NVIDIA / NVIDIA/cuvs

Improve BitwiseHamming distance computation in NN Descent

Open
#1,127 0 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@jinsolp is already working on this.

Since Jul 16, 2025.

improvement
Dominant language
Cuda
Stars
854
Forks
236
Avg merge
3d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
62

Description

InnerProduct in NN Descent is calculated by reinterpret_cast<const uint8_t*> the fp16 data pointer.
Then, based on the data_dim of the int8/uint8 data it calculates the distance like below;

// data_n1 and data_n2 are uint8_t*
for (int d = 0; d < data_dim; d++) {
          s_distances[i] += __popc(static_cast<uint32_t>(data_n1[d] ^ data_n2[d]) & 0xff);
}

This can be improved by checking for the divisibility of data_dim. If data is divisible by 2, we can do something like this

Then, based on the data_dim of the int8/uint8 data it calculates the distance like below;

// data_n1 and data_n2 are half*. Say data_dim %2 == 0
for (int d = 0; d < data_dim/2; d++) {
          s_distances[i] += __popc(static_cast<uint32_t>(data_n1[d] ^ data_n2[d]) & 0xffff);
}

can do the same for when data_dim%4 == 0

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.