matmul 1.0.2
FP matrix multiplication
- extensions
- raw README.md
- raw benchmark.4th
- raw matmul.4th
- raw package.4th
- raw runbenchs
- raw test.4th
This package provides floating-point matrix multiplication. It runs on Forth-94 and Forth-2012 systems with the floating-point wordset.
include matmul.4th
to get the word
matmul ( a b c ncols nrows -- )
MATMUL computes C=AxB, where A, B, and C are matrixes: A has nrows rows and ncols columns, B has ncols rows and nrows columns, and C has nrows rows and columns. Matrixes are stored in row-major order, i.e., the elements of one row are adjacent, whereas the items of a column are separated by all the items in the first row.
Testing
To test whether this works as intended with your Forth system, type
create matmul-verbose include matmul.4th include test.4th
Details (irrelevant for most usage)
MATMUL calls a word FAXPY-NOSTRIDE, and the library contains several implementations of this word, and automatically selects the one expected to give the best performance. If you want to know which implementation is used, you can CREATE MATMUL-VERBOSE before including matmul.4th. You can also determine which implementation is used by defining a constant FAXPY-NOSTRIDE-VARIANT. The values for this constant are as follows:
unrolling
no yes
1 use FAXPY (a primitive in Gforth)
4 2 separate-stack (Forth-2012) implementation
5 3 Forth-94 implementation by Joel Rees and Anton Ertl
15 13 Forth-94 implementation by pahihu
The Forth-94 implementations work on systems with separate FP stacks as well as on systems with a combined FP and data stack with any number of cells per FP item.
Use as Benchmark
For use as benchmark, there is benchmark.4th, which performs one
500x500 matrix multiplication. There is also the script runbenchs; by
default, runbenchs will run the benchmark on gforth-fast, vfxlin (with
various FP packages), and sf if available (and for VFX, if %vfxpath%
works), and it will use perf
(with a fallback to time
) for timing.
You can influence these choices and more by setting environment
variables before calling runbenchs. E.g., if you want to benchmark
iforth only, you can do (on a bourne-compatible shell):
SF=iforth GFORTH=xx VFXLIN=xx ./runbenchs
The environment variables used are:
TIMING command used for measuring, e.g., `time`
RUN file used for running benchmark (RUN=test.4th for testing)
GFORTH how to invoke Gforth (default: gforth-fast)
SF how to invoke SwiftForth (default: sf)
VFXLIN How to invoke VFX (default: vfxlin)
VFXHOME where the VfxLin directory is (default: %vfxpath%)
VFXLIB where the FP packages can be found (default: $VFXHOME/Lib)
VFXX86 where the x86-specific FP packages can be found
The defaults are reasonable, but you may need to define VFXHOME yourself.
You can also use this script to test all the different variants on several systems with
TIMING=command RUN=test.4th ./runbenchs
Performance
This may not be the best-performing matrix multiplication written in Forth and certainly not outside of Forth, but it has the advantage of just working (at least that's the intention). It's also not too badly performing: Gforth performs 0.8 FLOP/cycle on a Core i5-6600K using the faxpy primitive, and ideally Forth compilers will generate as good code for FAXPY-NOSTRIDE as that for the FAXPY primitive.
Here are some results (using unrolled versions):
cycles Core i5-6600K
Forth-2012 Forth-94 Forth-94 primitive
Rees/Ertl pahihu faxpy
*1044M 1170M 1515M vfxlin Ndp387.fth
2222M 2949M 2763M *319M gforth-fast
*4978M 4859M 4936M SwiftForth HW stack, no WAIT
The default variants are marked with "*".
by AntonErtl
Versions
2.0.2, 2.0.1, 2.0.0, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0
Tags
ansforth94, forth-94, forth-2012, floating-point-arithmetic, benchmark
Dependencies
None
Dependents
None