Draft JEP: Vector API

[Viswanathan, Sandhya]

Hi Ningsheng,

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

The Vector API can be used without specifying a concrete shape but instead querying for "preferredVectorSpecies" as noted in the JEP description.  Vector API is aiming to support generic shape coding as much as possible and explicit shape coding where needed by algorithms. Current implementation under OpenJDK project Panama (vectorIntrinsics branch) only implements 64, 128, 256, and 512 bit vectors as 512 bit is the largest vector supported on Intel platforms.

The Java API implementation can be easily extended to support 1024 bit and larger vectors in future by updating the scripts to generate that variant for all of the different types. The tests also have a similar mechanism - so it is straightforward and easy to generate tests for variants of different sizes. Most of the effort needed to support larger vector sizes lies in the architecture specific backend implementation. 

This is our attempt to provide vector programming to Java users with efficient tight back-end code generation.

Quoting John Rose from one of the panama-dev posts:
"This is a good time to talk about where the Vector API
might go in the future, and how we are trying to get there.
The short answer is, a long way in small steps.
Getting any kind of tight vector code from Java is a major
accomplishment all by itself, whether the code is shape
agnostic or not.  Removing shape dependencies has always
been on the roadmap, but we have to start somewhere	
more concrete.  As you point out, shape-aware code will
probably always be a use case.  I don't think we will get
stuck there, and I look forward, after a few more rounds
with shape-aware code, to working on the problems of
shape-shifting (shape polymorphic) loops."

You might also be interested in ARM SVE related post by Paul Sandoz on panama-dev mailing list archives.
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/panama-dev/2018-March/001199.html


Best Regards,
Sandhya

-----Original Message-----
From: Ningsheng Jian [mailto:ningsheng.jian at linaro.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2018 1:02 AM
To: Viswanathan, Sandhya <sandhya.viswanathan at intel.com>
Cc: jdk-dev at openjdk.java.net; John Rose <john.r.rose at oracle.com>; Vladimir Ivanov <vladimir.x.ivanov at oracle.com>; Aundhe, Shirish <shirish.aundhe at intel.com>; Lupusoru, Razvan A <razvan.a.lupusoru at intel.com>
Subject: Re: Draft JEP: Vector API

Hi Sandhya,

Thanks for taking into account ARM SVE!

From the description, you've mentioned that we just need to get
preferred species by API instead of the hardcoded concrete vector
shape. That's really good. But I just checked current VectorAPI code.
There are only 64, 128, 256 and 512 bit vector shapes. Regarding to
SVE's vector length agnostic feature, do you have a plan to extend
current vector shapes, e.g. introducing some kind of Agnostic shape?

Thanks,
Ningsheng

On 10 April 2018 at 01:49, Viswanathan, Sandhya
<sandhya.viswanathan at intel.com> wrote:
>
>
> This draft JEP contains a proposal to provide an incubating module to express vector computations in Java that reliably compiles at runtime to optimal vector hardware instructions on supported CPU architectures and thus achieve superior performance than equivalent scalar computations.
>
>
> For more details, please see:
> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8201271
>
> Best Regards,
> Sandhya
>
>



-- 
Ningsheng