opencl kernel implementing a simple mathematical formula - opencl

Question

What are the best practices to consider when implementing an error function defined as
using an OpenCL kernel?
A, B and C are 3D float arrays and \delta is the Kronecker delta.
Typical values for (N, M) = (2, 7) or (N, M) = (3, 23).
The naive implementation (given below) is by several orders of magnitude slower than the CPU version.
Thanks,
T.
__kernel void cl_bilinear_alg(
__global float * A,
__global float * B,
__global float * C,
__global const int M,
__global const int N,
__global float * R)
{
int index = get_global_id(0);
int N2 = N * N;
int mat_offset = index * N2 * M;
float s1, s2, err = 0.0f;
for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
{
for (int j = 0; j < N; ++j)
{
for (int k = 0; k < N; ++k)
{
for (int l = 0; l < N; ++l)
{
for (int m = 0; m < N; ++m)
{
for (int n = 0; n < N; ++n)
{
s1 = (n == i) * (j == k) * (l == m);
s2 = 0;
for (int r = 0; r < M; ++r)
{
s2 += A[mat_offset + r * N2 + i * N + j] *
B[mat_offset + r * N2 + k * N + l] *
C[mat_offset + r * N2 + m * N + n];
}
err += (s2 - s1) * (s2 - s1);
}
}
}
}
}
}
R[index] = err;
}
UPDATE
The primary target is a Geforce GTX 570, though this could change in the future.
UPDATE2
After vectorizing the code, moving bits to local memory, unrolling some loops and passing precomputed Kronecker products explicitly to the kernel the code looks as follows:
__kernel void cl_bilinear_alg(__global const float * A,
__global const float * B,
__global const float * C,
__global const int N,
__global const int M,
__global const float * kron,
__global float * R)
{
__private int index = get_global_id(0);
__private int cM = ceil(M / 4.0f);
__private int N2 = N*N;
__private int N4 = N2*N2;
__private int mat_offset = index * N2 * M;
__private float s1, s2, err = 0;
__private float4 vzero = (float4) (0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
__local float4 va[54], vb[54], vc[54];
for (int ij = 0, k = 0; ij < N2; ++ij)
{
int r = 0;
for (; r < M / 4; r += 4, ++k)
{
int idx0 = mat_offset + N2 * r + ij;
int idx1 = mat_offset + N2 * (r + 1) + ij;
int idx2 = mat_offset + N2 * (r + 2) + ij;
int idx3 = mat_offset + N2 * (r + 3) + ij;
va[k] = (float4) (A[idx0], A[idx1], A[idx2], A[idx3]);
vb[k] = (float4) (B[idx0], B[idx1], B[idx2], B[idx3]);
vc[k] = (float4) (C[idx0], C[idx1], C[idx2], C[idx3]);
}
if (M % 4)
{
float buffa[4] = {0}, buffb[4] = {0}, buffc[4] = {0};
for (; r < M; ++r)
{
int idx = mat_offset + N2 * r + ij;
buffa[r % 4] = A[idx];
buffb[r % 4] = B[idx];
buffc[r % 4] = C[idx];
}
va[k] = vload4(0, buffa);
vb[k] = vload4(0, buffb);
vc[k++] = vload4(0, buffc);
}
}
for (int ij = 0; ij < N2; ++ij)
{
for (int kl = 0; kl < N2; ++kl)
{
for (int mn = 0; mn < N2; ++mn)
{
s1 = kron[ij * N4 + kl * N2 + mn];
s2 = 0;
for (int r = 0; r < cM; ++r)
s2 += dot(va[cM * ij + r], mad(vb[cM * kl + r], vc[cM * mn + r], vzero));
//the most expensive line
err += (s2 - s1) * (s2 - s1);
}
}
}
R[index] = err;
}
By applying these changes a 4x speed increase was observed compared to the naive implementation. Furthermore, it was revealed that the most expensive line of all is the error update, i.e.
err += (s2 - s1) * (s2 - s1);
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Typically you'd want to break some of those loops up... a lot...
- the outer loops become split over multiple workgroups, which run on their own compute unit (there are around 16 compute units per GPU, not many)
- the next few loops would be split over different threads within each workgroup
If you try to run all the calculations all at the same time, they will all try to load the data into memory at the same time, and this will simply thrash horribly. GPUs have very limited memory. Sure, the global memory sounds large enough, several gigabytes, but the global GPU memory is slow. You want to get the data into the local memory, which is per compute unit, and is of the order of 32-64KB, not much more than that.
You'd typically want to somehow divide your task into very small tasks, and do the following, for each workgroup:
load a chunk of memory from global memory into local memory
the whole workgroup warp of threads can participate in doing the copy, using coallesced access
do work on this memory, like doing some sums, and so on
write the results back to global memory
then, can either iterate a bit, or simply exit, and leave other workgroups to handle other bits of the work
On the CPU, the mathematical operations tend to be a major bottleneck, but on the GPU, generally the cores are mostly spinning uselessly, whilst waiting for data to gradually get to them, from global memory. Whatever you can do to optimize this process, prevent conflicting demands, and so on, will make the kernel significantly faster.