Altera Arria V latest software for OpenCL - opencl

I recently bought a new Altera Arria V board 1. I am planning to use it to design a certain application using OpenCL.
Unfortunately, I didn't find so far the required software to get it work. I mean by that the Altera RTE for OpenCL and the required driver (aclsoc_drv.ko).
I would be grateful if you could help me how I can find the latest software!
Thank you all

You need to read the manual about how to install and what you need to install which you should be able to find here: Arria V SoC Development Kit and SoC Embedded Design Suite
OpenCL runtime environment and SDK you can find here: Altera SDK for OpenCL
Also Altera OpenCL guides will be helpful.

If I understand to your problem correctly, you are missing the required BSP and the base design to support OpenCL development for your Arria V board.
For this problem, please check with the board vendor (customer support) for the availability of the two items.
To be able to develop under Altera OpenCL framework, you need to load a basic design file on to the flash ROM / configuration device on the board. This is to provide some necessary IP support for the basic PCIe and memory access. It is usually provided with the BSP from the board vendor.
Along with the basic design file, drivers should be included as well for your host to recognise the OpenCL device.
Until you sort out the above missing parts, your OpenCL development environment should be up and running. Good luck!

Related

OpenCL with ARM NEON (without Mali GPU) available?

I working on customized SoC with ARM Cortex-A9.
It supports NEON, but do not has Mali GPU.
With system, can I use OpenCL with NEON?
I found OpenCL SDK for Mali at ARM website.
(http://malideveloper.arm.com/resources/sdks/mali-opencl-sdk/)
but there isn't any words support NEON.
ARM have previously announced OpenCL for NEON, but these were not directly available to the public, and the 'opencl-for-neon' link on that page now just redirects to the Mali developer page.
You could instead use pocl, an open source implementation of OpenCL that runs on many different platforms, include ARM CPUs with NEON.
There exist some third party research work on this topic
they created a framework for OpenCL to make use of NEON instructions
check here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261176555_OpenCL_framework_for_ARM_processors_with_NEON_support

Use OpenCL on AMD APU but use discrete GPU for the X server

Is it possible to enable OpenCL on an A10-7800 without using it for the X server? I have a Linux box that I use for GPGPU programming. A discrete GEForce 740 card is used for both the X server and running OpenCL & Cuda programs I develop. I would also like the option of running OpenCL code on the APU's integrated GPU cores.
Everything I've read so far implies that if I want to use the APU for OpenCL, I have to install Catalyst and, AFAIK, that means using it for the X server. Is this true? Would there be an advantage to using the APU for my X server and using the GEForce solely for GPGPU code?
I had a similar goal, so I've built a system with AMD APU (4 regular cores + 6 GPUs) and Nvidia discrete graphics board. Sorry to say it wasn't easy to make it work, so I asked a question on the Ask Ubuntu forum, didn't get any answers, experimented a lot with hardware and software setup, and finally have posted my own answer to my question.
I'll describe my setup again here - who knows, what might happen with my auto-answered question on the Ask Ubuntu?
At first, I had to enable the integrated graphics hardware via a BIOS flag. This flag is called IGFX Multi-Monitor on my motherboard (ASUS A88X-PRO).
The second step was to find a right mix of a low-level graphics driver and high-level OpenCL implementation. The low-level driver for AMD processors is called AMD Catalyst and has a file name fglrx. I didn't install this driver from the Ubuntu software center - instead I used a version 15.302, directly downloaded from the AMD site. I had to install a significant number of prerequisites for this driver. The most important finding was that I had to skip running the aticonfig command after the fglrx installation - this command actually configures the X server to use this driver for graphics output, and I didn't want that.
Then I've installed the AMD SDK Ver 3.0 (release 130.136, earlier releases didn't work with my fglrx) - it's the OpenCL implementation from AMD. The clinfo command reports both CPUs and GPUs with correct number of cores now.
So, I have a hybrid AMD processor, supported by the OpenCL, with all the graphics output, supported by a discrete graphics card with Nvidia processor.
Good luck!
I maintain a Linux server (OpenSUSE, but the distribution shouldn't matter) containing both NVIDIA and (a discrete) AMD GPU. It's headless, so technically I do not know whether the X server will create additional problems, but I don't think so. You can always configure xorg.conf to use exactly the driver you want. Or for that matter: install Catalyst, but delete the X server driver file itself, which is not the same thing that you need for OpenCL.
There is one problem with a mixed-vendor system that I noticed, however: AMDs OpenCL driver (ICD) will go spelunking for a libGL.so library, I guess in order to do OpenCL/OpenGL-interop. If it finds any of the NVIDIA-supplied libGL.so's, it will get confused and hang - at least on my machine. I "solved" this by deleting all libGL.so's (I do not need it on a headless compute server), but that might not be an acceptable solution for you. Maybe you can arrange things such that the AMD-supplied libGL.so's take precedence, possibly by installing the AMD driver last.

Can the Intel Edison MCU be used without the standard Yocto linux?

Is it possible to use the MCU on the Intel Edison without having the standard Yocto Linux installed?
At the moment I have downloaded the specific Eclipse MCU SDK and have been using that to program the MCU on the Edison. I have the newest version (from Intel's website) of Yocto on the Edison as well.
If I switch to e.g. Emutex's Ubilinux will I still be able to use the MCU in any way? With or without the standard Eclipse MCU SDK?
The main reason I want to switch to Ubilinux is to have an easier time using ROS (Robot Operating System), but this is not strictly relevant to the question.
The Quark core runs its own Zephyr based OS, but I do expect some sort of support to be required on the Linux side too for intercommunication between CPUs. As dwelch said, the required drivers might be there for Ubilinux too.
If you are specific about ROS someone is working on adding it to Yocto. A quick google search also returned an unfinished project of ROS on Edison.

OpenCL for custom systems on SoC prototyping board

Is it possible to run OpenCL on a system designed by a user on a SoC prototyping board? To be more specific, I have a ZedBoard (Xilinx Zynq) that has Dual ARM cores and a Programmable Logic (PL) Area. If I design a simple system of my own that has a video processing accelerator implemented in the logic area, an ARM core and an AXI interconnect, what do I have to do to provide OpenCL support for this simple system? (In this simple system, the ARM core could be the "Host" and the video processing accelerator could be the "device").
I am a student and I have only some basic knowledge about OpenCL. I have researched about my question and have only ended up confusing myself. What are the things that have to be done to provide OpenCL support for a SoC? I understand that this may be a big project, but I need a guideline where to start and how to proceed.
what do I have to do to provide OpenCL support for this simple system?
Implement a OpenCL platform that makes either use of your ARM CPU or the FPGA (or both). I'd say that is pretty much impossible for you; ARM would surely offer one for the CPU if it was easy (and they definitely have the financial means to employ capable engineers/computer scientists), and implementing accelerators on an FPGA requires in-depth knowledge of FPGA development, as well as compiler theory and experience in systems design. I don't want to sound mean, but you seem to have none of these three.
You asked where to get started; I recommend just writing a first accelerator that e.g. adds up a vector of numbers; as soon as you have that, you will have a clearer idea of your task.
If you want to have a look at a reference: The Ettus USRP E310 is a zynq-based SDR device. Ettus has a technology called RFNoC, which allows users to write their own blocks to push data through. Notice that this took quite a few engineers and quite some time to get started. Notice further that it's much easier than implementing something that converts OpenCL to FPGA implementations.
If you have access to the Xilinx tools: Vivado HLS 15.1 System Edition should compile OpenCL kernels. This will also be included in the SDAccel tool suite.
Source: UG973: Vivado Design Suite User Guide Release Notes, Installation,and Licensing
An alternative might be switching to Altera. They provide some good examples for the Altera Cyclone V SoC which is comparable to Xilinx Zynq devices (also includes ARM Cortex-A9) :
AlteraSDK for OpenCL
I am also a student and my current project is also going on a similar direction, i have successfully installed a version of opencl called POCL on the zedboard, it successfully detects the arm cpu of the zedboard. To install pocl, you need llvm and a horde of other things as well. but basic steps to get pocl up on the zedboard are given below:-
Installing pocl:
http://www.hosseinabady.com/install-pocl-opencl
running example:
http://www.hosseinabady.com/embedded-system-by-examples/opencl_embedded_system/opencl-vector-addition
Lots of dependency: can resolved easily
but LLVM make sure you install 3.4 version for pocl 0.9
Steps to install llvm
https://github.com/pacs-course/pacs/wiki/Instructions-to-install-clang-3.1-on-ubuntu-12.04.1-and-12.10
POCL 0.9 is successfully working for me, as you do the installation you will face many other missing dependencies like hwloc, mesa libraries, open gl/cl headers icd loaders i hope you can resolve them as its a very big list to put up in stack overflow.
In order to detect your fpga as an open cl device, thats not going to be a trivial thing to do, you can refer to this link question i posted on github
https://github.com/pocl/pocl/issues/285
and also a research paper published by hosseinbady found on the publications link on the pocl website
http://pocl.sourceforge.net/publications.html
hope this helps you
Try the ARM OpenCL SDK. The Zedboard has an ARM A9 CPU, this should have a NEON SIMD vector unit http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php which can run OpenCL. See http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-technologies/opencl-for-neon.php.
The Zedboard isn't listed as an OpenCL conformant platform https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#opencl.
So there is a chance the ARM driver will not work.
Good luck!
If still relevant, try this paper OpenCL on ZYNQ [PDF]
Also note that Zynq-7000 is listed on https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#opencl ( OpenCL_1_0 ), hence the compatibility.

Need to install opencl for CPU and GPU platforms?

I have a system with an NVidia graphics card and I'm looking at using openCL to replace openMP for some small on CPU tasks (thanks to VS2010 making openMP useless)
Since I have NVidia's opencl SDK installed clGetPlatformIDs() only returns a single platform (NVidia's) and so only a single device (the GPU).
Do I need to also install Intel's openCL sdk to get access to the CPU platform?
Shouldn't the CPU platform always be available - I mean, how do you NOT have a cpu?
How do you manage to build against two openCL SDKs simultaneously?
You need to have a SDK which provides interface to CPU. nVidia does not, AMD and Intel's SDKs do; in my case the one from Intel is significantly (something like 10x) faster, which might due to bad programming on my part however.
You don't need the SDK for programs to run, just the runtime. In Linux, each vendor installs a file in /etc/OpenCL/vendors/*.icd, which contains path of the runtime library to use. That is scanned by the OpenCL runtime you link to (libOpenCL.so), which then calls each of the vendor's libs when querying for devices on that particular platform.
In Linux, the GPU drivers install OpenCL runtime automatically, the Intel runtime is likely to be downloadable separately from the SDK, but is part of the SDK as well, of course.
Today i finally got around to trying to start doing openCl development and wow... it is not straight forward at all.
There's an AMD sdk, there's an intel sdk, there's an nvidia sdk, each with their own properties (CPU only vs GPU only vs specific video card support only perhaps?)
There may be valid technical reasons for it having to be this way but i really wish there was just one sdk, and that when programming perhaps you could specify GPU / CPU tasks, or that maybe it would use whatever resources made most sense / preformed best or SOMETHING.
Time to dive in though I guess... trying to decide though if i go CPU or GPU. I have a pretty new 4000$ alienware laptop with SLI video cards, but then also an 8 core cpu so yeah... guess ill have to try a couple sdk's and see which preforms best for my needs?
Not sure what end users of my applications would do though... it doesnt seem like they can flip a switch to make it run on cpu or gpu instead.
The OpenCL landscape really needs some help...

Resources