I want to intercept at PTX level of opencl programs on NVIDIA GPU.
I imagine the routine would probably look like this.
First, I write an opencl program (both host and device code), using NVIDIA compiler to produce respective ptx code. Then I write what I want to do by modifying the PTX code (please don't ask why I didn't do this on the device C code - I have some reasons for it). But problem is, after being modified, how do I compile this PTX code to binary code?
You can use ptxas, which is included in the CUDA toolkit. It compiles .ptx into .cubin, which can then be loaded with the driver API.
Related
I want to know, when the cuda code gets compiled? I mean is it possible to know the values of parameters of the cuda kernel which is given in the command line argument of host code run time? Is it possible to compile cuda code during run time of host code ?
In typical usage of the CUDA runtime API, CUDA device code gets compiled when you pass a file containing CUDA device code to nvcc, the CUDA compiler driver engine.
CUDA device code can/will be compiled at run-time using either the driver API or using the CUDA NVRTC mechanism. There is documentation for each of these approaches, CUDA sample codes for each of these approaches, and various questions here on the cuda SO tag for each.
When you use the CUDA driver API, the device source code you will present for compilation at run-time is in the form of PTX, a CUDA intermediate language.
For compilation of typical CUDA C++ device code at runtime, you would use the NVRTC mechanism.
It is possible to use nvprof to access/read bank conflicts counters for CUDA exec:
nvprof --events shared_st_bank_conflict,shared_ld_bank_conflict my_cuda_exe
However it does not work for the code that uses OpenCL rather then CUDA code.
Is there any way to extract these counters outside nvprof from OpenCL environment, maybe directly from ptx?
Alternatively is there any way to convert PTX assembly generated from nvidia OpenCL compiler using clGetProgramInfo with CL_PROGRAM_BINARIES to CUDA kernel and run it using cuModuleLoadDataEx and thus be able to use nvprof?
Is there any simulation CPU backend that allows to set such parameters as bank size etc?
Additional option:
Use converter of opencl to cuda code inlcuding features missing from CUDA like vloadn/vstoren, float16, and other various accessors. #define work only for simple kernels. Is there any tool that provides it?
Is there any way to extract these counters outside nvprof from OpenCL
environment, maybe directly from ptx?
No. Nor is there in CUDA, nor in compute shaders in OpenGL, DirectX or Vulkan.
Alternatively is there any way to convert PTX assembly generated from
nvidia OpenCL compiler using clGetProgramInfo with
CL_PROGRAM_BINARIES to CUDA kernel and run it using
cuModuleLoadDataEx and thus be able to use nvprof?
No. OpenCL PTX and CUDA PTX are not the same and can't be used interchangeably
Is there any simulation CPU backend that allows to set such parameters
as bank size etc?
Not that I am aware of.
I'm writing a single header library that executes a cuda kernel. I was wondering if there is a way to get around the <<<>>> syntax, or get C source output from nvcc?
You can avoid the host language extensions by using the CUDA driver API instead. It is a little more verbose and you will require a little more boilerplate code to manage the context, but it is not too difficult.
Conventionally, you would compile to PTX or a binary payload to load at runtime, however NVIDIA now also ship an experimental JIT CUDA C compiler library, libNVVM, which you could try if you want JIT from source.
This is a bit of silly question, but I'm wondering if CUDA uses an interpreter or a compiler?
I'm wondering because I'm not quite sure how CUDA manages to get source code to run on two cards with different compute capabilities.
From Wikipedia:
Programmers use 'C for CUDA' (C with Nvidia extensions and certain restrictions), compiled through a PathScale Open64 C compiler.
So, your answer is: it uses a compiler.
And to touch on the reason it can run on multiple cards (source):
CUDA C/C++ provides an abstraction, it's a means for you to express how you want your program to execute. The compiler generates PTX code which is also not hardware specific. At runtime the PTX is compiled for a specific target GPU - this is the responsibility of the driver which is updated every time a new GPU is released.
These official documents CUDA C Programming Guide and The CUDA Compiler Driver (NVCC) explain all the details about the compilation process.
From the second document:
nvcc mimics the behavior of the GNU compiler gcc: it accepts a range
of conventional compiler options, such as for defining macros and
include/library paths, and for steering the compilation process.
Not just limited to cuda , shaders in directx or opengl are also complied to some kind of byte code and converted to native code by the underlying driver.
1)I want to extract ptx code from a CUDA exe and use that kernel code in another program .
Is there a way to identify the kernel ptx code from an exe. I know they are arbitrarily laid out in an exe file data section.
I learnt that in MAC executables the ptx kernels start with .version and ends with a null string. Is there something like that for win exe(PE) files. I guess i need to parse the exe file , gather ptx statements one at a time and group them together as kernels. But I dont know how i would go about it. some help would get me started. I also find a .nvFatBi section in Cuda exe. What is that supposed to be?
2)I also learnt that there are global constructors which register the cubin with the cuda runtime. I dont understand this part completely. Does the function cudaRegisterFatBinary come into play here. If so how can I use this ptx to supply the pointer to the cudaRegisterFatBinary ? I understand i have to compile the ptx to cubin file . is it possible programatically? In short i want to emulate the nvcc itself in some sense.
Try: cuobjdump --dump-ptx [executable-name]