README
¶
simdblas
A BLAS implementation for gonum, backed by simd.go. No cgo.
Gonum's own BLAS is pure Go with SSE2-only assembly on amd64 and none at all on arm64. This replaces the routines where a vector unit helps, reaching AVX-512, NEON, SVE2, RVV, VSX, VX and LASX — with no cgo, because the kernels are compiled ahead of time and committed as assembly.
Install
go get github.com/sebishogun/simdblas
One call at startup, and everything above BLAS — gonum's mat, stat,
optimize — runs on it:
import (
"gonum.org/v1/gonum/blas/blas32"
"gonum.org/v1/gonum/blas/blas64"
"github.com/sebishogun/simdblas"
)
func init() {
blas64.Use(simdblas.Implementation{})
blas32.Use(simdblas.Implementation{})
}
Go 1.25 or later.
Numbers
Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 (Zen 5, AVX-512, 32 threads), float64, both implementations
in the same process on the same inputs. -count 6, twice, reporting the worse
of the two runs — see measuring before believing any of it.
| routine | size | gonum | simdblas | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Dnrm2 |
1,000 | 805 ns | 28 ns | 29.3× |
| 100,000 | 80.2 µs | 3.6 µs | 22.3× | |
| 1,000,000 | 806 µs | 53 µs | 15.1× | |
Dgemm |
64² | 40.7 µs | 4.4 µs | 9.3× |
| 256² | 415 µs | 73 µs | 5.7× | |
| 512² | 2.10 ms | 0.44 ms | 4.8× | |
Dgemv |
2048² | 989 µs | 103 µs | 9.6× |
| 1024² | 97 µs | 42 µs | 2.3× | |
Ddot |
1,000 | 107 ns | 33 ns | 3.2× |
| 1,000,000 | 127 µs | 107 µs | 1.2× | |
Daxpy |
1,000 | 125 ns | 37 ns | 3.4× |
| 1,000,000 | 145 µs | 111 µs | 1.3× |
Nothing measured is slower than gonum; the narrowest case is 1.18×.
Dnrm2 is the outlier because gonum computes it with a scaling loop that cannot
vectorize. Dgemm and Dgemv use simd.go's parallel kernels, which is why they
beat a gonum implementation that is itself parallel.
What is accelerated
The routines where whole-slice vector work pays, in both precisions:
- Level 1 —
dot,nrm2,asum,axpy,scal - Level 2 —
gemv - Level 3 —
gemm
Everything else is inherited from gonum.Implementation and behaves exactly as
it did. That is the whole design: simdblas.Implementation embeds gonum's,
so every one of the 60-odd BLAS routines exists and is correct from the first
line, and each accelerated one is an override of a working method rather than a
new one that has to be got right.
Acceleration additionally requires unit strides, and for the matrix routines no transpose, alpha of 1, beta of 0 and natural leading dimensions. Anything else — including invalid arguments — falls through to gonum, so the answer is always a correct BLAS answer and never a wrong fast one, and the panics your code relies on come from gonum and read exactly as they always have.
That fast-path condition is narrow on purpose for a first release. It is the
shape mat.Mul produces for dense matrices that are not views, which is the
common call. Widening it is worth doing against measurements rather than in
advance.
Results differ from gonum's, and that is the point
BLAS does not specify bit-exact results and no two implementations agree. Reductions here use a fixed sixteen-accumulator tree and gonum's use a four-way unrolled loop, so a dot product of 4096 elements typically differs in the last unit in the last place.
The difference worth knowing runs the other way:
gonum Ddot 0x...de75 with its amd64 assembly
gonum Ddot 0x...de61 without it
simdblas 0x...de71 both
Gonum's answer depends on what it was compiled for. It has no arm64 assembly, so the same program gives different results on x86 and on arm64. This implementation gives the same bits on every architecture and every instruction set, because the accumulation order is fixed rather than following the vector width. If you need a result that reproduces across machines, that is the reason to use this.
One place the specification bites
nrm2 is defined by BLAS to avoid spurious overflow and underflow. The
obvious implementation — sqrt of the sum of squares — does not: a vector of
1e200s returns +Inf, and a vector of 1e-200s returns zero, where gonum returns
the correct finite value for both.
So the fast path runs and its own failure is detected. The sum of squares
overflowing gives +Inf; sinking into the subnormals gives a value below the
smallest normal float, which is the case that is easy to miss, because a vector
of 1e-160s squares to 1e-320 — not zero, so a test for zero passes it through
with six digits of mantissa already gone. Both go to gonum's scaled algorithm.
The common path pays one comparison. Checking the magnitudes up front instead was measured at 483 µs against 54 µs for a million elements, which spends most of the win to buy an answer that is almost always already correct.
Testing
Every override is checked against the gonum routine it replaces, at two different bars. Where the fast path does not apply this delegates, so the answer must be gonum's exactly, to the bit — anything else means a guard is wrong and a fast path ran when it should not have. Where it does apply, the bar is a relative tolerance.
There is also a test asserting the accelerated path is reached: a suite that
passed by delegating everything would look identical to one that worked, so
TestFastPathActuallyRuns requires Ddot and Dnrm2 not to return gonum's
exact bits. Dgemm cannot be checked that way — the blocked kernel and gonum's
both accumulate sequentially over k and agree exactly at every size tried — so
its guards are tested directly instead.
go test ./...
go test -race ./...
Measuring
The numbers above are from one machine and they are the only numbers here.
Benchmark noise is one-sided, so the minimum of several runs is what gets used
rather than the mean, and the machine has to be quiet. An earlier draft of that
table was measured while a docker cross-compilation lane was using all 32
threads and reported Dgemm at 512 as 2.27× instead of 4.81×.
go test -run '^$' -bench . -count 6 .
Status
Early. The interface is satisfied in full and the accelerated subset is tested against gonum, but this has run on amd64 only. Reports from other architectures are welcome — simd.go itself is verified on amd64 and arm64 NEON, and under emulation everywhere else.
License
MIT — see LICENSE. Depends on simd.go (MIT) and gonum (BSD-3-Clause).
Documentation
¶
Overview ¶
Package simdblas is a BLAS implementation for gonum, backed by github.com/sebishogun/simd.
Gonum's own BLAS is pure Go with SSE2-only assembly on amd64 and none at all on arm64. This replaces the routines where a vector unit helps, reaching AVX-512, NEON, SVE2, RVV, VSX, VX and LASX — with no cgo, because the kernels are compiled ahead of time and committed as assembly.
Install it once, at startup:
import (
"gonum.org/v1/gonum/blas/blas64"
"github.com/sebishogun/simdblas"
)
func init() {
blas64.Use(simdblas.Implementation{})
blas32.Use(simdblas.Implementation{})
}
Everything above BLAS — gonum's mat, stat and optimize — then runs on it without further change.
What is accelerated ¶
The routines where whole-slice vector work pays: the Level 1 set, Dgemv and Dgemm, in both precisions. Everything else is inherited from gonum.Implementation and behaves exactly as it did.
Acceleration also requires unit strides and, for the matrix routines, no transpose, alpha of 1, beta of 0 and natural leading dimensions. Anything else falls through to gonum, so the answer is always a correct BLAS answer and never a wrong fast one. See Implementation for why that is the whole design.
Results differ from gonum's, and that is the point ¶
BLAS does not specify bit-exact results, and no two implementations agree. Reductions here use a fixed sixteen-accumulator tree, gonum's use a four-way unrolled loop, so a dot product of 4096 elements typically differs in the last unit in the last place.
The difference worth knowing runs the other way. Gonum's answer depends on what it was compiled for: its amd64 assembly and its pure-Go fallback do not agree with each other, so the same program gives different results on x86 and on arm64. This implementation gives the same bits on every architecture and every instruction set, because the accumulation order is fixed rather than following the vector width. If you need a result that reproduces across machines, that is the reason to use this.
Index ¶
- type Implementation
- func (impl Implementation) Dasum(n int, x []float64, incX int) float64
- func (impl Implementation) Daxpy(n int, alpha float64, x []float64, incX int, y []float64, incY int)
- func (impl Implementation) Ddot(n int, x []float64, incX int, y []float64, incY int) float64
- func (impl Implementation) Dgemm(tA, tB blas.Transpose, m, n, k int, alpha float64, a []float64, lda int, ...)
- func (impl Implementation) Dgemv(tA blas.Transpose, m, n int, alpha float64, a []float64, lda int, x []float64, ...)
- func (impl Implementation) Dnrm2(n int, x []float64, incX int) float64
- func (impl Implementation) Dscal(n int, alpha float64, x []float64, incX int)
- func (impl Implementation) Sasum(n int, x []float32, incX int) float32
- func (impl Implementation) Saxpy(n int, alpha float32, x []float32, incX int, y []float32, incY int)
- func (impl Implementation) Sdot(n int, x []float32, incX int, y []float32, incY int) float32
- func (impl Implementation) Sgemm(tA, tB blas.Transpose, m, n, k int, alpha float32, a []float32, lda int, ...)
- func (impl Implementation) Sgemv(tA blas.Transpose, m, n int, alpha float32, a []float32, lda int, x []float32, ...)
- func (impl Implementation) Snrm2(n int, x []float32, incX int) float32
- func (impl Implementation) Sscal(n int, alpha float32, x []float32, incX int)
Constants ¶
This section is empty.
Variables ¶
This section is empty.
Functions ¶
This section is empty.
Types ¶
type Implementation ¶
type Implementation struct{ gonum.Implementation }
Implementation is a drop-in for gonum's BLAS.
It embeds gonum.Implementation rather than reimplementing the interface, so every routine exists and is correct from the first line, and each accelerated one is an override of a working method rather than a new one that has to be got right. The 60-odd routines nobody has measured a win for are gonum's, unchanged.
Each override checks whether its fast path applies and delegates to the embedded method when it does not — including for invalid arguments, so the panics a caller relies on come from gonum and read exactly as they always have.
func (Implementation) Dasum ¶
func (impl Implementation) Dasum(n int, x []float64, incX int) float64
func (Implementation) Daxpy ¶
func (impl Implementation) Daxpy(n int, alpha float64, x []float64, incX int, y []float64, incY int)
Daxpy is y += alpha*x, the operation BLAS calls axpy and this library calls AddScaled. One pass over both slices rather than a scale followed by an add.
func (Implementation) Dnrm2 ¶
func (impl Implementation) Dnrm2(n int, x []float64, incX int) float64
Dnrm2 is the one routine here that cannot simply be handed to the vector unit, and the reason is in the BLAS specification rather than in the kernel.
nrm2 is *defined* to avoid spurious overflow and underflow: gonum computes it by scaling to the largest element first, so a vector of 1e200s returns 8.48e200 rather than +Inf. The sum of squares overflows there, and flushes to zero for a vector of 1e-200s. Swapping the backend must not turn a finite result into an infinity.
Checking the magnitudes first works and costs a whole extra pass — measured at 483us against 54us for a million elements, which spends most of the win to buy an answer that is almost always already correct. So instead the fast path runs and its own failure is detected: the sum of squares overflowing produces +Inf, and underflowing produces a zero that a non-empty vector can only otherwise reach by being all zeros. Both are exactly the cases gonum's scaled algorithm exists for, and both then go to it.
The common path pays one comparison.
func (Implementation) Dscal ¶
func (impl Implementation) Dscal(n int, alpha float64, x []float64, incX int)
func (Implementation) Sasum ¶
func (impl Implementation) Sasum(n int, x []float32, incX int) float32
Source Files