Vector
Pascal: a free Pascal Compiler
Vector Pascal is a
language targeted at SIMD instruction-sets such as the MMX and the AMD 3d Now
It currently supports
- the 486,
- the AMD Opteron 64 bit
processor,
- the Pentium,
- the Athlon
- the Sony Playstation 3 Emotion Engine see report here
- the Intel P3 and P4
processors.
It has a SIMD compiler which supports parallel vector operations, loop unrolling, common sub expression removal etc. It is implemented in Java, and is available for download in source or binary.
Downloads
To download the latest binary version of Vector Pascal you should click on install.jar.
For a source version click on source release
Overview
Vector Pascal is an
extended Pascal incorporating:
- Unicode support – New in version 4
- Programs may be input in Unicode, allowing Chinese, Greek, Japanese and Russian characters in variable names.
- Strings can contain Unicode.
- Characters are 16 bit.
- Conversion to and from UTF-8 performed on input and output.
- Mathematical operators √ , ∏, ∑, ≤, ≥, ∈, ÷ can now be entered in Unicode rather than as ASCII surrogates
- Vector Pascal extensions aimed at vector
processing. These are derived from APL and similar to the extensions provided
in Fortran90. These extensions translate to the SIMD instructions of the Athlon
and P4 etc.
- All operators extended to arrays eg: a:=a +b where a,b:array[y] of t;
- All monadic functions map over arrays eg: p:=sin(q); where p,q:array[1..n] of real;
- TRANS transposes a matrix
- The reduction functional \ can perform array summation etc
- Array slices of the form A[ i..j]:= K[i+1..j+1]
- Read and write operate on multidimensional arrays
- New operator extensions
- User defined operators allowed
- Operators +: and -: perform saturated arithmetic
- MIN and MAX
- Type system extensions
- Type pixel predefined as fixed point number in range –1 .0 to 1.0
- Sets of strings, reals, etc allowed. – New in version 4
- Dimensioned reals allow distinct and incompatible types for time, distance, mass etc
- Generic Units allow the writing of polymorphic functions
- Many of the features of ISO extended Pascal (see http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/compilers/compilerindex/iso10206.ps ) in particular
o Schematic array types
o Extended formats of Pred and Succ
o Any type can be returned by a function
o Operators ** and POW for exponentiation and Power
o >< for set symmetric difference
o Complex numbers
o Protected parameters
o Sets of arbitrary cardinality
o For x in y do for set iteration
- Turbo Pascal features
o Units, Strings, Turbo Pascal style file operations
A comparison with other languages and implementation details are given in Vector Pascal an Array Language .
Reference
manual
.pdf version of full manual
The code generator technology used to retarget the compiler to different platforms is documented in: Direct compilation of high level languages to multi media instructionsets . Covers use of MMX, 3DNOW and SIMD instructions to obtain parallelism. Also available as HTML
Book
SIMD Programming Manual for Linux
The book is a programming manual for SIMD processors with special emphasis on the use of Vector Pascal
Related
Work
Similar vectorisation transformations for a C compiler have been done by Aart Bi k whose web page contains useful articles on vectorisation.
Speedups
Vector Pascal
provides considerable speedups on vector loop based applications:
Table 1: Comparative Compiler Performances on Convolution
|
Program |
Implementation |
Target Processor |
Million Ops Per Second |
|
conv |
Vector Pascal |
Pentium + MMX |
61 |
|
|
Borland Pascal |
286 + 287 |
5.5 |
|
|
Delphi 4 |
486 |
86 |
|
|
DevPascal |
486 |
62 |
|
pconv |
Vector Pascal |
486 |
80 |
|
|
Vector Pascal |
Pentium + MMX |
817 |
Table 2: Pascal Compiler Performances in Million Ops per Second on
vector kernels
|
TEST |
DevP |
TMT |
BP 286 |
DP 4 |
VP 486 |
VP K6 |
|
unsigned byte
additions |
71 |
80 |
46 |
166 |
333 |
2329 |
|
saturated
unsigned byte additions |
55 |
57 |
38 |
110 |
225 |
2329 |
|
32 bit integer
additions |
85 |
59 |
47 |
285 |
349 |
635 |
|
16 bit integer
additions |
66 |
74 |
39 |
124 |
367 |
1165 |
|
real additions |
47 |
10 |
33 |
250 |
367 |
582 |
|
pixel additions |
49 |
46 |
23 |
98 |
188 |
2330 |
|
pixel
multiplications |
67 |
14 |
39 |
99 |
158 |
998 |
|
real dot product |
47 |
10 |
32 |
161 |
164 |
665 |
|
integer dot
product |
79 |
58 |
33 |
440 |
517 |
465 |
Abbreviations DevP - Dev Pascal version 1.9, TMT - TMT Pascal version 3, BP 286 - Borland Pascal compiler with 287 instructions enabled range checks off., DP 4 - Delphiversion 4, VP 486 - Vector Pascal targeted at a 486 , VP K6 - Vector Pascal targeted at an AMD K6 . Measurements on a 1Ghz Athlon.
Development
Environment
Vector Pascal now comes with the VIPER IDE , which supports:
Syntax highlighting
Project management
Compiling and linking
Automatic translation of
Pascal to Tex using VPTEX
VPTeX
Both the command line and the IDE compilers contain the facility to translate
Pascal to Latex to provide a literate programming environment. Comments can
contain Latex which is passed to the latex output, pascal code is translated
using a literate programming style.
Dependencies
Java, gcc – for windows this should be the djgpp release, Nasm assembler and for the literate programming tool you need Latex
Releases
Since the system is in Java one binary jar file will work with either
Linux or Windows Latest binary release covering all systems is in install17_5_05.jar
An earlier version is:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/compilers/compilerindex/install.jar
Installation procedure for binary version
1. Unpack the jar file into a directory preferably called mmpc. This is done using the command:
jar -xf install.jar
2. Define an environment variable mmpcdir to point at this directory.
3. Within the mmpc directory unpack the file viper.jar
4. Make the files vpc and vp executable for linux, the corresponding windows files are vpc.bat and viper.bat.
5.
Put the mmpc directory on your path.
src.jar the most recent source package to be released
Installation of the source version
Create a directory for Vector Pascal and place the src.jar file in this directory. then unpack the archive using the command
jar -xf src.jar
Then type
make install.jar
to create the installation jar file. You then proceed
as for the binary install procedure using the install.jar file you have
created. Since the works of the compiler are all in Java and since the C code
of the run-time library is portable, the same version of the source will work
under both Windows and Linux.
Previous
releases:
The old Linux only releases start with the name linstall in directory http;//www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/compilers/compilerindex
A release of the runtime library on its own is in rtl.jar
Windows only releases start with then name winstall
Compliance to the ISO 7185 specification
here is a spreadsheet which contains a comparison between Vector Pascal and other Pascal compiler on the ISO test suite.here is a pdf report which the instances of failures on the ISO test suite. A number of these failures are shared with other compilers such as Turbo Pascal and relate to the model of i/o used by Vector Pascal which differs from standard.
Man Page
Usage: vpc srcname [options] [non pascal files]
- srcname should not include the .pas extension
- output will be in an executable srcname.exe for Windows or
simply srcname for Linux
Non Pascal files you can supply a list of .a, .o, .s or .c files that
are to be compiled and linked with your program
this is typically done to give a Pascal program access
to libraries written in another language
Options for user programs
-A<asmfile> Allows you to specify the assembler file name used
-apu<digit><name> specifies what code generator is to be used for
auxilliary processor n, eg:
-apu0SonyVPU0 -apu1SonyVPU1
You can specify that particular Pascal Units
in your program are to be targeted to particular
auxilliary processors. This feature is not fully
debugged yet. If several apus are listed on the
command line they must be in ascending order of APU number
-BOEHM
link with the BOEHM garbage collector which must
be installed in your gcc linkage path
-NOBOEHM default
-cpu<NAME>
specifies the code ss generator to be used in compiling
code. Default is Pentium, other available <NAME>s include
K6 - AMD Athlon using NASM
Opteron - AMD 64 bit architecture using gas
P3 - Intel P3 using NASM
P4 - Intel P4 using NASM
IA32 - Intel 486 using NASM
gnuPentium, gnu486 intel processors but using gas assembler
EE - for Sony PS2 Emotion Engine ( cross compiler )
NIOS - Altera NIOS ( cross compiler )
-D<symbol> Define compiler pre-processor flag for conditional compilation
-fcoff Get assembler to generate coff output
-felf Get assembler to generate elf output
-gnu generate assembler using the gnu Pentium assembler
? -h -help --h --help print this text
-inter generate an intermediate ilc file for the syntax tree
-L -L<digit> Output a Latex listing of the program with variable levels of detail included
-nobalance switches off cannonical re-ordering of expression trees
-o<filename> Specifies the name of the object file generated by
the assembler pass
-opt<digit> select an optimisation level from 0 to 3, default is 1
-S Generate an assembler output but do not assemble or link
-T Run in training mode, do not load any of the pre-learned
code generation tactics stored in the .vwu file
-U Generate underlines as prefix for external symbols to the
linker
Compiler development options
-V switch on verbose mode for entire compilation
-switchon<number> switch on verbose mode whilst generate src line <number>
-switchon<nuber>..<number> switch on verbose mode between range of lines
in source when code generating code
-cputest do not compile a program but send test patterns
to the code generator to test what arithmetic
operations it can do and print the result to
the standard output
Keywords: Pascal,
free Compiler, MMX, Vector, SSE, 3Dnow!,APL, SIMD compiler, Matrix
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Compiler Page |
wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk
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Teaching
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