Finally some good news on this topic. Earlier I stated that 'big or small tests' are expensive for the Pi, but that is not by definition the case. There must have been other conditions blurring my impression. I've now done a systematic test where other influences are ruled out. A test class [lopass~] with exactly the same routine as [lop~] was made, but compiled with PD_BIGORSMALL() macro enabled. It was verified that [lopass~] is not affected by denormals. Performance comparison of [lop~] and [lopass~] shows that both objects cause equivalent CPU load. Meaning, Raspberry Pi gives the 'big or small checks' for free! At least in the case of this simple filter. Please try attached bigorsmalltest.zip on the Pi to see if I'm not dreaming.
While I was at the topic anyway, I also tried a big or small test with union instead of direct type aliasing. It has the advantage that the compiler can apply strict aliasing rules. This test with unions did not cause extra CPU load either on the Pi. If you want to verify this result, enable the call to bigorsmall() instead of PD_BIGORSMALL in lopass~.c and recompile.
The fact that these tests do not cause extra CPU load, indicate that they are done in parallel with other instructions. Float and int registers are apparently strictly separated on armv6, there's no such thing like Intel's xmm registers or armv7's NEON. As it happens, the big or small tests are done on ints, aliases of the floats that must be tested. Initially I assumed that the transport of floats from vfp to the arm integer processor would be expensive, but if the instructions are done simultaneously it may be an advantage instead. Another thing is that ARM implements branch predication instead of branch prediction. Those terms look almost the same but the routines are very different. Predication is when instructions for both branches are executed, and the wrong result is simply discarded later.
Conclusions from the limited test with [lop~] and [lopass~] do not mean that all sorts of conditional checks are cheap on the Pi, or on ARM in general. If PD_BIGORSMALL is enabled for RPi using compile-time definition __arm__, it will also hold for armv7, but it may have very different result there. At the moment I have no access yet to an armv7 device. Maybe someone can recompile test class [lopass~] and do the tests on Beagleboard or Cubieboard? Otherwise I may be able to do it on my friend's PengPod when that has arrived.
Katja
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Miller Puckette msp@ucsd.edu wrote:
thanks - I'd better try this and find out what's going on :)
M
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:54:29AM +0100, katja wrote:
Tried the 0.44.0 build from your website. It has the same issue with subnormal values. My test patch is with [lop~]. If inf or nan is fed into [lop~], these 'values' keep circulating in the object, it can no longer process normal signal values.
I also tried my reverb stuff with specific compiler options for Pi's processor:
-march=armv6zk -mcpu=arm1176jzf-s -mtune=arm1176jzf-s
With these options, gcc should be able to decide that RunFast mode is permitted. But even in combination with -ffast-math (which in turn sets -funsafe-math-optimizations and -fno-trapping-math amongst others), denormals are still there. I'm literally out of options for the moment. Sorry for not having better news.
Katja