vmmlaq_s32 computes a 2x2 int32 tile (2 weight rows x 2 activation
rows) per instruction on 8-deep segments. Tile o and s in pairs,
halving weight traffic and doubling per-instruction work at S>=2.
Four independent accumulators over a 64-deep unroll keep the loop
throughput-bound (a single chained accumulator measures no better
than SDOT: latency-bound). S=1 and all tails (odd o, odd s, I not a
multiple of 16/32) keep the existing SDOT/scalar code, and scales
apply in the same order, so results are bit-identical.
Compile-time gated on __ARM_FEATURE_MATMUL_INT8. The default Darwin
build passes no -mcpu and is byte-identical (still SDOT, IDOT_KERNEL
"neon"). Opt in with ARCH=native (new Darwin Makefile knob, appends
-mcpu=<arch>), which reports IDOT_KERNEL "neon-i8mm". The same gate
lights up on any aarch64 with i8mm (Graviton3+, Grace).
test_idot grows a driver-level exactness check through matmul_qt_ex:
fmt 1 and 2, S in {2,3,4,5,8}, O in {1,2,3,64,65}, I in {16,17,100,
1408}, bitwise float equality against a plain-C reference. Green on
both build flavors.
Measured on an M5 Pro (18 threads, matmul_qt_ex microbenchmark at
GLM-5.2 expert shapes, best of 3 process runs, vs the SDOT baseline):
gateup int4 S=8 499.7 -> 1076.6 GF/s (+115%)
gateup int8 S=8 512.9 -> 1166.3 GF/s (+127%)
down int4 S=8 696.9 -> 1186.0 GF/s (+70%)
S=1 decode rows unchanged (SDOT path untouched)
Michael Denyer
d0c9941a67