CLBlast: The tuned OpenCL BLAS library ================ | | Build status | Tests on Intel CPU | Tests on NVIDIA GPU | Other tests | |-----|-----|-----|-----|-----| | Windows | [![Build Status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/github/cnugteren/clblast?branch=master&svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/CNugteren/clblast) | [![Build Status](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/badges/clblast-windows-intel-i7-4790k.svg)](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/#/builders/clblast-windows-intel-i7-4790k) | [![Build Status](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/badges/clblast-windows-nvidia-k5000.svg)](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/#/builders/clblast-windows-nvidia-k5000) | N/A | | Linux | [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/CNugteren/CLBlast.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/CNugteren/CLBlast/branches) | [![Build Status](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/badges/clblast-linux-intel-e5-2620-v4.svg)](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/#/builders/clblast-linux-intel-e5-2620-v4) | [![Build Status](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/badges/clblast-linux-nvidia-k80.svg)](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/#/builders/clblast-linux-nvidia-k80) | N/A | | OS X | [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/CNugteren/CLBlast.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/CNugteren/CLBlast/branches) | [![Build Status](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/badges/clblast-osx-intel-i5-4278U.svg)](http://ci.arrayfire.org:8010/#/builders/clblast-osx-intel-i5-4278U) | N/A | N/A | CLBlast is a modern, lightweight, performant and tunable OpenCL BLAS library written in C++11. It is designed to leverage the full performance potential of a wide variety of OpenCL devices from different vendors, including desktop and laptop GPUs, embedded GPUs, and other accelerators. CLBlast implements BLAS routines: basic linear algebra subprograms operating on vectors and matrices. See [the CLBlast website](https://cnugteren.github.io/clblast) for performance reports on various devices as well as the latest CLBlast news. The library is not tuned for all possible OpenCL devices: __if out-of-the-box performance is poor, please run the tuners first__. See below for a list of already tuned devices and instructions on how to tune yourself and contribute to future releases of the CLBlast library. See also the [CLBlast feature roadmap](ROADMAP.md) to get an indication of the future of CLBlast. Why CLBlast and not clBLAS or cuBLAS? ------------- Use CLBlast instead of clBLAS: * When you care about achieving maximum performance. * When you want to be able to inspect the BLAS kernels or easily customize them to your needs. * When you run on exotic OpenCL devices for which you need to tune yourself. * When you are still running on OpenCL 1.1 hardware. * When you prefer a C++ API over a C API (C API also available in CLBlast). * When you value an organized and modern C++ codebase. * When you target Intel CPUs and GPUs or embedded devices. * When you can benefit from the increased performance of half-precision fp16 data-types. Use CLBlast instead of cuBLAS: * When you want your code to run on devices other than NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPUs. * When you want to tune for a specific configuration (e.g. rectangular matrix-sizes). * When you sleep better if you know that the library you use is open-source. * When you are using OpenCL rather than CUDA. When not to use CLBlast: * When you run on NVIDIA's CUDA-enabled GPUs only and can benefit from cuBLAS's assembly-level tuned kernels. Getting started ------------- CLBlast can be compiled with minimal dependencies (apart from OpenCL) in the usual CMake-way, e.g.: mkdir build && cd build cmake .. make Detailed instructions for various platforms can be found are [here](doc/installation.md). Like clBLAS and cuBLAS, CLBlast also requires OpenCL device buffers as arguments to its routines. This means you'll have full control over the OpenCL buffers and the host-device memory transfers. CLBlast's API is designed to resemble clBLAS's C API as much as possible, requiring little integration effort in case clBLAS was previously used. Using CLBlast starts by including the C++ header: #include Or alternatively the plain C version: #include Afterwards, any of CLBlast's routines can be called directly: there is no need to initialize the library. The available routines and the required arguments are described in the above mentioned include files and the included [API documentation](doc/api.md). The API is kept as close as possible to the Netlib BLAS and the cuBLAS/clBLAS APIs. For an overview of the supported routines, see [here](doc/routines.md). To get started quickly, a couple of stand-alone example programs are included in the `samples` subfolder. They can optionally be compiled using the CMake infrastructure of CLBlast by providing the `-DSAMPLES=ON` flag, for example as follows: cmake -DSAMPLES=ON .. Afterwards, you can optionally read more about running proper [benchmarks](doc/benchmarking.md) and [tuning the library](doc/tuning.md). Full documentation ------------- More detailed documentation is available in separate files: * [Building and installing](doc/installation.md) * [Supported routines overview](doc/routines.md) * [Performance measuring and benchmarking](doc/benchmarking.md) * [Tuning for better performance](doc/tuning.md) * [Testing the library for correctness](doc/testing.md) * [Bindings / wrappers for other languages](doc/bindings.md) * [More details on the GEMM kernel](doc/details_gemm.md) * [More details on the convolution implementation](doc/details_conv.md) * [Glossary with some terms explained](doc/glossary.md) * [Frequently asked questions (FAQ) and their answers](doc/faq.md) Known issues ------------- Known performance related issues: * Severe performance issues with Beignet v1.3.0 due to missing support for local memory. Please downgrade to v1.2.1 or upgrade to v1.3.1 or newer. * Performance issues on Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Other known issues: * Routines returning an integer are currently not properly tested for half-precision FP16: IHAMAX/IHAMIN/IHMAX/IHMIN * Half-precision FP16 tests might sometimes fail based on order multiplication, i.e. (a * b) * c != (c * b) * a * The AMD APP SDK has a bug causing a conflict with libstdc++, resulting in a segfault when initialising static variables. This has been reported to occur with the CLBlast tuners. * The AMD run-time compiler has a bug causing it to get stuck in an infinite loop. This is reported to happen occasionally when tuning the CLBlast GEMM routine. * AMD Southern Island GPUs might cause wrong results with the amdgpu-pro drivers. Do configure CMake with `AMD_SI_EMPTY_KERNEL_WORKAROUND` to resolve the issue, [see issue #301](https://github.com/CNugteren/CLBlast/issues/301). * Tests might fail on an Intel IvyBridge GPU with the latest Beignet. Please downgrade Beignet to 1.2.1, [see issue #231](https://github.com/CNugteren/CLBlast/issues/231). Contributing ------------- Contributions are welcome in the form of tuning results for OpenCL devices previously untested or pull requests. See [the contributing guidelines](CONTRIBUTING.md) for more details. The main contributing authors (code, pull requests, testing) are: * [Cedric Nugteren](http://cnugteren.github.io) - main author * [Anton Lokhmotov](https://github.com/psyhtest) * [Dragan Djuric](https://github.com/blueberry) * [Marco Hutter](http://marco-hutter.de/) * [Hugh Perkins](https://github.com/hughperkins) * [Gian-Carlo Pascutto](https://github.com/gcp) * [Ivan Shapovalov](https://github.com/intelfx) * [Dimitri Van Assche](https://github.com/dvasschemacq) * [Shehzan Mohammed](https://shehzan10.github.io) * [Marco Cianfriglia](https://github.com/mcian) * [Kodonnell](https://github.com/kodonnell) * [Koichi Akabe](https://github.com/vbkaisetsu) * Everyone else listed as a [GitHub contributor](https://github.com/CNugteren/CLBlast/graphs/contributors) Tuning and testing on a variety of OpenCL devices was made possible by: * [TU/e ES research group](http://www.es.ele.tue.nl/) * [ASCI DAS4 and DAS5](http://www.cs.vu.nl/das4/) * [dividiti](http://www.dividiti.com) * [SURFsara HPC center](http://www.surfsara.com) * [ArrayFire](http://arrayfire.org) * [TomTom](http://www.tomtom.com) * Everyone reporting [tuning results](https://github.com/CNugteren/CLBlast/issues/1) Hardware/software for this project was contributed by: * [HPC research group at the University of Bristol](http://uob-hpc.github.io/zoo/) for access to their GPU zoo * [ArrayFire](http://arrayfire.org) for settings up and supporting Buildbot correctness tests on multiple platforms * [JetBrains](https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/) for supply a free CLion IDE license for CLBlast developers * [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/CNugteren/CLBlast/branches) and [AppVeyor](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/CNugteren/clblast) for free automated build tests for open-source projects More information ------------- Further information on CLBlast is available through the following links: * A 20-minute presentation of CLBlast was given at the GPU Technology Conference in May 2017. A recording is available on the [GTC on-demand website](http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/video/s7280-nugteren-clblast.mp4) (poor audio quality however) and a full slide-set is also available [as PDF](http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/presentation/s7280-cedric-nugteren-clblast.pdf). An updated version was also presented at IWOCL in May 2018. The slide set can be found [here as PDF](https://cnugteren.github.io/downloads/CLBlastIWOCL18.pdf). * More in-depth information and experimental results are also available in a scientific paper titled [CLBlast: A Tuned OpenCL BLAS Library](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.05249) (v1 May 2017, updated to v2 in April 2018). For CLTune, the inspiration for the included auto-tuner, see also the [CLTune: A Generic Auto-Tuner for OpenCL Kernels](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.06503) paper. How to cite this work: Cedric Nugteren. CLBlast: A Tuned OpenCL BLAS Library. In IWOCL'18: International Workshop on OpenCL. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1145/3204919.3204924 Support us ------------- This project started in March 2015 as an evenings and weekends free-time project next to a full-time job for Cedric Nugteren. If you are in the position to support the project by OpenCL-hardware donations or otherwise, please find contact information on the [website of the main author](http://cnugteren.github.io).