AVX2 what is the most efficient way to pack left based on a mask?

Question

If you have an input array, and an output array, but you only want to write those elements which pass a certain condition, what would be the most efficient way to do this in AVX2?

I've seen in SSE where it was done like this: (From:https://deplinenoise.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/gdc2015_afredriksson_simd.pdf)

__m128i LeftPack_SSSE3(__m128 mask, __m128 val)
{
 // Move 4 sign bits of mask to 4-bit integer value.
 int mask = _mm_movemask_ps(mask);
 // Select shuffle control data
 __m128i shuf_ctrl = _mm_load_si128(&shufmasks[mask]);
 // Permute to move valid values to front of SIMD register
 __m128i packed = _mm_shuffle_epi8(_mm_castps_si128(val), shuf_ctrl);
 return packed;
}

This seems fine for SSE which is 4 wide, and thus only needs a 16 entry LUT, but for AVX which is 8 wide, the LUT becomes quite large(256 entries, each 32 bytes, or 8k).

I'm surprised that AVX doesn't appear to have an instruction for simplifying this process, such as a masked store with packing.

I think with some bit shuffling to count the # of sign bits set to the left you could generate the necessary permutation table, and then call _mm256_permutevar8x32_ps. But this is also quite a few instructions I think..

Does anyone know of any tricks to do this with AVX2? Or what is the most efficient method?

Here is an illustration of the Left Packing Problem from the above document:

Thanks

You could use VGATHERDPS under the assumption that the src is in memory. Before that you have to create the appropriate indices from the mask. — zx485
It's worse than you think. The AVX2 256-bit VPSHUFB instruction can't move data between the 128-bit vector lanes. You'd need vpermd to do that, which would need a second lookup-table. — EOF
@EOF: Thanks for this important addition. That VPSHUFB, (scroll down to 'VEX.256 encoded version') does not operate on a 256-bit vector but instead operates on two separate 128-bit vectors in a YMM is noteworthy. Another major inconsistency in the Intel ISA. — zx485
@zx485: I'll have to disagree with you on the "inconsistency". The separate AVX-lanes are actually fairly consistent, with the few instructions that can cross them being explicitly documented. Also, what other ISA even offers 256-bit vectors at all? Yes, there's a price to pay for compatibility, but AVX2 is a really nice vector instruction set. — EOF
@EOF: I'll have to disagree with your preceding elaborations, too, but from my/another point of view. Due to legacy over legacy, the Intel ISA is highly fragmented. IMHO a thorough cleanup would be beneficial. Intel tried that with IA-64, but in a strange way. Some days ago I read a posting of Agner Fog, in which he explains the inconsistencies of the x86/64 architecture proliferated, titled '...a big step forward - but repeating past mistakes!'. — zx485

Peter Cordes Peter Cordes · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-30T06:34:24

AVX2 + BMI2. See my other answer for AVX512. (Update: saved a pdep in 64bit builds.)

We can use AVX2 vpermps (_mm256_permutevar8x32_ps) (or the integer equivalent, vpermd) to do a lane-crossing variable-shuffle.

We can generate masks on the fly, since BMI2 pext (Parallel Bits Extract) provides us with a bitwise version of the operation we need.

Beware that pdep/pext are very slow on AMD CPUs, like 6 uops / 18 cycle latency and throughput on Ryzen. This implementation will perform horribly on AMD. For AMD, you might be best with 128-bit vectors using a pshufb or vpermilps LUT, or some of the AVX2 variable-shift suggestions discussed in comments. Especially if your mask input is a vector mask (not an already packed bitmask from memory).

AMD before Zen2 only has 128-bit vector execution units anyway, and 256-bit lane-crossing shuffles are slow. So 128-bit vectors are very attractive for this on Zen 1. But Zen 2 has 256-bit load/store and execution units. (And still slow microcoded pext/pdep.)

For integer vectors with 32-bit or wider elements: Either 1) _mm256_movemask_ps(_mm256_castsi256_ps(compare_mask)).
Or 2) use _mm256_movemask_epi8 and then change the first PDEP constant from 0x0101010101010101 to 0x0F0F0F0F0F0F0F0F to scatter blocks of 4 contiguous bits. Change the multiply by 0xFFU into expanded_mask |= expanded_mask<<4; or expanded_mask *= 0x11; (Not tested). Either way, use the shuffle mask with VPERMD instead of VPERMPS.

For 64-bit integer or double elements, everything still Just Works; The compare-mask just happens to always have pairs of 32-bit elements that are the same, so the resulting shuffle puts both halves of each 64-bit element in the right place. (So you still use VPERMPS or VPERMD, because VPERMPD and VPERMQ are only available with immediate control operands.)

For 16-bit elements, you might be able to adapt this with 128-bit vectors.

For 8-bit elements, see Efficient sse shuffle mask generation for left-packing byte elements for a different trick, storing the result in multiple possibly-overlapping chunks.

The algorithm:

Start with a constant of packed 3 bit indices, with each position holding its own index. i.e. [ 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 ] where each element is 3 bits wide. 0b111'110'101'...'010'001'000.

Use pext to extract the indices we want into a contiguous sequence at the bottom of an integer register. e.g. if we want indices 0 and 2, our control-mask for pext should be 0b000'...'111'000'111. pext will grab the 010 and 000 index groups that line up with the 1 bits in the selector. The selected groups are packed into the low bits of the output, so the output will be 0b000'...'010'000. (i.e. [ ... 2 0 ])

See the commented code for how to generate the 0b111000111 input for pext from the input vector mask.

Now we're in the same boat as the compressed-LUT: unpack up to 8 packed indices.

By the time you put all the pieces together, there are three total pext/pdeps. I worked backwards from what I wanted, so it's probably easiest to understand it in that direction, too. (i.e. start with the shuffle line, and work backward from there.)

We can simplify the unpacking if we work with indices one per byte instead of in packed 3-bit groups. Since we have 8 indices, this is only possible with 64bit code.

See this and a 32bit-only version on the Godbolt Compiler Explorer. I used #ifdefs so it compiles optimally with -m64 or -m32. gcc wastes some instructions, but clang makes really nice code.

#include <stdint.h>
#include <immintrin.h>

// Uses 64bit pdep / pext to save a step in unpacking.
__m256 compress256(__m256 src, unsigned int mask /* from movmskps */)
{
  uint64_t expanded_mask = _pdep_u64(mask, 0x0101010101010101);  // unpack each bit to a byte
  expanded_mask *= 0xFF;    // mask |= mask<<1 | mask<<2 | ... | mask<<7;
  // ABC... -> AAAAAAAABBBBBBBBCCCCCCCC...: replicate each bit to fill its byte

  const uint64_t identity_indices = 0x0706050403020100;    // the identity shuffle for vpermps, packed to one index per byte
  uint64_t wanted_indices = _pext_u64(identity_indices, expanded_mask);

  __m128i bytevec = _mm_cvtsi64_si128(wanted_indices);
  __m256i shufmask = _mm256_cvtepu8_epi32(bytevec);

  return _mm256_permutevar8x32_ps(src, shufmask);
}

This compiles to code with no loads from memory, only immediate constants. (See the godbolt link for this and the 32bit version).

    # clang 3.7.1 -std=gnu++14 -O3 -march=haswell
    mov     eax, edi                   # just to zero extend: goes away when inlining
    movabs  rcx, 72340172838076673     # The constants are hoisted after inlining into a loop
    pdep    rax, rax, rcx              # ABC       -> 0000000A0000000B....
    imul    rax, rax, 255              # 0000000A0000000B.. -> AAAAAAAABBBBBBBB..
    movabs  rcx, 506097522914230528
    pext    rax, rcx, rax
    vmovq   xmm1, rax
    vpmovzxbd       ymm1, xmm1         # 3c latency since this is lane-crossing
    vpermps ymm0, ymm1, ymm0
    ret

(Later clang compiles like GCC, with mov/shl/sub instead of imul, see below.)

So, according to Agner Fog's numbers and https://uops.info/, this is 6 uops (not counting the constants, or the zero-extending mov that disappears when inlined). On Intel Haswell, it's 16c latency (1 for vmovq, 3 for each pdep/imul/pext / vpmovzx / vpermps). There's no instruction-level parallelism. In a loop where this isn't part of a loop-carried dependency, though, (like the one I included in the Godbolt link), the bottleneck is hopefully just throughput, keeping multiple iterations of this in flight at once.

This can maybe manage a throughput of one per 4 cycles, bottlenecked on port1 for pdep/pext/imul plus popcnt in the loop. Of course, with loads/stores and other loop overhead (including the compare and movmsk), total uop throughput can easily be an issue, too.

e.g. the filter loop in my godbolt link is 14 uops with clang, with -fno-unroll-loops to make it easier to read. It might sustain one iteration per 4c, keeping up with the front-end, if we're lucky.

clang 6 and earlier created a loop-carried dependency with popcnt's false dependency on its output, so it will bottleneck on 3/5ths of the latency of the compress256 function. clang 7.0 and later use xor-zeroing to break the false dependency (instead of just using popcnt edx,edx or something like GCC does :/).

gcc (and later clang) does the multiply by 0xFF with multiple instructions, using a left shift by 8 and a sub, instead of imul by 255. This takes 3 total uops vs. 1 for the front-end, but the latency is only 2 cycles, down from 3. (Haswell handles mov at register-rename stage with zero latency.) Most significantly for this, imul can only run on port 1, competing with pdep/pext/popcnt, so it's probably good to avoid that bottleneck.

Since all hardware that supports AVX2 also supports BMI2, there's probably no point providing a version for AVX2 without BMI2.

If you need to do this in a very long loop, the LUT is probably worth it if the initial cache-misses are amortized over enough iterations with the lower overhead of just unpacking the LUT entry. You still need to movmskps, so you can popcnt the mask and use it as a LUT index, but you save a pdep/imul/pexp.

You can unpack LUT entries with the same integer sequence I used, but @Froglegs's set1() / vpsrlvd / vpand is probably better when the LUT entry starts in memory and doesn't need to go into integer registers in the first place. (A 32bit broadcast-load doesn't need an ALU uop on Intel CPUs). However, a variable-shift is 3 uops on Haswell (but only 1 on Skylake).

AVX2 what is the most efficient way to pack left based on a mask?

6 Answers

The algorithm:

Performance: 256-bit vectors may be faster on Skylake-X / Cascade Lake