Visible to Intel only — GUID: ewa1399396539918
Ixiasoft
Visible to Intel only — GUID: ewa1399396539918
Ixiasoft
5.7.1. Stall, Occupancy, Bandwidth
For definitions of stall, occupancy, and bandwidth, refer to Types of Performance Data.
The Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ generates a pipeline architecture where work-items traverse through the pipeline stages sequentially (that is, in a pipeline-parallel manner). As soon as a pipeline stage becomes empty, a work-item enters and occupies the stage. Pipeline parallelism also applies to iterations of pipelined loops, where iterations enter a pipelined loop sequentially.
The following are simplified equations that describe the Profiler calculates stall, occupancy, and bandwidth:
Ideal kernel pipeline conditions:
- Stall percentage equals 0%
- Occupancy percentage equals 100%
- Bandwidth equals the board's bandwidth
For a given location in the kernel pipeline if the sum of the stall percentage and the occupancy percentage approximately equals 100%, the Profiler identifies the location as the stall source. If the stall percentage is low, the Profiler identifies the location as the victim of the stall.
The Profiler reports a high occupancy percentage if the offline compiler generates a highly efficient pipeline from your kernel, where work-items or iterations are moving through the pipeline stages without stalling.
If all LSUs are accessed the same number of times, they have the same occupancy value.
- If work-items cannot enter the pipeline consecutively, they insert bubbles into the pipeline.
- In loop pipelining, loop-carried dependencies also form bubbles in the pipeline because of bubbles that exist between iterations.
- If an LSU is accessed less frequently than other LSUs, such as the case when an LSU is outside a loop that contains other LSUs, this LSU has a lower occupancy value than the other LSUs.
The same rule regarding occupancy value applies to channels.