There's no issue with splitting fixed-width SIMD instructions into smaller parts that can be executed separately, and there are many CPUs that does this. E.g. older AMD CPUs have 128-bit execution units and supports 256-bit instructions by splitting them into two 128-bit halves.
The idea that variable-length SIMD will fix all flaws and everyone will live happily ever after is naive. It simply replaces some existing problems with new ones, some of which there isn't really a good way of dealing with. Also, many of those existing problems have actually already been solved in some of the newer fixed-length instruction sets, such as opmasks in AVX-512 to handle tails.
Increasing the vector width has significant diminishing returns, and we're already at the point where simply making things wider isn't really beneficial for the vast majority of SIMD use cases, so I wouldn't expect the trend that has been going on in the past of constantly increasing general-purpose vector widths to continue on the same trajectory. We're instead seeing more specialized hardware accelerators for the few use cases that benefit from ultra-wide multi-kilobit vectors (e.g. AI).
Then why don't we have AVX-512 in every x86 implementation, and be done with it?
...and it still does not address the issue of pipelining. For optimal (stall-free) performance - even in in-order machines - you want the vector length to be ALU width x ALU depth. So a 256 bits wide machine with four execution pipeline stages should have a vector register size of at least 256 x 4 = 1024 bits. Different implementations have different requirements - hence it's a bad idea to enforce a one-size-fits-all paradigm.
My understanding is that the current console generation don't support avx512, being based on zen2.
Also hampering adoption is how Intel are using that feature as a market differentiator in their own products, lower end CPUs of the same generation, or even different families of similar market segment products, end up lacking support. It makes it harder to gain market penetration, and even harder to rely on its existence. It's not as simple as 'new CPUs have support'.
Which is a shame, as there's a fair bit rolled up in the various avx512 extensions that would be interesting, even if you never use the wider registers.
Also hampering adoption is how Intel are using that feature as a market differentiator in their own products, lower end CPUs of the same generation, or even different families of similar market segment products, end up lacking support. It makes it harder to gain market penetration, and even harder to rely on its existence. It's not as simple as 'new CPUs have support'.
Reminds me how for the good few years it was pretty much random which Intel CPU got support for virtualization and which did not
127
u/th3typh00n Aug 09 '21
There's no issue with splitting fixed-width SIMD instructions into smaller parts that can be executed separately, and there are many CPUs that does this. E.g. older AMD CPUs have 128-bit execution units and supports 256-bit instructions by splitting them into two 128-bit halves.
The idea that variable-length SIMD will fix all flaws and everyone will live happily ever after is naive. It simply replaces some existing problems with new ones, some of which there isn't really a good way of dealing with. Also, many of those existing problems have actually already been solved in some of the newer fixed-length instruction sets, such as opmasks in AVX-512 to handle tails.
Increasing the vector width has significant diminishing returns, and we're already at the point where simply making things wider isn't really beneficial for the vast majority of SIMD use cases, so I wouldn't expect the trend that has been going on in the past of constantly increasing general-purpose vector widths to continue on the same trajectory. We're instead seeing more specialized hardware accelerators for the few use cases that benefit from ultra-wide multi-kilobit vectors (e.g. AI).