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LLVM-EXEGESIS(1) LLVM LLVM-EXEGESIS(1)

NAME
llvm-exegesis - LLVM Machine Instruction Benchmark

SYNOPSIS
llvm-exegesis [options]

DESCRIPTION
llvm-exegesis is a benchmarking tool that uses information available in
LLVM to measure host machine instruction characteristics like latency,
throughput, or port decomposition.

Given an LLVM opcode name and a benchmarking mode, llvm-exegesis gener-
ates a code snippet that makes execution as serial (resp. as parallel)
as possible so that we can measure the latency (resp. inverse through-
put/uop decomposition) of the instruction. The code snippet is jitted
and, unless requested not to, executed on the host subtarget. The time
taken (resp. resource usage) is measured using hardware performance
counters. The result is printed out as YAML to the standard output.

The main goal of this tool is to automatically (in)validate the LLVM's
TableDef scheduling models. To that end, we also provide analysis of
the results.

llvm-exegesis can also benchmark arbitrary user-provided code snippets.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS
llvm-exegesis currently only supports X86 (64-bit only), ARM (AArch64
only), MIPS, and PowerPC (PowerPC64LE only) on Linux for benchmarking.
Not all benchmarking functionality is guaranteed to work on every plat-
form. llvm-exegesis also has a separate analysis mode that is sup-
ported on every platform that LLVM is.

SNIPPET ANNOTATIONS
llvm-exegesis supports benchmarking arbitrary snippets of assembly.
However, benchmarking these snippets often requires some setup so that
they can execute properly. llvm-exegesis has five annotations and some
additional utilities to help with setup so that snippets can be bench-
marked properly.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-DEFREG <register name> - Adding this annotation to the
text assembly snippet to be benchmarked marks the register as requir-
ing a definition. A value will automatically be provided unless a
second parameter, a hex value, is passed in. This is done with the
LLVM-EXEGESIS-DEFREG <register name> <hex value> format. <hex value>
is a bit pattern used to fill the register. If it is a value smaller
than the register, it is sign extended to match the size of the reg-
ister.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-LIVEIN <register name> - This annotation allows speci-
fying registers that should keep their value upon starting the bench-
mark. Values can be passed through registers from the benchmarking
setup in some cases. The registers and the values assigned to them
that can be utilized in the benchmarking script with a LLVM-EXEGE-
SIS-LIVEIN are as follows:

• Scratch memory register - The specific register that this value is
put in is platform dependent (e.g., it is the RDI register on X86
Linux). Setting this register as a live in ensures that a pointer
to a block of memory (1MB) is placed within this register that can
be used by the snippet.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-DEF <value name> <size> <value> - This annotation
allows specifying memory definitions that can later be mapped into
the execution process of a snippet with the LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-MAP an-
notation. Each value is named using the <value name> argument so that
it can be referenced later within a map annotation. The size is spec-
ified in a decimal number of bytes and the value is given in hexadec-
imal. If the size of the value is less than the specified size, the
value will be repeated until it fills the entire section of memory.
Using this annotation requires using the subprocess execution mode.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-MAP <value name> <address> - This annotation allows
for mapping previously defined memory definitions into the execution
context of a process. The value name refers to a previously defined
memory definition and the address is a decimal number that specifies
the address the memory definition should start at. Note that a single
memory definition can be mapped multiple times. Using this annotation
requires the subprocess execution mode.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-SNIPPET-ADDRESS <address> - This annotation allows for
setting the address where the beginning of the snippet to be executed
will be mapped in at. The address is given in hexadecimal. Note that
the snippet also includes setup code, so the instruction exactly at
the specified address will not be the first instruction in the snip-
pet. Using this annotation requires the subprocess execution mode.
This is useful in cases where the memory accessed by the snippet de-
pends on the location of the snippet, like RIP-relative addressing.

• LLVM-EXEGESIS-LOOP-REGISTER <register name> - This annotation speci-
fies the loop register to use for keeping track of the current itera-
tion when using the loop repetition mode. llvm-exegesis needs to keep
track of the current loop iteration within the loop repetition mode
in a performant manner (i.e., no memory accesses), and uses a regis-
ter to do this. This register has an architecture specific default
(e.g., R8 on X86), but this might conflict with some snippets. This
annotation allows changing the register to prevent interference be-
tween the loop index register and the snippet.

EXAMPLE 1: BENCHMARKING INSTRUCTIONS
Assume you have an X86-64 machine. To measure the latency of a single
instruction, run:

$ llvm-exegesis --mode=latency --opcode-name=ADD64rr

Measuring the uop decomposition or inverse throughput of an instruction
works similarly:

$ llvm-exegesis --mode=uops --opcode-name=ADD64rr
$ llvm-exegesis --mode=inverse_throughput --opcode-name=ADD64rr

The output is a YAML document (the default is to write to stdout, but
you can redirect the output to a file using --benchmarks-file):

---
key:
opcode_name: ADD64rr
mode: latency
config: ''
cpu_name: haswell
llvm_triple: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
num_repetitions: 10000
measurements:
- { key: latency, value: 1.0058, debug_string: '' }
error: ''
info: 'explicit self cycles, selecting one aliasing configuration.
Snippet:
ADD64rr R8, R8, R10
'
...

To measure the latency of all instructions for the host architecture,
run:

$ llvm-exegesis --mode=latency --opcode-index=-1

EXAMPLE 2: BENCHMARKING A CUSTOM CODE SNIPPET
To measure the latency/uops of a custom piece of code, you can specify
the snippets-file option (- reads from standard input).

$ echo "vzeroupper" | llvm-exegesis --mode=uops --snippets-file=-

Real-life code snippets typically depend on registers or memory.
llvm-exegesis checks the liveliness of registers (i.e. any register use
has a corresponding def or is a "live in"). If your code depends on the
value of some registers, you need to use snippet annotations to ensure
setup is performed properly.

For example, the following code snippet depends on the values of XMM1
(which will be set by the tool) and the memory buffer passed in RDI
(live in).

# LLVM-EXEGESIS-LIVEIN RDI
# LLVM-EXEGESIS-DEFREG XMM1 42
vmulps (%rdi), %xmm1, %xmm2
vhaddps %xmm2, %xmm2, %xmm3
addq $0x10, %rdi

EXAMPLE 3: BENCHMARKING WITH MEMORY ANNOTATIONS
Some snippets require memory setup in specific places to execute with-
out crashing. Setting up memory can be accomplished with the LLVM-EXE-
GESIS-MEM-DEF and LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-MAP annotations. To execute the
following snippet:

movq $8192, %rax
movq (%rax), %rdi

We need to have at least eight bytes of memory allocated starting
0x2000. We can create the necessary execution environment with the
following annotations added to the snippet:

# LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-DEF test1 4096 7fffffff
# LLVM-EXEGESIS-MEM-MAP test1 8192

movq $8192, %rax
movq (%rax), %rdi

EXAMPLE 4: ANALYSIS
Assuming you have a set of benchmarked instructions (either latency or
uops) as YAML in file /tmp/benchmarks.yaml, you can analyze the results
using the following command:

$ llvm-exegesis --mode=analysis \
--benchmarks-file=/tmp/benchmarks.yaml \
--analysis-clusters-output-file=/tmp/clusters.csv \
--analysis-inconsistencies-output-file=/tmp/inconsistencies.html

This will group the instructions into clusters with the same perfor-
mance characteristics. The clusters will be written out to /tmp/clus-
ters.csv in the following format:

cluster_id,opcode_name,config,sched_class
...
2,ADD32ri8_DB,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD32ri_DB,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD32rr,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD32rr_DB,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD32rr_REV,,WriteALU,1.00
2,ADD64i32,,WriteALU,1.01
2,ADD64ri32,,WriteALU,1.01
2,MOVSX64rr32,,BSWAP32r_BSWAP64r_MOVSX64rr32,1.00
2,VPADDQYrr,,VPADDBYrr_VPADDDYrr_VPADDQYrr_VPADDWYrr_VPSUBBYrr_VPSUBDYrr_VPSUBQYrr_VPSUBWYrr,1.02
2,VPSUBQYrr,,VPADDBYrr_VPADDDYrr_VPADDQYrr_VPADDWYrr_VPSUBBYrr_VPSUBDYrr_VPSUBQYrr_VPSUBWYrr,1.01
2,ADD64ri8,,WriteALU,1.00
2,SETBr,,WriteSETCC,1.01
...

llvm-exegesis will also analyze the clusters to point out inconsisten-
cies in the scheduling information. The output is an html file. For ex-
ample, /tmp/inconsistencies.html will contain messages like the follow-
ing : [image]

Note that the scheduling class names will be resolved only when
llvm-exegesis is compiled in debug mode, else only the class id will be
shown. This does not invalidate any of the analysis results though.

OPTIONS
--help Print a summary of command line options.

--opcode-index=<LLVM opcode index>
Specify the opcode to measure, by index. Specifying -1 will re-
sult in measuring every existing opcode. See example 1 for de-
tails. Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must
be set.

--opcode-name=<opcode name 1>,<opcode name 2>,...
Specify the opcode to measure, by name. Several opcodes can be
specified as a comma-separated list. See example 1 for details.
Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must be set.

--snippets-file=<filename>
Specify the custom code snippet to measure. See example 2 for
details. Either opcode-index, opcode-name or snippets-file must
be set.

--mode=[latency|uops|inverse_throughput|analysis]
Specify the run mode. Note that some modes have additional re-
quirements and options.

latency mode can be make use of either RDTSC or LBR. la-
tency[LBR] is only available on X86 (at least Skylake). To run
in latency mode, a positive value must be specified for
x86-lbr-sample-period and --repetition-mode=loop.

In analysis mode, you also need to specify at least one of the
-analysis-clusters-output-file= and -analysis-inconsisten-
cies-output-file=.

--benchmark-phase=[prepare-snippet|prepare-and-assemble-snippet|assem-
ble-measured-code|measure]
By default, when -mode= is specified, the generated snippet will
be executed and measured, and that requires that we are running
on the hardware for which the snippet was generated, and that
supports performance measurements. However, it is possible to
stop at some stage before measuring. Choices are: * pre-
pare-snippet: Only generate the minimal instruction sequence. *
prepare-and-assemble-snippet: Same as prepare-snippet, but also
dumps an excerpt of the sequence (hex encoded). * assemble-mea-
sured-code: Same as prepare-and-assemble-snippet. but also cre-
ates the full sequence that can be dumped to a file using
--dump-object-to-disk. * measure: Same as assemble-mea-
sured-code, but also runs the measurement.

--x86-lbr-sample-period=<nBranches/sample>
Specify the LBR sampling period - how many branches before we
take a sample. When a positive value is specified for this op-
tion and when the mode is latency, we will use LBRs for measur-
ing. On choosing the "right" sampling period, a small value is
preferred, but throttling could occur if the sampling is too
frequent. A prime number should be used to avoid consistently
skipping certain blocks.

--x86-disable-upper-sse-registers
Using the upper xmm registers (xmm8-xmm15) forces a longer in-
struction encoding which may put greater pressure on the fron-
tend fetch and decode stages, potentially reducing the rate that
instructions are dispatched to the backend, particularly on
older hardware. Comparing baseline results with this mode en-
abled can help determine the effects of the frontend and can be
used to improve latency and throughput estimates.

--repetition-mode=[duplicate|loop|min|middle-half-duplicate|mid-
dle-half-loop]
Specify the repetition mode. duplicate will create a large,
straight line basic block with min-instructions instructions
(repeating the snippet min-instructions/snippet size times).
loop will, optionally, duplicate the snippet until the loop body
contains at least loop-body-size instructions, and then wrap the
result in a loop which will execute min-instructions instruc-
tions (thus, again, repeating the snippet min-instructions/snip-
pet size times). The loop mode, especially with loop unrolling
tends to better hide the effects of the CPU frontend on archi-
tectures that cache decoded instructions, but consumes a regis-
ter for counting iterations. If performing an analysis over many
opcodes, it may be best to instead use the min mode, which will
run each other mode, and produce the minimal measured result.
The middle half repetition modes will either duplicate or run
the snippet in a loop depending upon the specific mode. The mid-
dle half repetition modes will run two benchmarks, one twice the
length of the first one, and then subtract the difference be-
tween them to get values without overhead.

--min-instructions=<Number of instructions>
Specify the target number of executed instructions. Note that
the actual repetition count of the snippet will be min-instruc-
tions/snippet size. Higher values lead to more accurate mea-
surements but lengthen the benchmark.

--loop-body-size=<Preferred loop body size>
Only effective for -repetition-mode=[loop|min]. Instead of
looping over the snippet directly, first duplicate it so that
the loop body contains at least this many instructions. This po-
tentially results in loop body being cached in the CPU Op Cache
/ Loop Cache, which allows to which may have higher throughput
than the CPU decoders.

--max-configs-per-opcode=<value>
Specify the maximum configurations that can be generated for
each opcode. By default this is 1, meaning that we assume that
a single measurement is enough to characterize an opcode. This
might not be true of all instructions: for example, the perfor-
mance characteristics of the LEA instruction on X86 depends on
the value of assigned registers and immediates. Setting a value
of -max-configs-per-opcode larger than 1 allows llvm-exegesis to
explore more configurations to discover if some register or im-
mediate assignments lead to different performance characteris-
tics.

--benchmarks-file=</path/to/file>
File to read (analysis mode) or write (latency/uops/in-
verse_throughput modes) benchmark results. "-" uses stdin/std-
out.

--analysis-clusters-output-file=</path/to/file>
If provided, write the analysis clusters as CSV to this file.
"-" prints to stdout. By default, this analysis is not run.

--analysis-inconsistencies-output-file=</path/to/file>
If non-empty, write inconsistencies found during analysis to
this file. - prints to stdout. By default, this analysis is not
run.

--analysis-filter=[all|reg-only|mem-only]
By default, all benchmark results are analysed, but sometimes it
may be useful to only look at those that to not involve memory,
or vice versa. This option allows to either keep all benchmarks,
or filter out (ignore) either all the ones that do involve mem-
ory (involve instructions that may read or write to memory), or
the opposite, to only keep such benchmarks.

--analysis-clustering=[dbscan,naive]
Specify the clustering algorithm to use. By default DBSCAN will
be used. Naive clustering algorithm is better for doing further
work on the -analysis-inconsistencies-output-file= output, it
will create one cluster per opcode, and check that the cluster
is stable (all points are neighbours).

--analysis-numpoints=<dbscan numPoints parameter>
Specify the numPoints parameters to be used for DBSCAN cluster-
ing (analysis mode, DBSCAN only).

--analysis-clustering-epsilon=<dbscan epsilon parameter>
Specify the epsilon parameter used for clustering of benchmark
points (analysis mode).

--analysis-inconsistency-epsilon=<epsilon>
Specify the epsilon parameter used for detection of when the
cluster is different from the LLVM schedule profile values
(analysis mode).

--analysis-display-unstable-clusters
If there is more than one benchmark for an opcode, said bench-
marks may end up not being clustered into the same cluster if
the measured performance characteristics are different. by de-
fault all such opcodes are filtered out. This flag will instead
show only such unstable opcodes.

--ignore-invalid-sched-class=false
If set, ignore instructions that do not have a sched class
(class idx = 0).

--mtriple=<triple name>
Target triple. See -version for available targets.

--mcpu=<cpu name>
If set, measure the cpu characteristics using the counters for
this CPU. This is useful when creating new sched models (the
host CPU is unknown to LLVM). (-mcpu=help for details)

--analysis-override-benchmark-triple-and-cpu
By default, llvm-exegesis will analyze the benchmarks for the
triple/CPU they were measured for, but if you want to analyze
them for some other combination (specified via -mtriple/-mcpu),
you can pass this flag.

--dump-object-to-disk=true
If set, llvm-exegesis will dump the generated code to a tempo-
rary file to enable code inspection. Disabled by default.

--use-dummy-perf-counters
If set, llvm-exegesis will not read any real performance coun-
ters and return a dummy value instead. This can be used to en-
sure a snippet doesn't crash when hardware performance counters
are unavailable and for debugging llvm-exegesis itself.

--execution-mode=[inprocess,subprocess]
This option specifies what execution mode to use. The inprocess
execution mode is the default. The subprocess execution mode al-
lows for additional features such as memory annotations but is
currently restricted to X86-64 on Linux.

--benchmark-repeat-count=<repeat-count>
This option enables specifying the number of times to repeat the
measurement when performing latency measurements. By default,
llvm-exegesis will repeat a latency measurement enough times to
balance run-time and noise reduction.

--validation-counter=[instructions-retired,l1d-cache-load-misses,

l1d-cache-store-misses,l1i-cache-load-misses,data-tlb-load-misses,

data-tld-store-misses,instruction-tlb-load-misses]
This option enables the use of validation counters, which mea-
sure additional microarchitectural events like cache misses to
validate snippet execution conditions. These events are measured
using the perf subsystem in a group with the performance counter
used to measure the value of interest. This flag can be speci-
fied multiple times to measure multiple events. The maximum num-
ber of validation counters is platform dependent.

EXIT STATUS
llvm-exegesis returns 0 on success. Otherwise, an error message is
printed to standard error, and the tool returns a non 0 value.

AUTHOR
Maintained by the LLVM Team (https://llvm.org/).

19 2025-04-13 LLVM-EXEGESIS(1)

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