The interfaces of these kernels have been standardized as the Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines or BLAS. These BLAS as classified into three categories:
The Level 1 BLAS or BLAS1 operate mostly on vectors (1D arrays), or pairs of vectors. If the vectors have length n, these routines perform O(n) operations, and return either a vector or a scalar. Examples are
The Level 2 BLAS or BLAS2 operate mostly on a matrix (2D array) and a vector (or vectors), returning a matrix or a vector. If the array is n-by-n, O(n^2) operations are performed. Here are some examples.
The Level 3 BLAS or BLAS3 operate on pairs or triples of matrices, returning a matrix. Here are some examples.
Mathematically, these operations are essentially equivalent. For example, the dot product can be thought of as the product of a 1-by-n vector and an n-by-1 vector, and each entry of A*B is the dot product of a row of A and a column of B. So essentially any linear algebra algorithm can be expressed in terms of any of these constructs. So why distinguish among them? The answer is performance: As indicated on the following slide of BLAS performance on the IBM RS 6000/590. The slide plots the performance in megaflops of the BLAS on the RS 6000/590, versus matrix or vector dimension. These BLAS are specially optimized by IBM to take advantage of all features of the RS 6000/590 architecture (we will discuss this in more detail later). The top curve is for matrix-matrix multiply (BLAS3), the second highest curve (for large dimension) is matrix-vector multiply (BLAS2), and the lowest curve is for saxpy (BLAS1) on the RS6000. These plots assume the data is not initially in the cache. As you can see there is potentially a big speed advantage if an algorithm can be expressed in terms of the BLAS3 instead of BLAS2 or BLAS1. The top speed of the BLAS3, about 250 Mflops, is very close to the peak machine speed of 266 Mflops. Later in the course, we will explain how to reorganize algorithms, like Gaussian elimination, so that that use BLAS3 instead of BLAS1.
Here is another way to describe the differences between BLAS1, BLAS2 and BLAS3, which is the clue to understanding their relative performance. Assume we have two levels of memory hierarchy, fast and slow, and that all data initially resides in slow memory. For each of saxpy, sgemv and sgemm, applied to vectors and matrices of dimension n, we will count
m = number of memory references to slow memory needed just to read the input data from slow memory, and write the output data back f = number of floating point operations q = f/m = average number of flops per slow memory reference m justification for m f q saxpy 3*n read each x(i), y(i) once, write y(i) once 2*n 2/3 sgemv n^2+O(n) read each A(i,j) once 2*n^2 2 sgemm 4*n^2 read each A(i,j),B(i,j),C(i,j) once, 2*n^3 n/2 write each C(i,j) once
There is a clear difference in q for each level of BLAS, with BLAS3 the highest. The significance of q is this: for each word read from slow memory (the expensive operation), one can hope to do at most q operations on it (on average) while it resides in fast memory. The higher q is, the more the algorithm appears to operate at the top of the memory hierarchy, where it is most efficient. Another way to describe q is in terms of the miss ratio, the fraction of all memory references (to fast or slow memory) that ``miss'' the fast memory, and need data from the slow memory: Assuming all input data initially resides in the slow memory, that the final result will also reside in the slow memory, and that each floating point operation involves 2 references to either fast or slow memory, we may bound
number of references to slow memory m 1 miss ratio = ------------------------------------- >= ----- = ----- . total number of memory references 2*f 2*qThus the higher is q, the lower we can hope to make the miss ratio by a clever choice of algorithm.
Let us use a very simple problem to illustrate why a large q means we can hope to run faster. Suppose one can do operations at 1 Mflop on data in the fast memory, and fetching data from slow memory takes 10 times longer per word. Suppose our simple algorithm is
s = 0 for i = 1, n s = s + f(x(i)) end forwhere evaluating f(x(i)) requires q-1 operations on x(i), all of which can be done in fast memory once x(i) is available. We can assume s also resides in fast memory. So for this algorithm m=n, and f=q*n. How fast does it run? Assuming x(i) is initially in slow memory, this algorithm takes time t = 10*n microsecs (to read each x(i)) plus q*n microsecs (to do q*n flops), for a megaflop rate of f/t = q/(q+10). As q increases, this megaflop rate approaches the top speed of 1 Mflop.
Let us analyze several different algorithms for sgemm in more detail, using the following overly simplistic model of how memory hierarchies work:
We consider 3 implementations of matrix multiply and compute q=f/m for each.
for i=1 to n {Read row i of A into fast memory} for j=1 to n {Read C(i,j) into fast memory} {Read column j of B into fast memory} for k=1 to n C(i,j)=C(i,j) + A(i,k)*B(k,j) end for {Write C(i,j) back to slow memory} end for end forNote that the innermost loop is doing a dot product of row i of A and column j of B. Also, the two innermost loops are doing a vector-matrix multiplication of the ith row of A times the matrix B, to get the i-th row of C. This is a hint that we will not perform any better than these operations, since they are within the inner loop. Here is the detailed accounting of memory references:
m = # slow memory refs = n^3 read each column of B n times + n^2 read each row of A once for each i, and keep it in fast memory during the execution of the two inner loops + 2*n^2 read/write each entry of C once = n^3 + 3*n^2
Thus q = f/m = (2*n^3)/(n^3 + 3*n^2) ~ 2. This is the same q as for sgemv, which is no surprise as mentioned above. It is far below the upper bound of n/2. We leave it to the reader to show that reading B into fast memory differently cannot significantly improve m and q.
for j=1 to N {Read Bj into fast memory} {Read Cj into fast memory} for k=1 to n {Read column k of A into fast memory} Cj = Cj + A( :,k ) * Bj( k,: ) ... rank-1 update of Cj end for {Write Cj back to slow memory} end forThe inner loop does a rank-one update of Cj, multiplying column k of A times row k of Bj. We assume the fast memory is large enough (or N is large enough) that we can keep Bj, Cj and one column of A in it at a time: M >= 2*n^2/N + n. Here is the detailed accounting of memory references
m = # memory refs = n^2 read each Bj once + N*n^2 read each column of A N times + 2*n^2 read/write each Cj once = (N+3)*n^2Thus q = f/m = (2*n^3)/((N+3)*n^2) ~ M/n, where we have chosen N so that M ~ 2*n^2/N + n. Thus we need M to grow proportionally to n to get a reasonable q. Thus for a fixed M, as n grows, we would expect the algorithm to go more slowly. This is not an attractive property.
for i=1 to N for j=1 to N {Read Cij into fast memory} for k=1 to N {Read Aik into fast memory} {Read Bkj into fast memory} Cij = Cij + Aik * Bkj end for {Write Cij back to slow memory} end for end for
Thus, the inner loop is an n/N-by-n/N matrix multiply. We choose N large enough so that the 3 subblocks Cij, Aik and Bkj fit in the fast memory (M >= 3*(n/N)^2). Here is the detailed accounting of memory references
m = # memory refs = N*n^2 read each Bkj N^3 times + N*n^2 read each Aik N^3 times + 2*n^2 read/write each Cij once = (2*N+2)*n^2
Thus q = f/m = (2*n^3)/((2*N+2)*n^2) ~ n/N ~ sqrt(M/3), where we have chosen N so that M ~ 3*(n/N)^2. Now q is independent of n, and in fact essentially optimal:
Theorem: ("I/O Complexity: the red blue pebble game", X. Hong and H. T. Kung, 13th Symposium on the Theory of Computing, ACM, 1981). Any blocked version of this matrix multiplication algorithm has q = Big-Omega( sqrt(M) ), growing at least as fast as a constant multiple of sqrt(M).
There is a lot more to matrix multiplication, both theoretically and practically.
M = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply(A,B,n) /* Return M=A*B, where A and B are n-by-n; Assume n is a power of 2 */ if n=1, return M=A*B /* scalar multiplication */ else Partition A = [ A11 A12 ] , B = [ B11 B12 ] [ A21 A22 ] [ B21 B22 ] where the subblocks Aij and Bij are n/2-by-n/2 M1 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A12 - A22, B21 + B22, n/2 ) M2 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A11 + A22, B11 + B22, n/2 ) M3 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A11 - A21, B11 + B12, n/2 ) M4 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A11 + A12, B22, n/2 ) M5 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A11, B12 - B22, n/2 ) M6 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A22, B21 - B11, n/2 ) M7 = Strassen_Matrix_Multiply( A21 + A22, B11, n/2 ) M11 = M1 + M2 - M4 + M6 M12 = M4 + M5 M21 = M6 + M7 M22 = M2 - M3 + m5 - M7 return M = [ M11 M12 ] [ M21 M22 ] endIt is straightforward but tedious to show (by induction on n) that this correctly computes the product A*B. If we let T(n) denote the number of floating point operations required to execute Strassen_Matrix_Multiply, then we may write down the simple recurrence:
T(n) = 7*T(n/2) ... the cost of the 7 recursive calls + 18*(n/2)^2 ... the cost of the 18 n/2-by-n/2 matrix additionsChanging variables from n to m = log_2 n changes this to a simpler recurrence for T'(m) = T(n):
T'(m) = 7*T'(m-1) + 18*2^(2*m-2)which can be solved to show that T(n) = n^(log_2 (7)) ~ n^2.81. Strassen's method is numerically stable, but not always as accurate as the straightforward algorithm (``Exploiting fast matrix multiplication within the Level 3 BLAS'', N. Higham, ACM Trans. Math. Soft., v. 16, 1990, "Stability of block algorithms with fast Level 3 BLAS", J. Demmel and N. Higham, ACM Trans. Math. Soft., v 18, n 3, 1992). A long sequence of ever more complicated algorithms has appeared (``How Can We Speed Up Matrix Multiplication'' by V. Pan, SIAM Review, v 26, 1984; ``How to multiply matrices faster'' by V. Pan, Lecture Notes in Mathematics v. 179, Springer, 1984; ``Polynomial and matrix computations,'' by V. Pan & D. Bini, Birkhauser, 1994) culminating in the current record algorithm of O(n^2.376...), due to Winograd and Coppersmith [check reference]. All but the simplest of these algorithms are far too complicated to implement efficiently. IBM's ESSL library includes an implementation of Strassen and of an algorithm by Winograd which trades some of the multiplies in the usual algorithm for more additions, which helps on some architectures. Strassen's method has also been implemented on the Cray 2 ("Extra high speed matrix multiplication on the Cray-2", D. Bailey, SIAM J. Sci. Stat. Comput., v 9, May 1988; "Using Strassen's algorithm to accelerate the solution of linear systems", D. Bailey, K. Lee, H. Simon, J. Supercomputing, v 4, 1991). A potential attraction of Strassen is its natural block decomposition; instead of continuing the recursion until n=1 (as in the above code), one could instead use a more standard matrix multiply as soon as n is small enough to fit all the data in the fast memory.