mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills

cpu-pipelines-and-hazards

CPU pipeline skill for hazards, forwarding, and stalls.

Quelltext ansehen

Verwendung

  1. Installationsbefehl kopieren und das Quellpaket vor der Installation in der eigenen Agentenumgebung prüfen.
  2. Benötigte Werkzeuge, Zugangsdaten und Hosts im Original prüfen.
  3. Eingabe und gewünschtes Ergebnis beschreiben und die Ausgabe mit den Quellen abgleichen.
npx skills add https://github.com/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill cpu-pipelines-and-hazards

Vor dem Start

  • Die Installation umfasst weder Modellabo noch API-Kontingent oder Dateizugriffsrechte.
  • Sterne und Installationen zeigen Aktivität, keine unabhängige Qualitäts- oder Sicherheitsprüfung.
Originales Skill-Dokument

Aus dem Quell-Repository gerendert; Überschriften, Beispiele, Code, Tabellen, Links und Bilder bleiben erhalten.

CPU Pipelines and Hazards

Purpose

Explain classic and modern CPU pipeline concepts: stages, data and control hazards, forwarding/bypassing, stalls, and branch handling — foundational for optimization and understanding microarchitecture counters.

When to Use

  • Interpreting pipeline stall metrics from skills/profilers/intel-vtune-amd-uprof
  • Teaching why instruction order affects throughput
  • Relating assembly scheduling to hardware behavior
  • Debugging unexpected performance cliffs in hot loops

Workflow

1. Five-stage classic pipeline (MIPS-style mental model)

IF → ID → EX → MEM → WB

Overlapped execution: instruction N in EX while N+1 in ID.

2. Data hazards

TypeExampleMitigation
RAW (true)add r1,r2,r3 then sub r4,r1,r5Forwarding from EX/MEM/WB
WAR / WAWRare in in-order; relevant in OoO renameRegister renaming

Without forwarding:

stall until writeback completes

3. Control hazards (branches)

Branch in ID → target unknown until EX
├── Predict taken/not-taken (static or dynamic)
├── Flush wrong-path instructions on mispredict
└── Penalty = pipeline depth (varies by CPU)

See skills/computer-architecture/branch-prediction-and-speculation.

4. Structural hazards

Limited functional units (single memory port) cause stalls even without dependencies.

5. Practical optimization hints

c
/* Bad — tight dependency chain */
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    acc = acc + data[i];   /* each iter waits on acc */

/* Better — multiple accumulators (ILP) */
acc0 = acc1 = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i += 2) {
    acc0 += data[i];
    acc1 += data[i+1];
}
acc = acc0 + acc1;

Pair with skills/low-level-programming/cpu-cache-opt — memory often dominates.

6. Reading uops / ports (x86)

bash
perf stat -e instructions,cycles,stalls-frontend,stalls-backend ./app

VTune "Microarchitecture Exploration" maps to pipeline slots.

7. Agent usage

/cpu-pipelines-and-hazards Explain RAW hazard in this ARM assembly loop and how to break it

Common Problems

SymptomCauseFix
High stalls-frontendI-cache misses / branch mispredictAlign hot loop; see branch skill
No speedup from unrollMemory boundProfile loads; prefetch
Wrong cycle modelIgnored OoO executionUse perf hardware counters
"NOP fixes it"Timing-sensitive MMIONever tune device delays by NOP

Related Skills

  • skills/computer-architecture/branch-prediction-and-speculation — mispredict cost
  • skills/computer-architecture/memory-hierarchy-and-caches — load latency
  • skills/low-level-programming/cpu-cache-opt — cache-line effects
  • skills/profilers/intel-vtune-amd-uprof — pipeline analysis
  • skills/low-level-programming/assembly-arm — instruction scheduling

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aus demselben Repository

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