xref: /freebsd/share/man/man7/simd.7 (revision 1c1f229e9156dd75cab5e0e3e586c5ef319d68ee)
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3.\" This documentation was written by Robert Clausecker <fuz@FreeBSD.org>
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27.Dd September 2, 2023
28.Dt SIMD 7
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm simd
32.Nd SIMD enhancements
33.
34.Sh DESCRIPTION
35On some architectures, the
36.Fx
37.Em libc
38provides enhanced implementations of commonly used functions, replacing
39the architecture-independent implementations used otherwise.
40Depending on architecture and function, an enhanced
41implementation of a function may either always be used or the
42.Em libc
43detects at runtime which SIMD instruction set extensions are
44supported and picks the most suitable implementation automatically.
45On
46.Cm amd64 ,
47the environment variable
48.Ev ARCHLEVEL
49can be used to override this mechanism.
50.Pp
51Enhanced functions are present in the following architectures:
52.Bl -column FUNCTION_________ aarch64_ arm_ amd64_ i386_ ppc64_ -offset indent
53.It Em FUNCTION          Ta Em AARCH64 Ta Em ARM Ta Em AMD64  Ta Em I386 Ta Em PPC64
54.It    bcmp              Ta            Ta        Ta    S1     Ta    S
55.It    bcopy             Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S    Ta    SV
56.It    bzero             Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S
57.It    div               Ta            Ta        Ta    S      Ta    S
58.It    index             Ta    S       Ta        Ta    S1
59.It    ldiv              Ta            Ta        Ta    S      Ta    S
60.It    lldiv             Ta            Ta        Ta    S
61.It    memchr            Ta            Ta        Ta    S1
62.It    memcmp            Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S1     Ta    S
63.It    memcpy            Ta    S       Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S    Ta    SV
64.It    memmove           Ta    S       Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S    Ta    SV
65.It    memset            Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S
66.It    rindex            Ta    S
67.It    stpcpy            Ta            Ta        Ta    S1
68.It    strcat            Ta            Ta        Ta    S      Ta    S
69.It    strchr            Ta    S       Ta        Ta    S1     Ta    S
70.It    strchrnul         Ta            Ta        Ta    S1
71.It    strcmp            Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S      Ta    S
72.It    strcpy            Ta            Ta        Ta    S1     Ta    S    Ta    S2
73.It    strcspn           Ta            Ta        Ta    S2
74.It    strlen            Ta            Ta    S   Ta    S1
75.It    strncmp           Ta            Ta    S   Ta           Ta    S
76.It    strncpy           Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta         Ta    S2
77.It    strnlen           Ta            Ta        Ta    S1
78.It    strrchr           Ta    S       Ta        Ta           Ta    S
79.It    strspn            Ta            Ta        Ta    S2
80.It    swab              Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta    S
81.It    timingsafe_bcmp   Ta            Ta        Ta    S1
82.It    timingsafe_memcmp Ta            Ta        Ta    S
83.It    wcschr            Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta    S
84.It    wcscmp            Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta    S
85.It    wcslen            Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta    S
86.It    wmemchr           Ta            Ta        Ta           Ta    S
87.El
88.Pp
89.Sy S Ns :\ scalar (non-SIMD),
90.Sy 1 Ns :\ amd64 baseline,
91.Sy 2 Ns :\ x86-64-v2
92or PowerPC\ 2.05,
93.Sy 3 Ns :\ x86-64-v3,
94.Sy 4 Ns :\ x86-64-v4,
95.Sy V Ns :\ PowerPC\ VSX.
96.
97.Sh ENVIRONMENT
98.Bl -tag
99.It Ev ARCHLEVEL
100On
101.Em amd64 ,
102controls the level of SIMD enhancements used.
103If this variable is set to an architecture level from the list below
104and that architecture level is supported by the processor, SIMD
105enhancements up to
106.Ev ARCHLEVEL
107are used.
108If
109.Ev ARCHLEVEL
110is unset, not recognised, or not supported by the processor, the highest
111level of SIMD enhancements supported by the processor is used.
112.Pp
113A suffix beginning with
114.Sq ":"
115or
116.Sq "+"
117in
118.Ev ARCHLEVEL
119is ignored and may be used for future extensions.
120The architecture level can be prefixed with a
121.Sq "!"
122character to force use of the requested architecture level, even if the
123processor does not advertise that it is supported.
124This usually causes applications to crash and should only be used for
125testing purposes or if architecture level detection yields incorrect
126results.
127.Pp
128The architecture levels follow the AMD64 SysV ABI supplement:
129.Bl -tag -width x86-64-v2
130.It Cm scalar
131scalar enhancements only (no SIMD)
132.It Cm baseline
133cmov, cx8, x87 FPU, fxsr, MMX, osfxsr, SSE, SSE2
134.It Cm x86-64-v2
135cx16, lahf/sahf, popcnt, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2
136.It Cm x86-64-v3
137AVX, AVX2, BMI1, BMI2, F16C, FMA, lzcnt, movbe, osxsave
138.It Cm x86-64-v4
139AVX-512F/BW/CD/DQ/VL
140.El
141.El
142.
143.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
144.Bl -diag
145.It "Illegal Instruction"
146Printed by
147.Xr sh 1
148if a command is terminated through delivery of a
149.Dv SIGILL
150signal, see
151.Xr signal 3 .
152.Pp
153Use of an unsupported architecture level was forced by setting
154.Ev ARCHLEVEL
155to a string beginning with a
156.Sq "!"
157character, causing a process to crash due to use of an unsupported
158instruction.
159Unset
160.Ev ARCHLEVEL ,
161remove the
162.Sq "!"
163prefix or select a supported architecture level.
164.Pp
165Message may also appear for unrelated reasons.
166.El
167.
168.Sh SEE ALSO
169.Xr string 3 ,
170.Xr arch 7
171.Rs
172.%A H. J. Lu
173.%A Michael Matz
174.%A Milind Girkar
175.%A Jan Hubi\[u010D]ka \" \(vc
176.%A Andreas Jaeger
177.%A Mark Mitchell
178.%B System V Application Binary Interface
179.%D May 23, 2023
180.%T AMD64 Architecture Processor Supplement
181.%O Version 1.0
182.Re
183.
184.Sh HISTORY
185Architecture-specific enhanced
186.Em libc
187functions were added starting
188with
189.Fx 2.0
190for
191.Cm i386 ,
192.Fx 6.0
193for
194.Cm arm ,
195.Fx 6.1
196for
197.Cm amd64 ,
198.Fx 11.0
199for
200.Cm aarch64 ,
201and
202.Fx 12.0
203for
204.Cm powerpc64 .
205SIMD-enhanced functions were first added with
206.Fx 13.0
207for
208.Cm powerpc64
209and with
210.Fx 14.0
211for
212.Cm amd64 .
213.Pp
214A
215.Nm
216manual page appeared in
217.Fx 14.0 .
218.
219.Sh AUTHOR
220.An Robert Clausecker Aq Mt fuz@FreeBSD.org
221.
222.Sh CAVEATS
223Other parts of
224.Fx
225such as cryptographic routines in the kernel or in
226OpenSSL may also use SIMD enhancements.
227These enhancements are not subject to the
228.Ev ARCHLEVEL
229variable and may have their own configuration
230mechanism.
231.
232.Sh BUGS
233Use of SIMD enhancements cannot be configured on powerpc64.
234