linebender / linebender/fearless_simd
vectorize() + #[inline(always)] is error-prone and hard to teach
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- Dominant language
- Rust
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- 457
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Description
After seeing an HPC expert who literally wrote a book on HPC and SIMD struggle with it (and entirely failing to get it to work when combined with criterion benchmarks), I'm convinced that we need to provide a more robust and convenient way to handle this.
Ideally I want to have some sort of annotation that you just put on every function generic over `Simd` and do not think about inlining at all, ever. The compiler just does the right thing automatically.
I see multiversion's `#[multiversion(targets=simd)]` ([PR adding it](https://github.com/calebzulawski/multiversion/pull/52)) and [thermite](https://github.com/raygon-renderer/thermite)'s `#[thermite::dispatch(V)]` as prior art that does this well.
AFAIK (I haven't re-checked yet) `multiversion` has an indirect dispatch through a cached atomic pointer on every function call, but doesn't require functions to be generic over `Simd`. I haven't looked into how `thermite` works yet.
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
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Research direction
Start by reviewing the linked multiversion PR and the thermite dispatch approach, then compare their dispatch and inlining behavior with the current vectorize() and #[inline(always)] workflow. The issue does not name files or tests, and the desired annotation and completion criteria still need to be specified.
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Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- performance
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100