boosting parallel reduction OpenCL - opencl

I have an algorithm, performing two-staged parallel reduction on GPU to find the smallest elemnt in a string. I know that there is a hint on how to make it work faster, but I don't know what it is. Any ideas on how I can tune this kernel to speed my program up? It is not necessary to actually change algorithm, may be there are other tricks. All ideas are welcome.
Thank you!
__kernel
void reduce(__global float* buffer,
__local float* scratch,
__const int length,
__global float* result) {
int global_index = get_global_id(0);
float accumulator = INFINITY
while (global_index < length) {
float element = buffer[global_index];
accumulator = (accumulator < element) ? accumulator : element;
global_index += get_global_size(0);
}
int local_index = get_local_id(0);
scratch[local_index] = accumulator;
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
for(int offset = get_local_size(0) / 2;
offset > 0;
offset = offset / 2) {
if (local_index < offset) {
float other = scratch[local_index + offset];
float mine = scratch[local_index];
scratch[local_index] = (mine < other) ? mine : other;
}
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
}
if (local_index == 0) {
result[get_group_id(0)] = scratch[0];
}
}

accumulator = (accumulator < element) ? accumulator : element;
Use fmin function - it is exactly what you need, and it may result in faster code (call to built-in instruction, if available, instead of costly branching)
global_index += get_global_size(0);
What is your typical get_global_size(0)?
Though your access pattern is not very bad (it is coalesced, 128byte chunks for 32-warp) - it is better to access memory sequentially whenever possible. For instance, sequential access may aid memory prefetching (note, OpenCL code can be executed on any device, including CPU).
Consider following scheme: each thread would process range
[ get_global_id(0)*delta , (get_global_id(0)+1)*delta )
It will result in fully sequential access.

Related

Force all threads in a work group to execute the same if/else branch

I would like to use the local/shared memory optimization to reduce global memory access, so I basically have this function
float __attribute__((always_inline)) test_unoptimized(const global float* data, ...) {
// ...
for(uint j=0; j<def_data_length; j++) {
const float x = data[j];
// do sime computation with x, like finding the minimum value ...
}
// ...
return x_min;
}
and do the usual local/shared memory optimization on it:
float __attribute__((always_inline)) test_optimized(const global float* data, ...) {
// ...
const uint lid = get_local_id(0); // shared memory optimization (only works with first ray)
local float cache_x[def_ws];
for(uint j=0; j<def_data_length; j+=def_ws) {
cache_x[lid] = data[j+lid];
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
#pragma unroll
for(uint k=0; k<min(def_ws, def_data_length-j); k++) {
const float x = cache_x[k];
// do sime computation with x, like finding the minimum value ...
}
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
}
// ...
return x_min;
}
Now the difficulty is that test_optimized is called in the kernel only in one of two possible if/else branches. If only some threads in a workgroup execute the else-branch, all other threads must not choose the if-branch for the local memory optimization in test_optimized to work. So I created a workaround: The condition for each thread in the workgroup is atomic_or-ed into an integer and then the integer, which is the same for all threads, is checked for branching. This ensures that, if 1 or more threads in the thread block choose the else-branch, all the others do too.
kernel void test_kernel(const global float* data, global float* result...) {
const uint n = get_global_id(0);
// ...
const bool condition = ...; // here I get some condition based on the thread ID n and global data
local uint condition_any; // make sure all threads within a workgroup are in the if/else part
condition_any = 0u;
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
atomic_or(&condition_any, condition);
barrier(CLK_LOCAL_MEM_FENCE);
if(condition_any==0u) {
// if-part is very short
result = 0;
return;
} else {
// else-part calls test_optimized function
const float x_min = test_optimized(data, ...);
result = condition ? x_min : 0;
}
}
The above code works flawlessly and is about 25% faster than with the test_unoptimized function. But atomically jamming a bit into the same local memory from all threads in the workgroup seems a bit like a hack to me and it only runs efficiently for small workgroup size (def_ws) 32, 64 or 128, but not 256 or greater.
Is this trick used in other codes and does it have a name?
If not: Is there a better way to do it?
With OpenCL 1.2 or older, I don't think there's a way to do this any faster. (I'm not aware of any relevant vendor extensions, but check your implementation's list for anything promising.)
With OpenCL 2.0+, you can use workgroup functions, in this case specifically work_group_any() for this sort of thing.

Use Comment to avoid OpenCL Error on NVIDIA

I wrote the following code for my test NVIDIA and AMD GPUs
kernel void computeLayerOutput_Rolled(
global Layer* layers,
global float* weights,
global float* output,
constant int* restrict netSpec,
int layer)
{
const int n = get_global_size(0);
const int nodeNumber = get_global_id(0); //There will be an offset depending on the layer we are operating on
int numberOfWeights;
float t;
//getPosition(i, netSpec, &layer, &nodeNumber);
numberOfWeights = layers[layer].nodes[nodeNumber].numberOfWeights;
//if (sizeof(Layer) > 60000) // This is the extra code add for nvidia
// exit(0);
t = 0;
for (unsigned int j = 0; j != numberOfWeights; ++j)
t += threeD_access(weights, layer, nodeNumber, j, MAXSIZE, MAXSIZE) *
twoD_access(output, layer-1, j, MAXSIZE);
twoD_access(output, layer, nodeNumber, MAXSIZE) = sigmoid(t);
}
At the beginning, I did not add the code that checking the size of Layer, and it works on AMD Kalindi GPU, but crash and report an error code -36 on NVIDIA Tesla C2075.
Since I had rewritten the struct type Layer and decreased the size of it a lot before, I decided to check the size of Layer to determine whether this struct defined well in kernel code. Then I added this code
if (sizeof(Layer) > 60000)
exit(0);
Then it is OK on NVIDIA. However, the strange thing is, when I add // before this just as the given code above, it still works. (I believe I do not need to make clean && make when I rewrite something in kernel code, but I still did it) Nevertheless, when I roll back to the version not contains this comment, it fails and the error code -36 appears again. It really puzzles me. I think two versions of my code are identical, isn't it?

Simple Vector Geometric Progression Design in OpenCL

I'm new to OpenCL and in order to get a better grasp of a few concepts I contrived a simple example of a geometric progression as follows (emphasis on contrived):
An array of N values and N coefficients (whose values could be
anything, but in the example they all are the same) are allocated.
M steps are performed in sequence where each value in the values array
is multiplied by its corresponding coefficient in the coefficients
array and assigned as the new value in the values array. Each step needs to fully complete before the next step can complete. I know this part is a bit contrived, but this is a requirement I want to enforce to help my understanding of OpenCL.
I'm only interested in the values in the values array after the final step has completed.
Here is the very simple OpenCL kernel (MultiplyVectors.cl):
__kernel void MultiplyVectors (__global float4* x, __global float4* y, __global float4* result)
{
int i = get_global_id(0);
result[i] = x[i] * y[i];
}
And here is the host program (main.cpp):
#include <CL/cl.hpp>
#include <vector>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
int main ()
{
auto context = cl::Context (CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU);
auto *sourceFile = fopen("MultiplyVectors.cl", "r");
if (sourceFile == nullptr)
{
perror("Couldn't open the source file");
return 1;
}
fseek(sourceFile, 0, SEEK_END);
const auto sourceSize = ftell(sourceFile);
auto *sourceBuffer = new char [sourceSize + 1];
sourceBuffer[sourceSize] = '\0';
rewind(sourceFile);
fread(sourceBuffer, sizeof(char), sourceSize, sourceFile);
fclose(sourceFile);
auto program = cl::Program (context, cl::Program::Sources {std::make_pair (sourceBuffer, sourceSize + 1)});
delete[] sourceBuffer;
const auto devices = context.getInfo<CL_CONTEXT_DEVICES> ();
program.build (devices);
auto kernel = cl::Kernel (program, "MultiplyVectors");
const size_t vectorSize = 1024;
float coeffs[vectorSize] {};
for (size_t i = 0; i < vectorSize; ++i)
{
coeffs[i] = 1.000001;
}
auto coeffsBuffer = cl::Buffer (context, CL_MEM_READ_ONLY | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR, sizeof (coeffs), coeffs);
float values[vectorSize] {};
for (size_t i = 0; i < vectorSize; ++i)
{
values[i] = static_cast<float> (i);
}
auto valuesBuffer = cl::Buffer (context, CL_MEM_READ_WRITE | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR, sizeof (values), values);
kernel.setArg (0, coeffsBuffer);
kernel.setArg (1, valuesBuffer);
kernel.setArg (2, valuesBuffer);
auto commandQueue = cl::CommandQueue (context, devices[0]);
for (size_t i = 0; i < 1000000; ++i)
{
commandQueue.enqueueNDRangeKernel (kernel, cl::NDRange (0), cl::NDRange (vectorSize / 4), cl::NullRange);
}
printf ("All kernels enqueued. Waiting to read buffer after last kernel...");
commandQueue.enqueueReadBuffer (valuesBuffer, CL_TRUE, 0, sizeof (values), values);
return 0;
}
What I'm basically asking is for advice on how to best optimize this OpenCL program to run on a GPU. I have the following questions based on my limited OpenCL experience to get the conversation going:
Could I be handling the buffers better? I'd like to minimize any
unnecessary ferrying of data between the host and the GPU.
What's the optimal work group configuration (in general at least, I
know this can very by GPU)? I'm not actually sharing any data
between work items and it doesn't seem like I'd benefit from work
groups much here, but just in case.
Should I be allocating and loading anything into local memory for a
work group (if that would at all makes sense)?
I'm currently enqueing one kernel for each step, which will create a
work item for each 4 floats to take advantage of a hypothetical GPU with a SIMD
width of 128 bits. I'm attempting to enqueue all of this
asynchronously (although I'm noticing the Nvidia implementation I have
seems to block each enqueue until the kernel is complete) at once
and then wait on the final one to complete. Is there a whole better
approach to this that I'm missing?
Is there a design that would allow for only one call to
enqueueNDRangeKernel (instead of one call per step) while
maintaining the ability for each step to be efficiently processed in
parallel?
Obviously I know that the example problem I'm solving can be done in much better ways, but I wanted to have as simple of an example as possible that illustrated a vector of values being operated on in a series of steps where each step has to be completed fully before the next. Any help and pointers on how to best go about this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

OpenCL on Xeon Phi: 2D Convolution Experience - OpenCL vs OpenMP

The performance of Xeon Phi benchmarked with 2D convolution in opnecl seems much better than an openmp implementation even with compiler-enabled vectorization. Openmp version was run in phi native mode, and timing measured only computation part: For-loop. For the opencl implementation, timing was only for kernel computation as well: no data transfer included. OpenMp-enbaled version was tested with 2,4,60,120,240 threads. - 240 threads gave the best performance for a balanced thread affinity setting. But Opencl was around 17x better even for the 240-thread openmp baseline with pragma-enbled vectorization is source code. Input image size is for 1024x1024 up to 16384x16384, and filter size of 3x3 up to 17x17. In call runs, opencl was better than openmp. Is this an expected speedup of opencl?? Seems too good to be true.
EDIT:
Compilation (openmp)
icc Convolve.cpp -fopenmp -mmic -O3 -vec-report1 -o conv.mic
Convolve.cpp(71): (col. 17) remark: LOOP WAS VECTORIZED
Source (Convole.cpp):
void Convolution_Threaded(float * pInput, float * pFilter, float * pOutput,
const int nInWidth, const int nWidth, const int nHeight,
const int nFilterWidth, const int nNumThreads)
{
#pragma omp parallel for num_threads(nNumThreads)
for (int yOut = 0; yOut < nHeight; yOut++)
{
const int yInTopLeft = yOut;
for (int xOut = 0; xOut < nWidth; xOut++)
{
const int xInTopLeft = xOut;
float sum = 0;
for (int r = 0; r < nFilterWidth; r++)
{
const int idxFtmp = r * nFilterWidth;
const int yIn = yInTopLeft + r;
const int idxIntmp = yIn * nInWidth + xInTopLeft;
#pragma ivdep //discards any data dependencies assumed by compiler
#pragma vector aligned //all data accessed in the loop is properly aligned
for (int c = 0; c < nFilterWidth; c++)
{
const int idxF = idxFtmp + c;
const int idxIn = idxIntmp + c;
sum += pFilter[idxF]*pInput[idxIn];
}
}
const int idxOut = yOut * nWidth + xOut;
pOutput[idxOut] = sum;
}
}
}
Source 2 (convolve.cl)
__kernel void Convolve(const __global float * pInput,
__constant float * pFilter,
__global float * pOutput,
const int nInWidth,
const int nFilterWidth)
{
const int nWidth = get_global_size(0);
const int xOut = get_global_id(0);
const int yOut = get_global_id(1);
const int xInTopLeft = xOut;
const int yInTopLeft = yOut;
float sum = 0;
for (int r = 0; r < nFilterWidth; r++)
{
const int idxFtmp = r * nFilterWidth;
const int yIn = yInTopLeft + r;
const int idxIntmp = yIn * nInWidth + xInTopLeft;
for (int c = 0; c < nFilterWidth; c++)
{
const int idxF = idxFtmp + c;
const int idxIn = idxIntmp + c;
sum += pFilter[idxF]*pInput[idxIn];
}
}
const int idxOut = yOut * nWidth + xOut;
pOutput[idxOut] = sum;
}
Result of OpenMP (in comparison with OpenCL):
image filter exec Time (ms)
OpenMP 2048x2048 3x3 23.4
OpenCL 2048x2048 3x3 1.04*
*Raw kernel execution time. Data transfer time over PCI bus not included.
Previously: (with #pragma ivdep and #pragma vector aligned for inner inner-most loop):
Compiler output:
Convolve.cpp(24): (col. 17) remark: LOOP WAS VECTORIZED
Program output:
120 Cores: 0.0087 ms
After advice by #jprice (with #pragma simd on horizontal-wise data):
Compiler output:
Convolve.cpp(24): (col. 9) remark: **SIMD** LOOP WAS VECTORIZED
Program output:
120 Cores: 0.00305
OpenMP now 2.8X faster compared to its previous execution. A fair comparison can now be made with OpenCL!
Thanks jprice and to everyone who contributed. Learnt huge lessons from you all.
EDIT:
Here are my results and comparison:
image filter exec Time (ms)
OpenMP 2048x2048 3x3 4.3
OpenCL 2048x2048 3x3 1.04
Speedup: 4.1X
Indeed OpenCL can be this faster than OpenMP ?
Intel's OpenCL implementation will use what they call "implicit vectorisation" in order to take advantage of vector floating point units. This involves mapping work-items onto SIMD lanes. In your example, each work-item is processing a single pixel, which means that each hardware thread will be processing 16 pixels at a time using the Xeon Phi's 512-bit vector units.
By contrast, your OpenMP code is parallelising across pixels, and then vectorising the computation within a pixel. This is almost certainly where the performance difference is coming from.
In order to get ICC to vectorize your OpenMP code in a manner that is similar to the implicitly vectorised OpenCL code, you should remove your #pragma ivdep and #pragma vector aligned statements from the innermost loop, and instead just place a #pragma simd in front of the horizontal pixel loop:
#pragma omp parallel for num_threads(nNumThreads)
for (int yOut = 0; yOut < nHeight; yOut++)
{
const int yInTopLeft = yOut;
#pragma simd
for (int xOut = 0; xOut < nWidth; xOut++)
{
When I compile this with ICC, it reports that it is successfully vectorising the desired loop.
Your OpenMP program use one thread for a row of image.The pixels in the same row are vectorized. It equals you have one dimension workgroup in OpenCL. Each workgroup process one row of image. But in your OpenCL code, it seems that you have a two dimension workgroup. Each workgroup(mapped into one thread on phi) is processing a BLOCK of the image, not a ROW of image. The cache hit will be different.

Copy portion of global array to local memory

I'm using PyOpenCL to let my GPU do some regression on a large data set. Right now the GPU is slower than the CPU, probably because there is a loop that requires access to the global memory during each increment (I think...). The data set is too large to store into the local memory, but each loop does not require the entire data set, so I want to copy a portion of this array to the local memory. My question is: how do I do this? In Python one can easily slice a portion, but I don't think that's possible in OpenCL.
Here's the OpenCL code I'm using, if you spot any more potential optimisations, please shout:
__kernel void gpu_slope(__global double * data, __global double * time, __global int * win_results, const unsigned int N, const unsigned int Nmax, const double e, __global double * result) {
__local unsigned int n, length, leftlim, rightlim, i;
__local double sumx, sumy, x, y, xx, xy, invlen, a, b;
n = get_global_id(0);
leftlim = win_results[n*2];
rightlim = win_results[n*2+1];
sumx = 0;
sumy = 0;
xy = 0;
xx = 0;
length = rightlim - leftlim;
for(i = leftlim; i <= rightlim; i++) {
x = time[i]; /* I think this is fetched from global memory */
y = data[i];
sumx += x;
sumy += y;
xy += x*y;
xx += x*x;
}
invlen = 1.0/length;
a = xy-(sumx*sumy)*invlen;
b = xx-(sumx*sumx)*invlen;
result[n] = a/b;
}
I'm new to OpenCL, so please bear with me. Thanks!
The main(ish) point in GPU computing is trying to utilize hardware parallelism as much as possible. Instead of using the loop, launch a kernel with a different thread for every one of the coordinates. Then, either use atomic operations (the quick-to-code, but slow-performance option), or parallel reduction, for the various sums.
AMD has A tutorial on this subject. (NVidia does too, but theirs would be CUDA-based...)
You will find examples copying to local memory in PyOpenCL's examples folder: https://github.com/inducer/pyopencl/tree/master/examples
I recommend you read, run, and customize several of these examples to learn.
I also recommend the Udacity parallel programming course: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs344 This course will help solidify your grasp of fundamental OpenCL concepts.

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