6 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
marfrit 5c8b09349c Cycle 9 closed: H.264 luma qpel mc20 = 131 Mblock/s NEON, CPU-only
Last unmeasured H.264 kernel. mc20 picked as representative
(horizontal half-pel, 6-tap filter; canonical for the H.264 luma
qpel family). M1 PASS 10000/10000 first try, M3 = 131.477
Mblock/s on a single core (7.6 ns/block), 135x the 1080p30 floor.

Per the cycles 6+7 lightweight-kernel rationale, Phase 4 deferred:
QPU dispatch floor (~250 ns/block) is 33x above the NEON per-block
cost; R9 ≈ 0.03 deep RED. No realistic QPU offload value.

Generalization: all H.264 luma MC variants (mc02, mc11, mc22,
etc.) will share this verdict. No need to measure each variant
individually.

H.264 NEON is dramatically faster than VP9 NEON across the board:
- IDCT 4x4: 175 vs N/A    (no VP9 analog)
- IDCT 8x8: 151 vs 8.2 Mblock/s (18x faster)
- MC 6/8-tap: 131 vs 7.0   (19x faster)
- Deblock: 92 vs 48 Medge/s (2x faster)

H.264 deployment recipe: all CPU NEON except deblock (opportunistic
QPU). On a Pi 5 running H.264-only, the QPU is mostly idle.

Cycles 1-9 complete. Public API exposes all 9.
Next: daedalus-v4l2 sibling repo per locked Phase 8 architecture
(B + γ + sibling), then README polish.

- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/libavcodec/aarch64/h264qpel_neon.S
  vendored (1467 lines, all qpel variants)
- tests/h264_qpel8_mc20_ref.c: 40-line C ref (clip255 of
  6-tap convolution)
- tests/bench_neon_h264qpel_mc20.c: M1 + M3 bench
- docs/k9_h264qpel_mc20.md: cycle 9 closure with comparison
  matrix

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 14:53:21 +00:00
marfrit 5a085e7180 Cycle 8 (H.264 deblock) opened — Phase 1 + NEON vendored
Targets the one H.264 kernel most likely to be QPU-worthy:
in-loop deblock. Cycles 6 and 7 (IDCT 4x4 and 8x8) both came in
CPU-only because H.264 transforms are NEON-trivial. H.264
deblock has analogous structure to VP9 LPF (cycles 2+4, both
GREEN) so predicted R8 = ORANGE/YELLOW.

This commit:
- Vendors ff_h264_*_loop_filter_*_neon from h264dsp_neon.S
  (1076 lines, includes both v/h luma + chroma + intra variants
  + weight/biweight)
- PROVENANCE.md updated with the new vendored file
- Phase 1 doc captures the full plan: start with luma vertical
  non-intra (most common case), defer Phase 3+ to next session

H.264 deblock C ref scope is ~2 hours (per-row branching,
per-4-row-segment tc0, ap/aq side conditions, alpha/beta
thresholds — much more complex than VP9 LPF wd=4's
single-branch filter). Deferring to fresh attention next
session rather than rushing now.

After cycle 8 closes, the H.264 QPU surface is well-characterised
and the cycles-1-8 inventory drives the Phase 8 V4L2 wrapper's
substrate-routing recipe.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 14:18:19 +00:00
marfrit f92dc40f43 Cycle 6 (H.264) opened — IDCT 4x4 Phase 1+3, M3 = 175 Mblock/s
H.264 scope added 2026-05-18 per user direction. Pi 5's VideoCore
VII has no hardware H.264 decoder block (only HEVC), so a
QPU-accelerated H.264 path fills the most impactful codec gap.
Cycle 6 = first H.264 kernel (4x4 IDCT + add, smallest H.264
transform, simplest first cycle).

Phase 1: goal doc + 1080p30 floor analysis (5.85 Mblock/s
worst-case, 2.0 Mblock/s realistic since most MBs use 8x8 or
P-skip).

Phase 3: NEON M3 baseline captured. ff_h264_idct_add_neon on
hertz delivers 175 Mblock/s (5.7 ns per block) = 30x worst-case
floor margin. H.264 IDCT 4x4 is dramatically lighter than VP9
IDCT 8x8 (21x faster per block).

Phase 3 closure also caught the key Phase 9 lesson: H.264/FFmpeg
blocks are COLUMN-MAJOR (block[c*4 + r] = (row=r, col=c)). NEON
ld1 with 4 registers interleaves loading, and the FFmpeg C ref
indexing makes this convention explicit. Initial C ref assumed
row-major, M1 was 5% bit-exact; after fix, M1 = 100%.

Convention encoded for all subsequent H.264 cycles (cycle 7+).

- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/libavcodec/aarch64/h264idct_neon.S
  (vendored verbatim from FFmpeg n7.1.3, 415 lines)
- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/PROVENANCE.md: updated
- tests/h264_idct4_ref.c: column-major C ref
- tests/bench_neon_h264idct4.c: M1 + M3 bench
- CMakeLists.txt: cycle 6 NEON bench wiring
- docs/k6_h264idct4_phase1.md, phase3.md

Phase 4 next: QPU shader for cycle 6. Predicted R6 = 0.01 (deep
RED — kernel too small relative to QPU dispatch overhead) but
worth building for cycle-completeness + the opportunistic-helper
hypothesis (cycle 6 may stay CPU per recipe).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 14:14:43 +00:00
marfrit 356e446a49 Cycle 3 (MC interpolation) closure: M1'''=100%, R'''=0.067 RED, M4=-19.5%
Third daedalus-fourier kernel — VP9 8-tap regular subpel filter,
horizontal direction, 8-wide output. Multiply-heavy by design to
stress V3D's no-DP4A deficit. Full cycle Phase 1-7 + M4'''.

Phase 5''' second-model review delivered cleanly — caught 1 RED
bug pre-implementation (src_off off-by-3 indexing convention) and
2 YELLOW gaps (assert MUST language, shaderdb filter-LUT gate).
Without the review, M1''' would have failed silently on first run
with cryptic "high-index source pixels wrong" symptoms.

Phase 6 v1 first-light: M1''' 100.0000% bit-exact (65536/65536
blocks across all 16 mx phases). Phase 5''' filter-LUT prediction
materialised exactly: 197 uniforms (gate was 144), 2 threads (down
from cycle-2's 4 due to register pressure).

Performance:

  M2''' = 1.413 Mblock/s     (707.9 ns/block)
  M3''' = 20.997 Mblock/s    (NEON baseline phase3)
  R'''  = 0.067              (RED band — structural mismatch)
  shaderdb: 488 inst, 2 threads, 197 uniforms, 25 max-temps, 0 spills

M4''' concurrent matrix (8s windows):

  NEON 1-core           14.479 Mblock/s
  NEON 4-core           15.248 Mblock/s   <- baseline (compute-bound,
                                              not bandwidth-saturated
                                              like cycles 1+2!)
  QPU only               1.380 Mblock/s
  MIXED NEON-3 + QPU    12.277 Mblock/s   <- -19.5% (FAIL gate)
  MIXED NEON-4 + QPU    12.158 Mblock/s   <- -20.3%

NEW cross-cycle finding (Phase 9 lesson 2): compute-bound CPU
workloads make the QPU-offload story collapse. Cycles 1+2 were
bandwidth-saturated (4-core scaling 0.56-0.82x of 1-core), so
freeing a CPU core via QPU offload added throughput. Cycle 3 MC
is compute-bound (4-core scaling 1.05x of 1-core — near-linear),
no free cycles to free. QPU contribution (0.45 Mblock/s in
contention) doesn't compensate for losing 1 NEON core delivering
~3.8 Mblock/s.

But 30fps@1080p floor: PASS in every config (1.4x to 15.7x
isolation margin). Per project_30fps_floor_is_fine.md, user-facing
test never fails — daily YouTube playback works fine on any CPU/QPU
split.

DEPLOYMENT RECIPE for higgs (cycle 3 confirmed split):

  IDCT (k1)  -> QPU   (R=0.92, +7% mixed, frees CPU core)
  LPF  (k2)  -> QPU   (R=0.41, +7% mixed, frees CPU core)
  MC   (k3)  -> CPU   (R=0.067, -19.5% mixed — stays on CPU)
  Entropy    -> CPU   (structurally serial)

Mixed-substrate deployment, not "QPU does everything". Realistic for
higgs: entropy + MC on 2-3 ARM cores; IDCT + LPF dispatched to QPU
concurrently; 1-2 ARM cores left for vscode etc.

New artifacts:
- src/v3d_mc_8h.comp               — GLSL kernel
- tests/vp9_mc_ref.c               — standalone C ref (REGULAR filter
                                     embedded; clean transcription)
- tests/bench_neon_mc.c            — M1'''_c + M3''' bench
- tests/bench_v3d_mc.c             — M1''' + M2''' bench with contract
                                     asserts + 30fps margin display
- tests/bench_concurrent_mc.c      — M4''' pthread bench
- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/libavcodec/aarch64/vp9mc_neon.S    (vendored)
- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/libavcodec/vp9_subpel_filters_table.c
                                     (hand-extracted; provides
                                      ff_vp9_subpel_filters symbol
                                      without dragging in full vp9dsp.c)
- docs/k3_mc_phase{1,2,3,4,5,7}.md — full cycle documentation

Memory updates: project_30fps_floor_is_fine.md (user's 30fps target
recalibration), MEMORY.md index updated.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 12:51:43 +00:00
marfrit be7ff5587c Cycle 2 (deblocking) Phase 1-3: M3'' = 48.285 Medge/s baseline
Second kernel candidate per phase7_M4.md verdict "next-kernel cycle
authorised". VP9 4-tap inner loop filter, horizontal direction,
8-pixel edge (libavcodec ff_vp9_loop_filter_h_4_8_neon as baseline).
Different workload shape from IDCT - boundary streaming, lighter
compute per unit, per-row conditionals - tests whether QPU win
generalises.

docs/k2_deblock_phase1.md - goal-setting. Same R-band decision rules
as cycle 1 (phase1.md), with the cycle-1 calibration adjustment:
ORANGE band is no longer auto-close because M4 showed mixed > pure
CPU even at modest R when CPU bandwidth-saturates.

docs/k2_deblock_phase2.md - situation analysis. C reference already
in vendored snapshot (vp9dsp_template.c:1780-1898). Fetched
vp9lpf_neon.S fresh (1334 lines, LGPL-2.1+, FFmpeg n7.1.3 pin,
SHA-256 384e49e7...). PROVENANCE.md updated.

docs/k2_deblock_phase3.md - NEON baseline:

  M1''_c bit-exact     100.0000 % (10000 random edges)
  M3'' throughput      48.285 Medge/s  (20.7 ns/edge, single A76)
  per-frame 1080p-eq   748 FPS (worst case 64 530 edges/frame)
  cycles/edge          ~58 (=20.7ns x 2.8GHz), ~7 cycles/row

LPF is 5.9x faster per-unit than IDCT M3 (20.7 vs 122 ns), so the
QPU break-even point moves down. Predicted R''_v1 band ~0.5-0.9
- frame-level batching amortises the same 33us dispatch overhead;
workload becomes bandwidth-bound rather than compute-bound
(~5.7 MB/frame traffic at 64 530 edges x ~88 B per edge).

New artifacts:
- tests/vp9_lpf_ref.c    - standalone bit-exact C ref (8-bit, wd=4
                           inner only; clean transcription)
- tests/bench_neon_lpf.c - M1''_c gate + M3'' time-based bench
                           (5s window, edge-content-biased RNG for
                           realistic fm/hev hit rates)
- external/ffmpeg-snapshot/libavcodec/aarch64/vp9lpf_neon.S
- CMakeLists.txt updated with bench_neon_lpf target

Phase 4 next: plan the QPU LPF compute shader. Cycle 1's phase4.md
+ phase5.md + phase7.md learnings apply directly - bake in the v4
winning patterns from the start (WG=256, edges-per-subgroup
pattern adapted from blocks, uint8_t dst SSBO, oob flag, unrolled
writes).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 12:28:57 +00:00
marfrit dcbbc77038 Path B pivot + Phase 0-3 closed with first baseline numbers
This is a from-scratch initial commit on a fresh .git. The original
scaffold commit (7510b56) and the earlier session's working-tree
docs were lost in a 2026-05-18 10:25 working-tree wipe; the corrupted
.git is preserved at .git-broken-2026-05-18/ (gitignored) for
forensic inspection.

Scope re-anchored from Path A (custom VPU firmware on VC7 scalar
cores; blocked by BCM2712 silicon-RoT mask-ROM signature check)
to Path B (QPU compute kernels via Mesa v3d / Vulkan compute or
direct DRM, on stock signed Pi 5 / CM5). See README.md and
docs/phase0.md for the substrate audit that closed Path A.

Phases closed:
  Phase 0 — substrate audit; Path A blocked, Path B open;
            codec-back-end-fits-QPU finding (docs/phase0.md)
  Phase 1 — first kernel locked (VP9 / AV1 8x8 inverse DCT) with
            publish-before-measure R = M2/M3 decision rules
            (docs/phase1.md)
  Phase 2 — reference impls mapped; FFmpeg n7.1.3 source vendored
            under external/ffmpeg-snapshot/ (PROVENANCE.md pins
            commit f46e514 + per-file SHA-256s) (docs/phase2.md)
  Phase 3 — real baseline measurements on hertz (docs/phase3.md):
              M1 bit-exact            100.0000 % (10000/10000)
              M3 NEON IDCT8 single    8.171 Mblock/s (122.4 ns/block)
              M5a empty Vulkan submit 22.66 us
              M5b 1-WG noop dispatch  55.60 us
              M5 delta                32.95 us/dispatch
            => per-dispatch overhead is ~455x per-NEON-block cost;
               Phase 4 must batch at frame level or close to it.

Build harness in place: CMakeLists.txt + tests/{bench_neon_idct.c,
vp9_idct8_ref.c, bench_vulkan_dispatch.c, shaders/noop.comp} +
external/ffmpeg-snapshot/config.h shim (7 defines + EXTERN_ASM).
Builds clean on Debian Trixie aarch64 with cmake 3.31, ninja 1.12,
libvulkan-dev 1.4.309, glslang-tools 15.1.0. Vendored FFmpeg .S
assembles via the config.h shim.

Next: Phase 4 (plan first QPU IDCT kernel under the M5 batching
constraint) -> Phase 5 second-model review -> Phase 6 implement.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 11:30:12 +00:00