Fitting discontinuous data from disparate sources

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Sorting and searching are probably the most widely performed operations in computing; they are extensively covered in volume 3 of The Art of Computer Programming. Algorithm performance is influence by the characteristics of the processor on which it runs, and the size of the processor cache(s) has a significant impact on performance.

A study by Khuong and Morin investigated the performance of various search algorithms on 46 different processors. Khuong kindly sent me a copy of the raw data; the study webpage includes lots of plots.

The performance comparison involved 46 processors (mostly Intel x86 compatible cpus, plus a few ARM cpus) times 3 array datatypes times 81 array sizes times 28 search algorithms. First a 32/64/128-bit array of unsigned integers containing N elements was initialized with known values. The benchmark iterated 2-million times around randomly selecting one of the known values, and then searching for it using the algorithm under test. The time taken to iterate 2-million times was recorded. This was repeated for the 81 values of N, up to 63,095,734, on each of the 46 processors.

The plot below shows the results of running each algorithm benchmarked (colored lines) on an Intel Atom D2700 @ 2.13GHz, for 32-bit array elements; the kink in the lines occur roughly at the point where the size of the array exceeds the cache size (all code+data):

Benchmark runtime at various array sizes, for each algorithm using a 32-bit datatype.

What is the most effective way of analyzing the measurements to produce consistent results?

One approach is to build two regression models, one for the measurements before the cache ‘kink’ and one for the measurements after this kink. By adding in a dummy variable at the kink-point, it is possible to merge these two models into one model. The problem with this approach is that the kink-point has to be chosen in advance. The plot shows that the performance kink occurs before the array size exceeds the cache size; other variables are using up some of the cache storage.

This approach requires fitting 46*3=138 models (I think the algorithm used can be integrated into the model).

If data from lots of processors is to be fitted, or the three datatypes handled, an automatic way of picking where the first regression model should end, and where the second regression model should start is needed.

Regression discontinuity design looks like it might be applicable; treating the point where the array size exceeds the cache size as the discontinuity. Traditionally discontinuity designs assume a sharp discontinuity, which is not the case for these benchmarks (R’s rdd package worked for one algorithm, one datatype running on one processor); the more recent continuity-based approach supports a transition interval before/after the discontinuity. The R package rdrobust supports a continued-based approach, but seems to expect the discontinuity to be a change of intercept, rather than a change of slope (or rather, I could not figure out how to get it to model a just change of slope; suggestions welcome).

Another approach is to use segmented regression, i.e., one of more distinct lines. The package segmented supports fitting this kind of model, and does estimate what they call the breakpoint (the user has to provide a first estimate).

I managed to fit a segmented model that included all the algorithms for 32-bit data, running on one processor (code+data). Looking at the fitted model I am not hopeful that adding data from more than one processor would produce something that contained useful information. I suspect that there are enough irregular behaviors in the benchmark runs to throw off fitting quality.

I’m always asking for more data, and now I have more data than I know how to analyze in a way that does not require me to build 100+ models :-(

Suggestions welcome.

Benchmarking desktop PCs circa 1990

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Before buying a computer customers want to be confident of choosing the best they can get for the money, and performance has often been a major consideration. Computer benchmark performance results were once widely discussed.

Knight’s analysis of early mainframe performance was widely cited for many years.

Performance on the Byte benchmarks was widely cited before Intel started spending billions on advertising, clock frequency has not always had the brand recognition it has today.

The Byte benchmark was originally designed for Intel x86 processors running Microsoft DOS; The benchmark was introduced in the June 1985 issue, and was written in the still relatively new C language (earlier microprocessor benchmarks were often written in BASIC, because early micros often came with a free BASIC interpreter), it was updated in the 1990s to be Windows based, and implemented for Unix.

Benchmarking computers using essentially the same cpu architecture and operating system removes many complications that have to be addressed when these differ. Before Wintel wiped them out, computers from different manufacturers (and often the same manufacturer) contained completely different cpu architectures, ran different operating systems, and compilers were usually created in-house by the manufacturer (or some university who got a large discount on their computer purchase).

The Fall 1990 issue of Byte contains tables of benchmark results from 1988-90. What can we learn from these results?

The most important takeaway from the tables is that those performing the benchmarks appreciated the importance of measuring hardware performance using the applications that customers are likely to be running on their computer, e.g., word processors, spreadsheets, databases, scientific calculations (computers were still sufficiently niche back then that scientific users were a non-trivial percentage of the market), and compiling (hackers were a large percentage of Byte’s readership).

The C benchmarks attempted to measure CPU, FPU (built-in hardware support for floating-point arrived with the 486 in April 1989, prior to that it was an add-on chip that required spending more money), Disk and Video (at the time support for color was becoming mainstream, but bundled hardware graphics support still tended to be minimal).

Running the application benchmarks takes a lot of time, plus the necessary software (which takes time to install from floppies, the distribution technology of the day). Running the C benchmarks is much quicker and simpler.

Ideally the C benchmarks are a reliable stand-in for the application benchmarks (meaning that only the C benchmarks need be run).

Let’s fit some regression models to the measurements of the 61 systems benchmarked, all supporting hardware floating-point (code+data). Surprisingly there is no mention of such an exercise being done by the Byte staff, even though one of the scientific benchmarks included regression fitting.

The following fitted equations explain around 90% of the variance of the data, i.e., they are good fits.

Wordprocessing=0.66+0.56*CPU+0.24*Disk

For wordprocessing, the CPU benchmark explains around twice as much as the Disk benchmark.

Spreedsheet=-0.46+0.8*CPU+1*Disk-0.16*CPU*Disk

For spreadsheets, CPU and Disk contribute about the same.

Database=0.6+0.01*CPU*FPU+0.53*Disk

Database is nearly all Disk.

ScientificEngineering=0.27+FPU*(0.59-0.17*Disk-0.03*CPU)+0.45*CPU*Disk

Scientific/Engineering is FPU, plus interactions with other components.

Compiling=-0.33+CPU*(1.1-0.09*Disk-0.16*Video)+0.33*Disk*Video

Compiling is CPU, plus interactions with other components.

Byte’s benchmark reports were great eye candy, and readers probably took away a rough feel for the performance of various systems. Perhaps somebody at the time also fitted regression models to the data. The magazine contained plenty of adverts for software to do this.

Modeling visual studio C++ compile times

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Last week I spotted an interesting article on the compile-time performance of C++ compilers running under Microsoft Windows. The author had obviously put a lot of work into gathering the data, and had taken care to have multiple runs to reduce the impact of random effects (128 runs to be exact); but, as if often the case, the analysis of the data was lackluster. I posted a comment asking for the data, and a link was posted the next day :-)

The compilers benchmarked were: Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2017 and clang 7.0.1; the compilers were configured to target: C++20, C++17, C++14, C++11, C++03, or C++98. The source code used was 100 system headers.

If we are interested in understanding the contribution of each component to overall compile-time, the obvious fist regression model to build is:

compile_time = header_x+compiler_y+language_z

where: header_x are the different headers, compiler_y the different compilers and language_z the different target languages. There might be some interaction between variables, so something more complicated was tried first; the final fitted model was (code+data):

compile_time = k+header_x+compiler_y+language_z+compiler_y*language_z

where k is a constant (the Intercept in R’s summary output). The following is a list of normalised numbers to plug into the equation (clang is the default compiler and C++03 the default language, and so do not appear in the list, the : symbol represents the multiplication; only a few of the 100 headers are listed, details are available):

                             Estimate Std. Error  t value Pr(>|t|)    
               (Intercept)                  headerany 
               1.000000000                0.051100398 
               headerarray             headerassert.h 
               0.522336397               -0.654056185 
...
            headerwctype.h            headerwindows.h 
              -0.648095154                1.304270250 
              compilerVS15               compilerVS17 
              -0.185795534               -0.114590143 
             languagec++11              languagec++14 
               0.032930014                0.156363433 
             languagec++17              languagec++20 
               0.192301727                0.184274629 
             languagec++98 compilerVS15:languagec++11 
               0.001149643               -0.058735591 
compilerVS17:languagec++11 compilerVS15:languagec++14 
              -0.038582437               -0.183708714 
compilerVS17:languagec++14 compilerVS15:languagec++17 
              -0.164031495                         NA 
compilerVS17:languagec++17 compilerVS15:languagec++20 
              -0.181591418                         NA 
compilerVS17:languagec++20 compilerVS15:languagec++98 
              -0.193587045                0.062414667 
compilerVS17:languagec++98 
               0.014558295 

As an example, the (normalised) time to compile wchar.h using VS15 with languagec++11 is:
1-0.514807638-0.183862162+0.033951731-0.059720131

Each component adds/substracts to/from the normalised mean.

Building this model didn’t take long. While waiting for the kettle to boil, I suddenly realised that an additive model was probably inappropriate for this problem; oops. Surely the contribution of each component was multiplicative, i.e., components have a percentage impact to performance.

A quick change to the form of the fitted model:

log(compile_time) = k+header_x+compiler_y+language_z+compiler_y*language_z

Taking the exponential of both side, the fitted equation becomes:

compile_time = e^{k}e^{header_x}e^{compiler_y}e^{language_z}e^{compiler_y*language_z}

The numbers, after taking the exponent, are:

               (Intercept)                  headerany 
              9.724619e+08               1.051756e+00 
...
            headerwctype.h            headerwindows.h 
              3.138361e-01               2.288970e+00 
              compilerVS15               compilerVS17 
              7.286951e-01               7.772886e-01 
             languagec++11              languagec++14 
              1.011743e+00               1.049049e+00 
             languagec++17              languagec++20 
              1.067557e+00               1.056677e+00 
             languagec++98 compilerVS15:languagec++11 
              1.003249e+00               9.735327e-01 
compilerVS17:languagec++11 compilerVS15:languagec++14 
              9.880285e-01               9.351416e-01 
compilerVS17:languagec++14 compilerVS15:languagec++17 
              9.501834e-01                         NA 
compilerVS17:languagec++17 compilerVS15:languagec++20 
              9.480678e-01                         NA 
compilerVS17:languagec++20 compilerVS15:languagec++98 
              9.402461e-01               1.058305e+00 
compilerVS17:languagec++98 
              1.001267e+00 

Taking the same example as above: wchar.h using VS15 with c++11. The compile-time (in cpu clock cycles) is:
9.724619e+08*3.138361e-01*7.286951e-01*1.011743e+00*9.735327e-01

Now each component causes a percentage change in the (mean) base value.

Both of these model explain over 90% of the variance in the data, but this is hardly surprising given they include so much detail.

In reality compile-time is driven by some combination of additive and multiplicative factors. Building a combined additive and multiplicative model is going to be like wrestling an octopus, and is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

Given a choice between these two models, I think the multiplicative model is probably closest to reality.

Building a regression model is easy and informative

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Running an experiment is very time-consuming. I am always surprised that people put so much effort into gathering the data and then spend so little effort analyzing it.

The Computer Language Benchmarks Game looks like a fun benchmark; it compares the performance of 27 languages using various toy benchmarks (they could not be said to be representative of real programs). And, yes, lots of boxplots and tables of numbers; great eye-candy, but what do they all mean?

The authors, like good experimentalists, make all their data available. So, what analysis should they have done?

A regression model is the obvious choice and the following three lines of R (four lines if you could the blank line) build one, providing lots of interesting performance information:

cl=read.csv("Computer-Language_u64q.csv.bz2", as.is=TRUE)

cl_mod=glm(log(cpu.s.) ~ name+lang, data=cl)
summary(cl_mod)

The following is a cut down version of the output from the call to summary, which summarizes the model built by the call to glm.

                    Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)         1.299246   0.176825   7.348 2.28e-13 ***
namechameneosredux  0.499162   0.149960   3.329 0.000878 ***
namefannkuchredux   1.407449   0.111391  12.635  < 2e-16 ***
namefasta           0.002456   0.106468   0.023 0.981595    
namemeteor         -2.083929   0.150525 -13.844  < 2e-16 ***

langclojure         1.209892   0.208456   5.804 6.79e-09 ***
langcsharpcore      0.524843   0.185627   2.827 0.004708 ** 
langdart            1.039288   0.248837   4.177 3.00e-05 ***
langgcc            -0.297268   0.187818  -1.583 0.113531 
langocaml          -0.892398   0.232203  -3.843 0.000123 *** 
  
    Null deviance: 29610  on 6283  degrees of freedom
Residual deviance: 22120  on 6238  degrees of freedom

What do all these numbers mean?

We start with glm's first argument, which is a specification of the regression model we are trying to fit: log(cpu.s.) ~ name+lang

cpu.s. is cpu time, name is the name of the program and lang is the language. I found these by looking at the column names in the data file. There are other columns in the data, but I am running in quick & simple mode. As a first stab, I though cpu time would depend on the program and language. Why take the log of the cpu time? Well, the model fitted using cpu time was very poor; the values range over several orders of magnitude and logarithms are a way of compressing this range (and the fitted model was much better).

The model fitted is:

cpu.s. = e^{Intercept+name+prog}, or cpu.s. = e^{Intercept}*e^{name}*e^{prog}

Plugging in some numbers, to predict the cpu time used by say the program chameneosredux written in the language clojure, we get: cpu.s. = e^{1.3}*e^{0.5}*e^{1.2}=20.1 (values taken from the first column of numbers above).

This model assumes there is no interaction between program and language. In practice some languages might perform better/worse on some programs. Changing the first argument of glm to: log(cpu.s.) ~ name*lang, adds an interaction term, which does produce a better fitting model (but it's too complicated for a short blog post; another option is to build a mixed-model by using lmer from the lme4 package).

We can compare the relative cpu time used by different languages. The multiplication factor for clojure is e^{1.2}=3.3, while for ocaml it is e^{-0.9}=0.4. So clojure consumes 8.2 times as much cpu time as ocaml.

How accurate are these values, from the fitted regression model?

The second column of numbers in the summary output lists the estimated standard deviation of the values in the first column. So the clojure value is actually e^{1.2 pm (0.2*1.96)}, i.e., between 2.2 and 4.9 (the multiplication by 1.96 is used to give a 95% confidence interval); the ocaml values are e^{-0.9 pm (0.2*1.96)}, between 0.3 and 0.6.

The fourth column of numbers is the p-value for the fitted parameter. A value of lower than 0.05 is a common criteria, so there are question marks over the fit for the program fasta and language gcc. In fact many of the compiled languages have high p-values, perhaps they ran so fast that a large percentage of start-up/close-down time got included in their numbers. Something for the people running the benchmark to investigate.

Isn't it easy to get interesting numbers by building a regression model? It took me 10 minutes, ok I spend a lot of time fitting models. After spending many hours/days gathering data, spending a little more time learning to build simple regression models is well worth the effort.