Accounting for warp serialisation

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

Hi,

I am trying to work out where in my kernel what I believe to be excessive warp serialisation is coming from and in particular the number that appears in the profiling output. According to the profile documentation:

warp_serialize : Number of thread warps that serialize on address conflicts
to either shared or constant memory

I have removed use of shared variables from my kernel and am using global for the arguements for the kernel. My ptxinfo output is:

ptxas info : Compiling entry function ‘_Z10saw_trimerv’
ptxas info : Used 30 registers, 320+0 bytes lmem, 28 bytes cmem[1], 4 bytes cmem[14]

No shared memory and a small amount of constant memory (28 bytes into constant program ‘variables’ and 4 bytes into compiler generated constants),

Profiling output is:

method=[ _Z10saw_trimerv ] gputime=[ 43286936.000 ] cputime=[ 43286976.000 ] occupancy=[ 0.500 ] cta_launched=[ 768 ] warp_serialize=[ 762985779 ] divergent_branch=[ 226520297 ] branch=[ 2164832414 ]

So where is the warp_serialize be coming from? The above number is not much different when I revert to using shared memory for some of my data.

I have checked the PTX file and see no reference to shared or constant memory access but I could have missed something. Attached is the PTX file.

Cheers

Mark
sawtrimer.txt (28.4 KB)

2

Unless all threads in warp read the same words of “constant” memory,
you get warp_serialise and your kernel slows down.
Perhaps this is waht you are seeing?

See http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=184724

Bill

3

Do you use atomic operations? IIRC they also get serialized, at least on conflicts.

4

Thanks guys for the responses. Yes, I am using an atomic operation. I will take a look at it.

Do you know how I can find out from the PTX where my constant memory accesses are? I have none explicitly in my code so I assume the compiler has put them in. I think the accesses should be from the same memory location.

Mark

5

Search for “.const”.

I’d also assume that constant memory references put in by the compiler always access the same location per warp.

6

I can’t find any in the PTX file.

I have removed my use of atomic operations and cleaned up my code. I still have ‘12 bytes cmem[1]’.

In “nvcc.doc V2.0” page 28, it says

"Used constant memory is partitioned in constant program ‘variables’ (bank 1), plus

compiler generated constants (bank 14)."

What are ‘constant program variables’?

Mark