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Author SHA1 Message Date
marfrit 8182e43c15 Phase 7 M4: mixed CPU+QPU beats pure 4-core NEON; project continues
The YELLOW-band gate test from phase1.md (concurrent CPU+QPU vs
pure-CPU baseline). tests/bench_concurrent.c is a pthread harness
that runs N NEON workers (pinned to cores 0..N-1) and optionally a
QPU dispatch loop on its own pinned thread; 8s time-based windows;
sums per-worker block counts.

Raw results on hertz (1920x1088, 32640 blocks/dispatch):

  Config                       Mblock/s   1080p FPS-eq
  NEON 1-core                  12.623     389.6
  NEON 4-core                   7.074     218.3   <- realistic CPU ceiling
  QPU only                      6.890     212.7
  MIXED NEON-3 + QPU            7.583     234.0   <- +7.2 % over NEON-4
  MIXED NEON-4 + QPU            7.739     238.9   <- +9.4 % oversubscribed

Headline findings beyond the gate test itself:

F1 — Pi 5 LPDDR4x saturates well before 4-core CPU scaling.
     NEON-1 (12.6) > NEON-4 (7.1): 4 cores deliver 0.56x the
     per-core throughput, not 4x. The realistic CPU ceiling for
     memory-bound IDCT work is ~7 Mblock/s aggregate, not the
     ~32 Mblock/s a naive 4x scaling would predict. This recasts
     phase7.md's R=0.92 framing: the right baseline is "4-core
     NEON saturated", which the QPU effectively matches (6.89
     vs 7.07) on its own.

F2 — QPU contributes meaningfully BECAUSE it doesn't fully share
     the CPU's bandwidth bottleneck (own access channel + v3d L2
     cache partially insulate it). Mixed adds the QPU's 0.51
     Mblock/s on top of an already-saturated CPU.

F3 — Oversubscribed mode (NEON-4 + QPU) is not harmful — per-NEON
     drops slightly but QPU adds more than the loss. Net +9 %.

F4 — Freed-core story is bigger than the throughput delta. In
     mixed NEON-3+QPU, the 4th core is 100 % free for entropy
     decode (Bool coder, ANS) which MUST run on CPU. Pure NEON-4
     has nothing left. Realistic decode pipeline gets more like
     a 30-50 % effective throughput uplift, not just 7 %.

Verdict per phase1.md YELLOW-band rule (mixed > pure-CPU): PASS.
Project continues to next-kernel cycle (recommend deblocking or
CDEF — same "small parallel block-level" workload class that
amortises the same M4 wins).

docs/phase7_M4.md captures the full M4 harness design, all 5
configs raw output, and the leaves-open items: M7 wall-power via
Himbeere plug, sustained-thermal test, realistic-bitstream
coefficient distribution, multi-frame async pipelining.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 12:18:36 +00:00
marfrit d66f22f333 Phase 6 (v1+v4 production) + Phase 7 closure: R = 0.92 ± 0.03 on hertz
First QPU IDCT8 kernel running and bit-exact on V3D 7.1 via Mesa
v3dv compute. Five iterations through a Phase 7→Phase 4' loopback;
production kernel is v4.

New files:
- src/v3d_runner.{c,h}  — reusable Vulkan compute plumbing (instance,
                          V3D device picker, HOST_VISIBLE|COHERENT
                          SSBOs with mmap, compute pipeline from .spv,
                          enables storageBuffer{8,16}BitAccess)
- src/v3d_idct8.comp    — VP9 8x8 DCT_DCT IDCT add, v4 production:
                          256 invocations/WG, 2 blocks/subgroup
                          (no idle lanes), uint8 dst SSBO (race-free
                          per phase5 finding 5), unrolled writes
                          (no chained ternary), oob-flag pattern
                          (barrier-safe per phase5 finding 7)
- tests/bench_v3d_idct.c — M1' bit-exact gate + M2 throughput vs C ref
- docs/phase7.md         — full iteration journey + decision verdict

CMakeLists.txt updated to build the new shader, library, and bench
when DAEDALUS_BUILD_VULKAN=ON.

Iteration record (1920x1088 luma, 32640 blocks/dispatch, N=3):

  ver  change                              R       ns/block
  v1   first-light                         0.230   533
  v2   kill ternary + 2-blocks-per-sg      0.474   258
  v3   per-pass scope oN                   0.481   254  (noise)
  v4   WG 64 -> 256 invocations            0.947   129
  v5   packed uint32 coeff reads           0.938   130  (noise, reverted)
  v4 final N=3                             0.918 +/- 0.033

Bit-exactness 100.0000% across all iterations (10000-block sample
on 128x128, 32640-block sample on 1080p) against both the C
reference (tests/vp9_idct8_ref.c) and the vendored FFmpeg NEON
ff_vp9_idct_idct_8x8_add_neon.

Key learning over the Phase 5 review's prediction model: the
chained ternary was NOT a spill killer on V3D 7.1 (shaderdb
showed 0:0 spills:fills even in v1). The actual lever was
workgroup-size-driven latency hiding — going from 64 to 256
invocations doubled throughput with the same compiled code
(270 inst, 2 threads, 21 max-temps, 0 spills) because the
v3dv scheduler had 4x more in-flight work to overlap TMU
latency.

Verdict per phase1.md decision rules: YELLOW band (0.5 <= R < 1.0)
by a wide margin, near GREEN boundary. Phase 1 YELLOW rule:
add M4 (concurrent CPU+QPU throughput) before honest-close or
continue. M4 is the next measurement, not more shader tuning —
at R = 0.92 with all 4 A76 cores still 100% free for other work,
the question is whether the system aggregate beats pure 4-core
NEON.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 12:09:00 +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