Automatic Loop Tiling for Direct Memory Access

In heterogeneous multi-core systems, such as the Cell BE processor, each accelerator core has its own fast local memory without hardware supported coherence and the software is responsible to dynamically transfer data between the fast local and slow global memory. The data can be transferred through either a software controlled cache or a direct buffer. The software controlled cache maintains correctness for arbitrary access patterns, but introduces the extra overhead of cache lookup. Direct buffer is efficient for regular accesses, while requiring precise analysis, detailed modeling of execution, and significant code generation. In this paper we present the design and implementation of {\em DMATiler} which combines compiler analysis and runtime management to optimize local memory performance via automatic loop tiling and buffer optimization techniques. The DMATiler chooses a data transfer friendly loop order and using a empirically validated DMA performance model, it formulates and solves a convex optimization problem to determine globally optimal tile sizes. Further, the DMATiler applies optimization techniques such compressed data transfers and DMA commands to achieve the best DMA performance for a given loop nest. We have implemented the DMATiler in the IBM XL Single Source Compiler (SSC), and have conducted experiments with a set of loop nest benchmarks. The results show that the DMATiler is much more efficient than software controlled cache (average speedup of 9.8x) and single level loop blocking (average speedup of 6.2x) on the Cell BE processor.