Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report
Date	2013-09-09 12:41 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<2013Sep9.144131@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References	<ade7108a-663a-47e3-91d2-d913082f6c10@googlegroups.com> <LPqdnRhGztBg07fPnZ2dnUVZ_oadnZ2d@supernews.com> <2013Sep7.170614@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <laqdnaQ8I6t7CLbPnZ2dnUVZ_q2XnZ2d@supernews.com>

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Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>> Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>>>Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> wrote:
>>>> 2. Elimination of redundant stores, such as 10 y1 ! 20 y1 !
>>>
>>>And at that point you'll have to decide what to do about volatile.
>> 
>> On the first order I would not let the compiler eliminate any @s and
>> !s.  If the programmer wants to do that he can do it in the source code.
>
>Well, then you have to wonder about visiblity to other threads.  Do
>you really want every store to have a store barrier to ensure that it
>actually becomes visible to other threads?  There's a performance
>penalty to pay.

My view is that what some processor makers are doing wrt shared memory
is totally impractical for general consumption.  It's the
supercomputer mindset: Let's do minimal hardware and leave the
headaches to the programmers.  This approach has failed to work for
most programmers repeatedly (e.g., look at the Cell), and it will fail
when it comes to shared memory, too.  I see two possible outcomes:

1) Hardware will become capable enough to support sequential
consistency or something close enough to it (and the barriers will be
cheap, because they are noops).  That's a common development in
hardware: First a new feature appears and is designed for minimizing
hardware, later it is implemented in a more usable way.  Examples:
trap barrier (trapb) on Alpha; alignment restrictions on SSE and
SSE-based SIMD extensions.

2) Communicating between threads with shared memory will stay a topic
for specialists only.  Mere mortals will use some higher-level
libraries to communicate between threads.  The specialists will use
the mechanisms the hardware provides (like barriers) instead of using
C-inspired abstractions like volatile.

What does that mean for the question you raise?  What should a Forth
system implementor do?

If we bet on outcome 1, we just generate a barrier after
every @ and !, and on good hardware, these barriers will cost little.

If we bet on outcome 2, we don't generate barriers automatically, but
provide ways for specialists to use them explicitly.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2013: http://www.euroforth.org/ef13/

Thread

RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-06 14:12 -0700
  Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-06 16:54 -0500
    Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-06 16:02 -0700
      Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-09-07 03:01 +0200
        Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-07 03:21 -0500
          Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-09-07 19:56 +0000
    Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-07 15:06 +0000
      Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-07 19:01 +0100
        Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-09 12:23 +0000
          Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-10 12:01 +0100
            Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-10 12:45 +0000
              Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-10 16:33 +0100
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-11 15:02 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-11 17:44 +0100
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-13 11:58 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@nohavenotit.com> - 2013-09-14 22:47 -0400
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-15 16:05 +0000
      Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-07 16:08 -0500
        Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report mhx@iae.nl - 2013-09-08 03:21 -0700
          Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-08 06:42 -0500
            Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report mhx@iae.nl - 2013-09-08 04:51 -0700
              Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-08 07:02 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-09-08 10:08 -0700
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-08 12:47 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-09-08 11:10 -0700
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-08 15:16 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-09-08 16:08 -0700
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-09 04:57 -0500
        Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-09 12:41 +0000
          Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-09 08:56 -0500
            Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-09-09 14:20 +0000
              Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-09 09:27 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@nohavenotit.com> - 2013-09-10 04:31 -0400
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-10 05:11 -0500
            Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-09 15:08 +0000
              Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-09 10:45 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-11 15:21 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-11 12:04 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-11 17:46 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-11 14:45 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-13 13:00 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-13 10:46 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2013-09-13 17:44 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-14 15:31 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-09-14 10:33 -0700
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-14 12:39 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-15 15:05 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-09-15 08:32 -0700
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-15 13:20 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2013-09-15 16:54 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-15 17:02 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-15 12:54 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-16 09:21 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-16 08:39 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-16 15:48 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-16 15:03 -0500
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-09-17 10:15 +0000
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@nohavenotit.com> - 2013-09-17 17:24 -0400
                Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2013-09-17 13:10 +0000
            Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@nohavenotit.com> - 2013-09-10 04:30 -0400
              Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-09-10 05:14 -0500
  Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report mhx@iae.nl - 2013-09-07 03:22 -0700
  Re: RAFTS-like optimiser; progress report mhx@iae.nl - 2013-09-07 03:32 -0700

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