Lab 6: Performance Optimization (Memory Hierarchy)

Overview

This lab will focus on how computer memory systems store data, and how the implementation of memory systems -- especially the cache(s) -- affects program performance. At the end of the lab, you will measure the performance of your computer memory system under different application behavior patterns.

Lab - Getting Started

To begin this lab, start by obtaining the necessary boilerplate code from here.  Then, change the directory to lab06:

unix>  cd ~/2022_spring_ecpe170/lab06/

Lab Part 1 - Data Storage in Memory

The C programming language, like most languages, supports multi-dimensional arrays. For example, your array could be declared as:

uint32_t array[10][20];   // An 2-dimensional array of 4-byte (32-bit) unsigned integers, i.e. uint32_t

While the array may be multi-dimensional, computer memory is not! Behind the scenes, the compiler is converting each array access into an equivalent access in a 1-dimensional array. How exactly is this done?

We can imagine several obvious possibilities:

• Option 1: Start at row=0, column=0. Step through each row until the end, then advance to the next column.
• Option 2: Start at row=0, column=0. Step through each column until the end, then advance to the next row.
• Other options?  (Start at the last row/column, and store in reverse order?)

Assignment: Write a C program that demonstrates how two-dimensional arrays and three-dimensional arrays are actually stored in computer memory. Include a Makefile.   The array can be static (i.e. you do not need to use malloc() as you did in the earlier C programming project).

There is no boilerplate code here. Just create a new part1 directory in the lab06 folder of your working repository, and get started!

unix>  cd ~/2022_spring_ecpe170/lab06
unix>  mkdir part1
unix>  cd part1 

Requirements:

1. Use an example array like this in your program:  (include the file stdint.h to get access to these data types)
   uint32_t array1[3][5]; // 2D array
   uint32_t array2[3][5][7];  // 3D array
2. The output of your program must be understandable to a lay person! (i.e. not a trained computer scientist).  Don't just print out some unlabeled memory addresses! The output of your program should clearly explain what is being done behind the scenes and how the results are to be read/interpreted.
3. Your program must include a Makefile.

Lab Report:
(1) Describe how a two-dimensional array is stored in one-dimensional computer memory.
(2) Describe how a three-dimensional array is stored in one-dimensional computer memory.
(3) Copy and paste the output of your program into your lab report, and be sure that the source code and Makefile is included in your compressed folder to submit.

Lab Part 2 - Memory Locality

Memory locality is **essential** in ensuring good application performance. There are two forms of locality to keep in mind when designing a computer system (both its hardware and software!)

• Temporal locality: A memory address accessed once is likely to be accessed again in the near future.
• Spatial locality: If one memory address is accessed, other nearby memory addresses are also likely to be accessed.

The general rule is this: programs with good memory locality perform better than programs with poor memory locality. We'll learn some reasons why good locality improves program performance later in this lab.

Consider the following function that processes an array:

int sumarray(int a[ROWS])
{
   int i, sum=0;

   for (i=0; i<ROWS; i++)
      sum += a[i];

   return sum;
} 

Does this function have good locality?  This is not a question with a simple yes or no answer.  It requires examining each variable in turn.

• Scalar variable i and sum:  These variables are accessed on each pass through the loop, so they each have temporal locality.  But, being a scalar, there is no guarantee of spatial locality. (i.e. There might be other data elements nearby that benefit, but we don't know for sure).
• Array variable a:  Using our knowledge from Lab Part 1, we know how the array "a" is actually stored in computer memory.  By tracing through the function, a table can be created that relates the memory address with the element of the array actually stored in that memory address, and the sequence (1, 2, 3, ...) that the array element is accessed when the function is run.   For example, Table 1 below shows the access pattern for the sumarray() function.

Table 1: Access Pattern for sumarray() Assuming ROWS=8

Note 1: Address assumes array starts at memory address 0.
Note 2: Table is sorted by ascending memory addresses, not by program access order.

Thus, from the table, the array exhibits good spatial locality (because elements are read sequentially), but poor temporal locality, because elements are only read once.

Below are two more functions:  sumarrayrows() and summarraycols().

int sumarrayrows(int a[ROWS][COLS]) 
{ 
    int i, j, sum = 0;

    for (i = 0; i < ROWS; i++) 
        for (j = 0; j < COLS; j++)
            sum += a[i][j];

   return sum; 
}

int sumarraycols(int a[ROWS][COLS]) 
{ 
    int i, j, sum = 0;

    for (j = 0; j < COLS; j++)
        for (i = 0; i < ROWS; i++) 
            sum += a[i][j];

    return sum; 
}

Lab Report:
(4) Provide an Access Pattern table for the sumarrayrows() function assuming ROWS=2 and COLS=3.
The table should be sorted by ascending memory addresses, not by program access order.
(5) Does sumarrayrows() have good temporal or spatial locality?
For your answer to receive full credit, you must discuss the locality of both the array itself, and the scalar variables such as i that are present in the function.
(6) Provide an Access Pattern table for the sumarraycols() function assuming ROWS=2 and COLS=3.
The table should be sorted by ascending memory addresses, not by program access order.
(7) Does sumarraycols() have good temporal or spatial locality?
For your answer to receive full credit, you must discuss the locality of both the array itself, and the scalar variables such as i that are present in the function.

Lab Part 3 - Performance Measurement

For this part of the lab, you will compare the performance of two algorithms in an actual application for a variety of data sizes.  The sample program measures the speed of the matrix computation C = C + A * B. The three matrices A, B, and C are all of size n*n, where n is passed to this program on the command line. The reported result is the number of double-precision (64-bit) floating point operations per second (FLOPS), which should be similar regardless of the specific numbers being multiplied and added.  The matrices are initialized to a specific pseudo-random sequence for repeatability.

Two algorithms are used here.  Algorithm 1 uses the conventional array access order.  Algorithm 2 reverses the order in which the loops are accessed for better cache locality.

You should already have the boilerplate code for this part of the lab.

unix>  cd ~/2022_spring_ecpe170/lab06
unix>  cd part3

Compile the application:

unix>  make

Run the application using algorithm 1 for a small 256x256 matrix:

unix>  ./matrix_math 1 256

Assignment: Write a script (either for the Bash shell or in Python) that characterizes the application performance.  Specifically, your script should automatically test both algorithms of the matrix math program for each of the array sizes shown in Table 2.

Extra Credit Option: Extend your script to automatically parse the output of the program, capture the number of FLOPS, and save it into a text file suitable for import into LibreOffice or other graphing program.   
Value: +20 points on lab score

Table 2: Array Sizes in Test Suite

Lab Report:
(8) Inspect the provided source code. Describe how the two-dimensional arrays are stored in memory, since the code only has one-dimensional array accesses like: a[element #].
(9) After running your experiment script, create a table that shows floating point operations per second for both algorithms at the array sizes listed in Table 2. 
(10) After running your experiment script, create a graph that shows floating point operations per second for both algorithms at the array sizes listed in Table 2.
Note: No credit will be given for sloppy graphs that lack X and Y axis labels, a legend, and a title.
(11) Be sure that the script source code is included in your compressed folder to submit.

Tips:

• To execute a script at the command line, it must be marked as "executable".  If the name of your script (text file) is experiment.sh, you can mark it executable at the command line by running: chmod +x experiment.sh
• Example of a for-loop in a Bash script
• Example of a for-loop in a Python script

Lab Part 4 - Memory Mountain

For the final part of this lab, you need to run the "Memory Mountain" program and display the results.  For each experiment, this program creates an array of 8-byte values in memory (floating-point doubles).  This array is then read from memory twice. The first time serves to "warm up" the cache (by reading in data from the array), while during the second time, the read bandwidth is measured. This bandwidth is simply the total number of bytes read from the array in a given second. A variety of experiments are conducted, in which the total array size and the read access pattern (called the stride) is varied.  A stride of 1 indicates that every array element is read, a stride of 2 indicates that every other array element is read, etc...

To help us interpret the (eventual) results, obtain information on your CPU:

unix>  cat /proc/cpuinfo

Lab Report:  Understanding your CPU
(12) Place the output of /proc/cpuinfo in your report. (I only need to see one processor core, not all the cores as reported)
(13) Based on the processor type reported, obtain the following specifications for your CPU from cpu-world.com or cpudb.stanford.edu
You might have to settle for a close processor from the same family. Make sure the frequency and L3 cache size match the results from /proc/cpuinfo!
(a) L1 instruction cache size
(b) L1 data cache size
(c) L2  cache size
(d) L3 cache size 
(e) What URL did you obtain the above specifications from?

You should already have the boilerplate code for this exercise, including a "Memory Mountain" program and a Python script to plot the output.

unix>  cd ~/2022_spring_ecpe170/lab06/part4

Compile the memory mountain program:

unix>  make

Run the memory mountain program, and save the output to a file called results.txt. Make sure your computer is as *IDLE* as possible while performing this test.

For perfect results, we would run this program on a bare computer without an operating system or other programs. Your current test environment, with a virtual machine (running an OS and other programs) inside a real OS (running the virtual machine manager and other programs) is definitely NOT IDEAL!  Try to make your computer system as quiet / idle as possible.

unix>  sudo nice -n -20 ./mountain > results.txt

• The program is called "mountain"
• The nice utility allows us to set the priority of the program as high as possible.  This requires root access (via sudo)

Add your results.txt to the list of files you push to bitbucket.org. 

Run the Python / Matplotlib graphing script.   Note that this requires you to install the python3-matplotlib package as listed on the original Virtual Machine setup tutorial.

unix>  ./plot.py results.txt &

Maximize the window to full screen for a better view. Click-and-drag the graph to examine it from different angles.

Example of a GOOD result:

Example of a BAD / INVALID result:
(note the massive difference in scale.  The good graph has values from 1000-9000, and the bad graph has values from 0 to 2x10^7!)

Good graphs are common on non-virtualized systems and systems running VMWare products.  VirtualBox, however, always seems to produce invalid results.  If you are running VirtualBox and get a bad result, please ask to "borrow" my results.txt file and my  /proc/cpuinfo output in order to answer the following questions. Indicate that you did this in your lab report.

Lab Report:  Understanding the Experiment
(14) Why is it important to run the test program on an idle computer system?  
Explain what would happen if the computer was running several other active programs in the background at the same time, and how that would impact the test results.
(15) What is the size (in bytes) of a data element read from the array in the test?
(16) What is the range (min, max) of strides used in the test?
(17) What is the range (min, max) of array sizes used in the test?

Lab Report:  Interpreting the Results
(18) Take a screen capture of the displayed "memory mountain" (maximize the window so it's sufficiently large to read), and place the resulting image in your report
(19) What region (array size, stride) gets the most consistently high performance? (Ignoring spikes in the graph that are noisy results...) What is the read bandwidth reported?  Annotate your figure by drawing an arrow on it.
(20) What region (array size, stride) gets the most consistently low performance? (Ignoring spikes in the graph that are noisy results...) What is the read bandwidth reported? Annotate your figure by drawing an arrow on it.
(21) Using LibreOffice calc, create two new bar graphs: One for stride=1, and the other for stride=64. Place them side-by-size in the report.
No credit will be given for sloppy graphs that lack X and Y axis labels and a title.
You can obtain the raw data from results.txt. Open it in gedit and turn off Text Wrapping in the preferences. (Otherwise, the columns will be a mess)
(22) When you look at the graph for stride=1, you (should) see relatively high performance compared to stride=64. This is true even for large array sizes that are much larger than the L3 cache size reported in /proc/cpuinfo.  
How is this possible, when the array cannot possibly all fit into the cache?  Your explanation should include a brief overview of hardware prefetching as it applies to caches.
(23) What is temporal locality? What is spatial locality?
(24) Adjusting the total array size impacts temporal locality - why?  Will an increased array size increase or decrease temporal locality?
(25) Adjusting the read stride impacts spatial locality - why?  Will an increased read stride increase or decrease spatial locality?
(26) As a software designer, describe at least 2 broad "guidelines" to ensure your programs run in the high-performing region of the graph instead of the low-performing region.

(Optional) Lab Report:
(1) How would you suggest improving this lab in future semesters?

"Memory Mountain" program from "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective", Second Edition, by Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron