Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 00:07:11 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Reworked KDF available on github for feedback: NOELKDF

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 04:49:49AM -0500, Bill Cox wrote:
> Thanks again for the detailed reply.  All this data is very helpful!  One
> data point I wouldn't mind seeing: what is the runtime of noelkdf with 1
> thread?

Here you are:

$ ./run_noelkdf 
AA9C7A25DBAFC0EAC056FF37A29BCAE98415DAB00CDD98C4435B6DD3B94A7758

real    0m1.838s
user    0m0.768s
sys     0m1.060s

> I'm running a home-built system I made for my son's birthday.  It's fast,
> but not the fastest  He runs Minecraft servers on them, which makes
> reliable benchmarking difficult.  Here's the parts I bought from Newegg to
> build it:
> 
> CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 2800) Desktop
> Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B
> 
> Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core
> Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770
> 
> GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H LGA 1155 Intel B75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX
> Intel Motherboard

Your system's performance should be quite close to the FX-8120 I was
using, with a difference of maybe up to 30% in favor of one or the other
on different codes, although indeed exceptions to that exist (and we may
have run into one of those).

> Here's the runtime with git
> commit 00cef314195850dc7829dd684051a3646ca2cf93.  I modified some docs most
> likely since your benchmark - nothing that changed performance.  Here's
> three runs I just did:

I also ran each benchmark several times, there was not much difference
between the runs.

> noelkdf> ./run_noelkdf
> 324C977EDEF4972925261D6B996C904E1EF297BC0EFF4286887D187CA16326EE
> 
> real    0m0.311s
> user    0m0.560s
> sys     0m0.040s

Your system time usage is a lot lower.

What OS and version are you running?

It might be that you have transparent hugepages and I don't, or
something like that.

> On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 12:27 AM, Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:
> I assume the previous "page" stays in L1 cache, so it's slowing
> noelkdf down, but not much.

I think you're exceeding L1 cache even with 1 thread/core, because
you're accessing 3*16 KB pages.  However, the sequential accesses are L2
cache friendly.

> I'm inferring you've sped up scrypt by as much as 5X.

This is definitely not true.  My optimized scrypt runs ~2x faster than
Colin's original (the -sse version of it), and that's on a newer machine
than what Colin was using at the time.

> > Not that in a way scrypt's 1 GB corresponds to NOELKDF's 2 GB, because
> > scrypt runs for 2*N time.  In terms of cost to attacker, NOELKDF's 2 GB
> > is _presumably_ better than scrypt's 1 GB.
> 
> Why do you say scrypt's 1GB is the same as noelkdf's 2GB?  For 1G, both
> read 1GB from memory, and write 1GB to memory.  Noelkdf just does it in 1
> loop instead of 2.

Oh, you're right.  However, for escrypt with p=1, there is this 2x
difference in memory access count:

> > Now let's try escrypt in one of its native modes, with random lookups
> > added to SMix's first loop and writes added to SMix's second loop.

[...]

> Here's a nice comparison of the two processors:
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/2
> 
> If I'm reading it right, your AMD FX 8 processor has a limit of 8
> instructions in parallel, while the Bulldozer Core i7 can do 16.

No, this sounds wrong.  Per that table, it's 16 instructions peak decode
rate per chip for either chip.  You should compare "Eight Core" FX
(that's AMD's marketing for the 4-module chips) vs. "Quad Core" i7.

> [...] I think my server has mood swings, probably related
> to temperature.  By the time it runs 2 cores that long, it's already
> scaling back the clock.

Hardly.  In my experience, recent Intel desktop CPUs almost always run
at max turbo frequency possible for the core count in use, with no
scaling down, and they definitely can't heat up that much in just a few
seconds (it'd take minutes) - well, unless you have no heatsink or
something (but then you'd have bigger problems). ;-)

> If you like, I'll run escrypt on my machine for you to see if you see
> similar speedups.

We may do that, but I don't expect any significant speedup (possibly a
slight slowdown for lacking XOP).  I am testing on several other
machines as well, including i7-4770K.  I may give you access to those so
that we can test on the same machine.

> > Let's revert to 1 GB allocation, to have same iteration count as NOELKDF
> > (but up to 2x lower area-time):
> 
> I see no 2x difference.  Still, more data is good.

Not "2x lower", but between 2/3 and 1x of NOELKDF's 2 GB, I think (as I
explained in another message).

> I wouldn't worry about the numbers I get on my machine.  I've simply got a
> different CPU and memory setup.

It's not very different, actually.  With properly optimized code (such
as in JtR "formats"), we're getting similar speeds on Bulldozer vs.
Sandy/Ivy Bridge (comparing AMD's "8-core" vs. Intel's quad-core).

> [...] From my memmove tests, my
> machine seems to max out around 22 GB/second of memory bandwidth.  Can we
> do better with SSE instructions and temporal cache instructions?

22 GB/s sounds like your memmove() is already using SSE, which is not
surprising.  This is 86% of theoretical peak, which is consistent with
the best speeds I got with SSE.

> Again, thanks for the review and all the benchmark data!  I wish I could
> get you to SIMD optimize my code.  There are still very significant issues
> I don't know the answers to, like is it OK to have that 64-bit multiply in
> there?

I already addressed this in another message.  There are both pros and
cons to using 64-bit multiplies and adds.  The maybe-pros include slight
unfriendliness to current GPUs.  The cons include unfriendliness to SIMD
on current CPUs (with the MULs; 64-bit ADDs are OK).

> I had it based on 2 32-bit multiplies and a couple shifts, but
> 64-bit ran faster everywhere I tested it.  I tried converting the code to
> all 32-bit, but it doubled my run-times.  If you don't mind working on two
> hashing projects in the same competition, I'd really appreciate having
> another author.  Two chances to win is better :-)

Thanks for the offer.  Unfortunately, I barely have time to complete our
own submission by the end of January, so I definitely won't work on
another one directly at least until then.  Also, it's not as much about
winning as it is about having better KDFs / hashing schemes among those
selected as winners, if any.  I am happy to help you improve yours, such
as by providing advice in this discussion, and your benchmark results,
etc. may also indirectly help improve escrypt.

Alexander

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