Prefetching data to cache for x86-64

Question

In my application, at one point I need to perform calculations on a large contiguous block of memory data (100s of MBs). What I was thinking was to keep prefetching the part of the block my program will touch in future, so that when I perform calculations on that portion, the data is already in the cache.

Can someone give me a simple example of how to achieve this with gcc? I read _mm_prefetch somewhere, but don't know how to properly use it. Also note that I have a multicore system, but each core will be working on a different region of memory in parallel.

Answer 1

gcc uses builtin functions as an interface for lowlevel instructions. In particular for your case __builtin_prefetch . But you only should see a measurable difference when using this in cases where the access pattern is not easy to predict automatically.

Answer 2

Modern CPUs have pretty good automatic prefetch and you may well find that you do more harm than good if you try to initiate software prefetching. There is most likely a lot more "low hanging fruit" that you can focus on for optimisation if you find that you actually have a performance problem. Prefetch tends to be one of the last things that you might try, when you're desperate for a few more percent throughput.