLVM
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> <http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 958 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

@mgorny may be able to help with some of this and has quite a bit of
experience building clang/llvm.  Where I work we use a "wrapper" that
helps coordinate a lot of the moving pieces.

https://github.com/pathscale/llvm-suite/

This may not be the perfect "gentoo" way to handle it, but the
approach would produce a clean and correct compiler. With llvm
dependencies getting more and more complicated, I'm not sure if it
would be possible to have both a gnu-free and also perfect
1-project-source-repo:1-ebuild ratio.

I'm sure there's llvm/clang ebuilds already and curious what others think..



On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 9:48 PM, Ian Bloss <ianlinkcd@gmail.com> wrote:
> Woot! Don't tell Stallman lol.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 09:22 Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hello, everyone.
>>
>> I have the pleasure of announcing that after the long period of split
>> maintenance, we are forming an united LLVM project [1] to maintain all
>> of LLVM packages in Gentoo and work on establishing improved support for
>> a healthy, gcc-free ecosystem.
>>
>> [1]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:LLVM
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Michał Górny
>> <http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Lei Zhang]

2016-08-18 21:56 GMT+08:00 C Bergström <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> @mgorny may be able to help with some of this and has quite a bit of
> experience building clang/llvm.  Where I work we use a "wrapper" that
> helps coordinate a lot of the moving pieces.
>
> https://github.com/pathscale/llvm-suite/
>
> This may not be the perfect "gentoo" way to handle it, but the
> approach would produce a clean and correct compiler. With llvm
> dependencies getting more and more complicated, I'm not sure if it
> would be possible to have both a gnu-free and also perfect
> 1-project-source-repo:1-ebuild ratio.

Currently the ebuilds for libunwind, libc++abi and libc++ all involve
some hackery to support standalone build. And the package clang is
just a placeholder, while it's actually built in llvm.

Maybe we can put them all into the llvm package, and control what
components to build via USE flags.


Lei

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[cbergstrom]

That seems a lot like what we've already done. I guess a GSOC student is working on the libcxxabi piece. The only advantage to using our runtime, libcxxrt, is performance and code size.‎ 

  Original Message  
From: Lei Zhang
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 06:34
To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
Reply To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
Cc: gentoo-dev-announce@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

2016-08-18 21:56 GMT+08:00 C Bergström <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> @mgorny may be able to help with some of this and has quite a bit of
> experience building clang/llvm. Where I work we use a "wrapper" that
> helps coordinate a lot of the moving pieces.
>
> https://github.com/pathscale/llvm-suite/
>
> This may not be the perfect "gentoo" way to handle it, but the
> approach would produce a clean and correct compiler. With llvm
> dependencies getting more and more complicated, I'm not sure if it
> would be possible to have both a gnu-free and also perfect
> 1-project-source-repo:1-ebuild ratio.

Currently the ebuilds for libunwind, libc++abi and libc++ all involve
some hackery to support standalone build. And the package clang is
just a placeholder, while it's actually built in llvm.

Maybe we can put them all into the llvm package, and control what
components to build via USE flags.


Lei

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Lei Zhang]

2016-08-19 10:07 GMT+08:00  <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> That seems a lot like what we've already done. I guess a GSOC student is working on the libcxxabi piece.

I am that GSoC student :)

I'm currently trying to push libc++abi to replace libcxxrt as the
default runtime: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/2048

The reason is I think libc++abi blends in more naturally with other
LLVM components, and it has a clear version number as opposed to
libcxxrt.

> The only advantage to using our runtime, libcxxrt, is performance and code size.‎

Honestly I don't know what essential difference these two libs have; I
can't find any decent comparison of them on the internet. Do you have
some real numbers to show the difference in performance and code size?


Lei

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

I think you're getting a bit confused

libsupc++ is the default now, from GNU

libcxxabi is the bloated runtime from Apple

libcxxrt is the faster c++ runtime, PathScale+David Chisnall, which
PathScale and FreeBSD use by default. We don't need a version number
because it's pretty much rock solid stable for a while.
I'd encourage you to consider libcxxrt for at least the code size and
performance reasons. Build it and you'll see. Locally my unoptimized
libcxxrt.so is like 88K. How much is your libcxxabi (static and
shared)

88K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.so
140K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.a
// This seems larger than I remember and I need to check why.

https://github.com/pathscale/libcxxrt

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:40 AM, Lei Zhang <zhanglei.april@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2016-08-19 10:07 GMT+08:00  <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
>> That seems a lot like what we've already done. I guess a GSOC student is working on the libcxxabi piece.
>
> I am that GSoC student :)
>
> I'm currently trying to push libc++abi to replace libcxxrt as the
> default runtime: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/2048
>
> The reason is I think libc++abi blends in more naturally with other
> LLVM components, and it has a clear version number as opposed to
> libcxxrt.
>
>> The only advantage to using our runtime, libcxxrt, is performance and code size.‎
>
> Honestly I don't know what essential difference these two libs have; I
> can't find any decent comparison of them on the internet. Do you have
> some real numbers to show the difference in performance and code size?
>
>
> Lei
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Luca Barbato]

On 19/08/16 05:11, C Bergström wrote:
> I think you're getting a bit confused
> 
> libsupc++ is the default now, from GNU
> 
> libcxxabi is the bloated runtime from Apple
> 
> libcxxrt is the faster c++ runtime, PathScale+David Chisnall, which
> PathScale and FreeBSD use by default. We don't need a version number
> because it's pretty much rock solid stable for a while.

C++ is evolving so it will be needed in the future =) Please consider
adding some versions even if it is a bourden.

> I'd encourage you to consider libcxxrt for at least the code size and
> performance reasons. Build it and you'll see. Locally my unoptimized
> libcxxrt.so is like 88K. How much is your libcxxabi (static and
> shared)
> 
> 88K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.so
> 140K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.a
> // This seems larger than I remember and I need to check why.
> 
> https://github.com/pathscale/libcxxrt

BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?

lu

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
> BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?

I wish, but no. We have known issues when building grub2, glibc and
the Linux kernel at the very least. Someone* did report a long time
ago that with their unofficial port, were able to build/boot the
NetBSD kernel.
(*A community dev we trusted with our sources and was helping us with
portability across platforms)

The stuff with grub2 may potentially be fixed in the "near" future...
the others are more tricky. In general if clang can do it, we have a
strong chance as well.

As a philosophy - "we" aren't really trying to be the best generic
compiler in the world. We aim more on optimizing as much for known
targets. So if by system you mean, a compiler that would produce an
"OS" which only runs on a single class of hardware, then yeah it could
work at some point in the future. Specifically, on x86 we default on
host CPU optimizations. So on newer Intel hardware it's easy to get a
binary that won't run on AMD or older 64bit Intel.

More recently on ARMv8 - we turn on processor specific tuning. So
while it may "run", the difference between APM's mustang and Cavium
ThunderX is pretty big and running binaries intended for A and ran on
B would certainly take a hit.. (this is just the tip of the iceberg)

For general scalar OS code it isn't likely to matter... the real
impact being like 1-10% difference (being very general.. it could be
less or more in the real world..)

For HPC codes or anything where you get loops or computationally
complex - the gloves are off and I could see big differences... (again
being general and maybe a bit dramatic for fun)

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Lei Zhang]

2016-08-19 11:11 GMT+08:00 C Bergström <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> I think you're getting a bit confused
>
> libsupc++ is the default now, from GNU
>
> libcxxabi is the bloated runtime from Apple
>
> libcxxrt is the faster c++ runtime, PathScale+David Chisnall, which
> PathScale and FreeBSD use by default. We don't need a version number
> because it's pretty much rock solid stable for a while.
> I'd encourage you to consider libcxxrt for at least the code size and
> performance reasons. Build it and you'll see. Locally my unoptimized
> libcxxrt.so is like 88K. How much is your libcxxabi (static and
> shared)
>
> 88K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.so
> 140K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.a
> // This seems larger than I remember and I need to check why.
>
> https://github.com/pathscale/libcxxrt

Currently libcxxrt is the default ABI lib for libc++ in Gentoo. I mean
to replace it with libc++abi in that context.

I'm interested in benchmarking to reveal the claimed difference in
performance. Perhaps I can build the same program against libcxxrt and
libc++abi respectively and see how it behaves. Do you have some hints
on what kind of programs I should test?


Thanks,
Lei

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

I finally got it to build and here's the size numbers
952K    ./lib/libc++abi.a
616K    ./lib/libc++abi.so.1.0

If the above isn't enough motivation and you really want benchmarks
which prove it's a pig... I'll try to figure something else

Not exactly a 1:1 comparison because I think other things are mixed in, but...
352K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/libsupc++.a
356K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/5/libsupc++.a

In the land of HPC we frequently statically link stuff... not that
864KB is big by any sort of modern definition, but it does raise
questions..


On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 12:54 AM, Lei Zhang <zhanglei.april@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2016-08-19 11:11 GMT+08:00 C Bergström <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
>> I think you're getting a bit confused
>>
>> libsupc++ is the default now, from GNU
>>
>> libcxxabi is the bloated runtime from Apple
>>
>> libcxxrt is the faster c++ runtime, PathScale+David Chisnall, which
>> PathScale and FreeBSD use by default. We don't need a version number
>> because it's pretty much rock solid stable for a while.
>> I'd encourage you to consider libcxxrt for at least the code size and
>> performance reasons. Build it and you'll see. Locally my unoptimized
>> libcxxrt.so is like 88K. How much is your libcxxabi (static and
>> shared)
>>
>> 88K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.so
>> 140K    /opt/enzo-2016-06-26/lib/6.0.983/x8664/64/libcxxrt.a
>> // This seems larger than I remember and I need to check why.
>>
>> https://github.com/pathscale/libcxxrt
>
> Currently libcxxrt is the default ABI lib for libc++ in Gentoo. I mean
> to replace it with libc++abi in that context.
>
> I'm interested in benchmarking to reveal the claimed difference in
> performance. Perhaps I can build the same program against libcxxrt and
> libc++abi respectively and see how it behaves. Do you have some hints
> on what kind of programs I should test?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Lei
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Luca Barbato]

On 19/08/16 19:13, C Bergström wrote:
> I finally got it to build and here's the size numbers
> 952K    ./lib/libc++abi.a
> 616K    ./lib/libc++abi.so.1.0
> 
> If the above isn't enough motivation and you really want benchmarks
> which prove it's a pig... I'll try to figure something else
> 
> Not exactly a 1:1 comparison because I think other things are mixed in, but...
> 352K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/libsupc++.a
> 356K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/5/libsupc++.a
> 
> In the land of HPC we frequently statically link stuff... not that
> 864KB is big by any sort of modern definition, but it does raise
> questions..
> 

We aren't in love with any specific implementation of it so it is nice
to have some comparison.

We could probably start a page in the wiki about it.

As said, the only part that makes uncomfortable about libcxxrt seems the
lack of versions and releases.

Surely we can cut another snapshot out of it and be happy about it.

lu

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Luca Barbato]

On 19/08/16 17:15, C Bergström wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?
> 
> I wish, but no. We have known issues when building grub2, glibc and
> the Linux kernel at the very least. Someone* did report a long time
> ago that with their unofficial port, were able to build/boot the
> NetBSD kernel.
> (*A community dev we trusted with our sources and was helping us with
> portability across platforms)
> 
> The stuff with grub2 may potentially be fixed in the "near" future...
> the others are more tricky. In general if clang can do it, we have a
> strong chance as well.

I see, it is getting quite close =)

> As a philosophy - "we" aren't really trying to be the best generic
> compiler in the world. We aim more on optimizing as much for known
> targets. So if by system you mean, a compiler that would produce an
> "OS" which only runs on a single class of hardware, then yeah it could
> work at some point in the future. Specifically, on x86 we default on
> host CPU optimizations. So on newer Intel hardware it's easy to get a
> binary that won't run on AMD or older 64bit Intel.
> 
> More recently on ARMv8 - we turn on processor specific tuning. So
> while it may "run", the difference between APM's mustang and Cavium
> ThunderX is pretty big and running binaries intended for A and ran on
> B would certainly take a hit.. (this is just the tip of the iceberg)

This is not a problem for Gentoo, actually sounds a good match for one
of our many use-cases =)

> For HPC codes or anything where you get loops or computationally
> complex - the gloves are off and I could see big differences... (again
> being general and maybe a bit dramatic for fun)

I started to do some decoding benchmark across compiler version some
time ago, I should try to put in the mix your compiler as well and
eventually blog about it =)

lu

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[james]

On 08/19/2016 11:15 AM, C Bergström wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?
>
> I wish, but no. We have known issues when building grub2, glibc and
> the Linux kernel at the very least. Someone* did report a long time
> ago that with their unofficial port, were able to build/boot the
> NetBSD kernel.
> (*A community dev we trusted with our sources and was helping us with
> portability across platforms)
>
> The stuff with grub2 may potentially be fixed in the "near" future...
> the others are more tricky. In general if clang can do it, we have a
> strong chance as well.
>
> As a philosophy - "we" aren't really trying to be the best generic
> compiler in the world. We aim more on optimizing as much for known
> targets. So if by system you mean, a compiler that would produce an
> "OS" which only runs on a single class of hardware, then yeah it could
> work at some point in the future. Specifically, on x86 we default on
> host CPU optimizations. So on newer Intel hardware it's easy to get a
> binary that won't run on AMD or older 64bit Intel.
>
> More recently on ARMv8 - we turn on processor specific tuning. So
> while it may "run", the difference between APM's mustang and Cavium
> ThunderX is pretty big and running binaries intended for A and ran on
> B would certainly take a hit.. (this is just the tip of the iceberg)
>
> For general scalar OS code it isn't likely to matter... the real
> impact being like 1-10% difference (being very general.. it could be
> less or more in the real world..)
>
> For HPC codes or anything where you get loops or computationally
> complex - the gloves are off and I could see big differences... (again
> being general and maybe a bit dramatic for fun)


OK (actually fantastic!). Looking at the pathscale site pages and 
github, perhaps a cheap arm embedded board where llvm is the centerpiece 
of compiling a minimal system to entice gentoo-llvm testers, would be 
possible in the near future?. I have a 96boards, HiKey arm64v8  that I 
could dedicate to gentoo+armv8-llvm testing, if that'd help. [1]

Perhaps a  baseline bootstrap iso (or such) version  targeted at 
llvm-centric testers on x86-64 or armv8 ? Skip grub2 and use grub-legacy 
or lilo or (?), since there seems to be issues with llvm-grub2.


[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~tgall/


No matter how you slice it, from someone who is focused on building 
minimized and embedded (bare metal) systems that are customized and 
coalesced into a heterogeneous gentoo cluster for HPC, this is wonderful 
news. Finally a vendor in the cluster space, with some vision and 
common-sense, imho. Heterogeneous and open  HPC is where is at, imho. If 
there is a forum where the community and pathscale folks discuss issues, 
point that out as I could not find one for deeper reading....


hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

Sorry to be the party crasher, but...

I'd love to have optimizations for everything out there, but it takes
a lot of work to fine tune for something specific.

Right now I see a few variants of ARMv8
------------
ARM reference stuff - A57 cores and the newer bits.. The scheduling
and stuff seems more-or-less similar enough that one tuning could
probably work for the vast majority of these parts.

Cavium ThunderX - It's ground up and quite different from the ARM
reference stuff under the hood

APM - Mustang, again ground up and different. I don't have enough
hands on to know how different from reference.

Broadcom - Coming Soon(tm) - Again no hands on or any data, but
certainly very interesting..

... now add in every variant of ground up implementation and you have
50 shades of gray..
-------------
Soo.. depending on your target hardware, you may be better off with
gcc if the end goal is general all-around performance. (It does a
quite respectable job of being generic) I realize a lot of people have
strong feelings for or against it. I leave that to the reader to
decide..

Back to my own glass house.. It will take a few years, but I am trying
to make it easier (internally) to expose in some clear way all the
pieces which compose a fine tuning per-processor. If this was "just"
scheduling models it would be really easy, but it's not.. Those
latencies and other magic bits decide things like.. "should I unroll
this loop or do something else" and then you venture into the land of
accelerators where a custom regalloc may be what you really need and
*nothing* off the shelf fits to meet your goals.. (projects like that
can take 9 months and in the end only give a general 1-5% median
performance gain..)
--------------


On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 2:02 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 08/19/2016 11:15 AM, C Bergström wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?
>>
>>
>> I wish, but no. We have known issues when building grub2, glibc and
>> the Linux kernel at the very least. Someone* did report a long time
>> ago that with their unofficial port, were able to build/boot the
>> NetBSD kernel.
>> (*A community dev we trusted with our sources and was helping us with
>> portability across platforms)
>>
>> The stuff with grub2 may potentially be fixed in the "near" future...
>> the others are more tricky. In general if clang can do it, we have a
>> strong chance as well.
>>
>> As a philosophy - "we" aren't really trying to be the best generic
>> compiler in the world. We aim more on optimizing as much for known
>> targets. So if by system you mean, a compiler that would produce an
>> "OS" which only runs on a single class of hardware, then yeah it could
>> work at some point in the future. Specifically, on x86 we default on
>> host CPU optimizations. So on newer Intel hardware it's easy to get a
>> binary that won't run on AMD or older 64bit Intel.
>>
>> More recently on ARMv8 - we turn on processor specific tuning. So
>> while it may "run", the difference between APM's mustang and Cavium
>> ThunderX is pretty big and running binaries intended for A and ran on
>> B would certainly take a hit.. (this is just the tip of the iceberg)
>>
>> For general scalar OS code it isn't likely to matter... the real
>> impact being like 1-10% difference (being very general.. it could be
>> less or more in the real world..)
>>
>> For HPC codes or anything where you get loops or computationally
>> complex - the gloves are off and I could see big differences... (again
>> being general and maybe a bit dramatic for fun)
>
>
>
> OK (actually fantastic!). Looking at the pathscale site pages and github,
> perhaps a cheap arm embedded board where llvm is the centerpiece of
> compiling a minimal system to entice gentoo-llvm testers, would be possible
> in the near future?. I have a 96boards, HiKey arm64v8  that I could dedicate
> to gentoo+armv8-llvm testing, if that'd help. [1]
>
> Perhaps a  baseline bootstrap iso (or such) version  targeted at
> llvm-centric testers on x86-64 or armv8 ? Skip grub2 and use grub-legacy or
> lilo or (?), since there seems to be issues with llvm-grub2.
>
>
> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~tgall/
>
>
> No matter how you slice it, from someone who is focused on building
> minimized and embedded (bare metal) systems that are customized and
> coalesced into a heterogeneous gentoo cluster for HPC, this is wonderful
> news. Finally a vendor in the cluster space, with some vision and
> common-sense, imho. Heterogeneous and open  HPC is where is at, imho. If
> there is a forum where the community and pathscale folks discuss issues,
> point that out as I could not find one for deeper reading....
>
>
> hth,
> James
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[james]

On 08/19/2016 02:20 PM, C Bergström wrote:
> Sorry to be the party crasher, but...
>
> I'd love to have optimizations for everything out there, but it takes
> a lot of work to fine tune for something specific.

Agreed. Right now on Armv8 alone, there are dozens of teams working on 
the identical concepts presented in this thread. Most are also targeting 
specific domains. At some point there with pathways, just like in 
Computational Chemistry, where the optimization pathway for new silicon 
is fast and previous work helps tremendously. That is, you are not alone 
in your quests, far, far from it.


> Right now I see a few variants of ARMv8
> ------------
> ARM reference stuff - A57 cores and the newer bits.. The scheduling
> and stuff seems more-or-less similar enough that one tuning could
> probably work for the vast majority of these parts.
>
> Cavium ThunderX - It's ground up and quite different from the ARM
> reference stuff under the hood
>
> APM - Mustang, again ground up and different. I don't have enough
> hands on to know how different from reference.
>
> Broadcom - Coming Soon(tm) - Again no hands on or any data, but
> certainly very interesting..
>
> ... now add in every variant of ground up implementation and you have
> 50 shades of gray..

And billions of dollars financing those efforts in parallel. It's an 
arms race, (like the pun?). Wonder why a Japanese conglomerate offered 
to purchase ARM ltd. for such a large figure? Wonder why intel has arm 
licenses now?  Your group might only be able to focus on a few ARM 
offerings, but there are dozens and dozens of ARM teams alone that would 
dispute your arithmetic above.

> -------------
> Soo.. depending on your target hardware, you may be better off with
> gcc if the end goal is general all-around performance. (It does a
> quite respectable job of being generic) I realize a lot of people have
> strong feelings for or against it. I leave that to the reader to
> decide..

You misconstrue concepts. Nobody, especially me, implies that one 
pathway (to a Unikernel [1] if you like) suites all near-optimized 
solutions. That would be pointless. What you allude to, already exists 
in some of the more progressive data/cloud vendor clouds. We are talking 
about a unikernel for different classes of problems, across arm8 and 
x86-64 and GPU architectures, not thousands of (arch) processor 
variants. However, those other processor (arch) variants and the folks 
that earn a living off of those variants, are not sitting back idle, either.


> Back to my own glass house.. It will take a few years, but I am trying
> to make it easier (internally) to expose in some clear way all the
> pieces which compose a fine tuning per-processor. If this was "just"
> scheduling models it would be really easy, but it's not.. Those
> latencies and other magic bits decide things like.. "should I unroll
> this loop or do something else" and then you venture into the land of
> accelerators where a custom regalloc may be what you really need and
> *nothing* off the shelf fits to meet your goals.. (projects like that
> can take 9 months and in the end only give a general 1-5% median
> performance gain..)

If this is your mantra, I resend the generous comments. Cray use to work 
that way, milking the Petroleum Industry for tons of money, but, things 
have changed and the change is accelerating, rapidly. Perhaps too much 
off those Cray patents that your company owns are leaking toxins into 
the brain-trust where you park?

Vendor walk-back is sad, imho. ymmv.

Best of luck to your company's  5-year plan....


[2] http://unikernel.org/

hth,
James


> --------------
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 2:02 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On 08/19/2016 11:15 AM, C Bergström wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> BTW is pathscale ready to be used as system compiler as well?
>>>
>>>
>>> I wish, but no. We have known issues when building grub2, glibc and
>>> the Linux kernel at the very least. Someone* did report a long time
>>> ago that with their unofficial port, were able to build/boot the
>>> NetBSD kernel.
>>> (*A community dev we trusted with our sources and was helping us with
>>> portability across platforms)
>>>
>>> The stuff with grub2 may potentially be fixed in the "near" future...
>>> the others are more tricky. In general if clang can do it, we have a
>>> strong chance as well.
>>>
>>> As a philosophy - "we" aren't really trying to be the best generic
>>> compiler in the world. We aim more on optimizing as much for known
>>> targets. So if by system you mean, a compiler that would produce an
>>> "OS" which only runs on a single class of hardware, then yeah it could
>>> work at some point in the future. Specifically, on x86 we default on
>>> host CPU optimizations. So on newer Intel hardware it's easy to get a
>>> binary that won't run on AMD or older 64bit Intel.
>>>
>>> More recently on ARMv8 - we turn on processor specific tuning. So
>>> while it may "run", the difference between APM's mustang and Cavium
>>> ThunderX is pretty big and running binaries intended for A and ran on
>>> B would certainly take a hit.. (this is just the tip of the iceberg)
>>>
>>> For general scalar OS code it isn't likely to matter... the real
>>> impact being like 1-10% difference (being very general.. it could be
>>> less or more in the real world..)
>>>
>>> For HPC codes or anything where you get loops or computationally
>>> complex - the gloves are off and I could see big differences... (again
>>> being general and maybe a bit dramatic for fun)
>>
>>
>>
>> OK (actually fantastic!). Looking at the pathscale site pages and github,
>> perhaps a cheap arm embedded board where llvm is the centerpiece of
>> compiling a minimal system to entice gentoo-llvm testers, would be possible
>> in the near future?. I have a 96boards, HiKey arm64v8  that I could dedicate
>> to gentoo+armv8-llvm testing, if that'd help. [1]
>>
>> Perhaps a  baseline bootstrap iso (or such) version  targeted at
>> llvm-centric testers on x86-64 or armv8 ? Skip grub2 and use grub-legacy or
>> lilo or (?), since there seems to be issues with llvm-grub2.
>>
>>
>> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~tgall/
>>
>>
>> No matter how you slice it, from someone who is focused on building
>> minimized and embedded (bare metal) systems that are customized and
>> coalesced into a heterogeneous gentoo cluster for HPC, this is wonderful
>> news. Finally a vendor in the cluster space, with some vision and
>> common-sense, imho. Heterogeneous and open  HPC is where is at, imho. If
>> there is a forum where the community and pathscale folks discuss issues,
>> point that out as I could not find one for deeper reading....
>>
>>
>> hth,
>> James
>>
>
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 4:52 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:

<snip>

>> Back to my own glass house.. It will take a few years, but I am trying
>> to make it easier (internally) to expose in some clear way all the
>> pieces which compose a fine tuning per-processor. If this was "just"
>> scheduling models it would be really easy, but it's not.. Those
>> latencies and other magic bits decide things like.. "should I unroll
>> this loop or do something else" and then you venture into the land of
>> accelerators where a custom regalloc may be what you really need and
>> *nothing* off the shelf fits to meet your goals.. (projects like that
>> can take 9 months and in the end only give a general 1-5% median
>> performance gain..)
>
>
> If this is your mantra, I resend the generous comments. Cray use to work
> that way, milking the Petroleum Industry for tons of money, but, things have
> changed and the change is accelerating, rapidly. Perhaps too much off those
> Cray patents that your company owns are leaking toxins into the brain-trust
> where you park?
>
> Vendor walk-back is sad, imho. ymmv.
>
> Best of luck to your company's  5-year plan....

I have no idea what on earth you were trying to say in most of your
reply. I am speaking only from a compiler perspective. Nothing more
and nothing less.. it may be my difficultly to describe the target
level and processor specific optimization choices a compiler *must*
make.

Beyond not understanding your email, I found it insulting. So please
keep rude comments to yourself.

So again to try to explain the technical side of this - We can't and
have no desire to optimize for every class of processor on the planet.
We have a narrow band of focus on mostly HPC centric code patterns and
processors which are are typically used in HPC workloads. I'd love to
expand past this, but we're a small company and that's our niche.
There's no walking back or trying to claim to be something we're not..
this is pure honest transparency. (imagine it like - do one thing and
do it well)

The only special note I'd add on to this - the CPU isn't where we
spend most of our time tuning, it's by far more on the accelerator
support.

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[james]

On 08/19/2016 05:05 PM, C Bergström wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 4:52 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>

You removed your rude remark:::
" Sorry to be the party crasher, but..."

So let's put it back, just for clarity.


>>> Back to my own glass house.. It will take a few years, but I am trying
>>> to make it easier (internally) to expose in some clear way all the
>>> pieces which compose a fine tuning per-processor. If this was "just"
>>> scheduling models it would be really easy, but it's not.. Those
>>> latencies and other magic bits decide things like.. "should I unroll
>>> this loop or do something else" and then you venture into the land of
>>> accelerators where a custom regalloc may be what you really need and
>>> *nothing* off the shelf fits to meet your goals.. (projects like that
>>> can take 9 months and in the end only give a general 1-5% median
>>> performance gain..)
>>
>>
>> If this is your mantra, I resend the generous comments. Cray use to work
>> that way, milking the Petroleum Industry for tons of money, but, things have
>> changed and the change is accelerating, rapidly. Perhaps too much off those
>> Cray patents that your company owns are leaking toxins into the brain-trust
>> where you park?
>>
>> Vendor walk-back is sad, imho. ymmv.
>>
>> Best of luck to your company's  5-year plan....
>
> I have no idea what on earth you were trying to say in most of your
> reply. I am speaking only from a compiler perspective. Nothing more
> and nothing less.. it may be my difficultly to describe the target
> level and processor specific optimization choices a compiler *must*
> make.

Nobody disagreed with the principals you espoused. If compiler 
development and optimizations all  occurred glacially as you suggest for 
all things related, we'd be nowhere near where the industry currently 
is. In fact this sort of work is greatly accelerating. ymmv. So, I 
included some prose to 'encourage' folks that this work is open to all 
and a very prosperous area. Just because I dipped a bit into the 
financial status of folks involved, is no reason for you to be insulted.
Facts are facts and the assimilation of diverse data usually enhances 
one's personal evaluation of where they should spend their technical 
attention.


> Beyond not understanding your email, I found it insulting.

If you did not understand what I wrote, how could you be insulted?


 > So please keep rude comments to yourself.

Right back at you. Your opening remark
"Sorry to be the party crasher, but..."

  Was found by me to be highly insulting, inaccurate and discouraging to 
folks to learn about some of the inner goals of HPC.

It was totally rude and discouraging. Keep that sort of attitude to 
yourself, thank you. It's simple to ignore what you do not like or 
disagree with, most of us do that all the time. YOU direct an insult 
directly at me, high or low brow, your gonna get 'domain data', that 
sheds light, right back at you.


> So again to try to explain the technical side of this - We can't and
> have no desire to optimize for every class of processor on the planet.
> We have a narrow band of focus on mostly HPC centric code patterns and
> processors which are are typically used in HPC workloads. I'd love to
> expand past this, but we're a small company and that's our niche.
> There's no walking back or trying to claim to be something we're not..
> this is pure honest transparency. (imagine it like - do one thing and
> do it well)
>
> The only special note I'd add on to this - the CPU isn't where we
> spend most of our time tuning, it's by far more on the accelerator
> support.


hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[C Bergström]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 5:41 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 08/19/2016 05:05 PM, C Bergström wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 4:52 AM, james <garftd@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>
> You removed your rude remark:::
> " Sorry to be the party crasher, but..."
>
> So let's put it back, just for clarity.

I'll forgive you because it seems English may not be your native
language, but this expression is rarely to never seen as offensive.
Further, you should be able to infer I was talking about *my* own
party. I was clarifying about the limitations of using "my" compiler
in a system context. This had nothing to do you. So again please keep
your tone civil, adult and if possible on-topic.

Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: LLVM

[Lei Zhang]

2016-08-20 1:13 GMT+08:00 C Bergström <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>:
> I finally got it to build and here's the size numbers
> 952K    ./lib/libc++abi.a
> 616K    ./lib/libc++abi.so.1.0
>
> If the above isn't enough motivation and you really want benchmarks
> which prove it's a pig... I'll try to figure something else
>
> Not exactly a 1:1 comparison because I think other things are mixed in, but...
> 352K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/libsupc++.a
> 356K    /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/5/libsupc++.a
>
> In the land of HPC we frequently statically link stuff... not that
> 864KB is big by any sort of modern definition, but it does raise
> questions..

Though larger code size might be detrimental to performance (more
cache misses), seeing the runtime of a real world program is probably
more convincing :)

Speaking of HPC, could you recommend some HPC programs that I can
benchmark against libcxxrt/libc++abi?


Lei