Interface Usage

Accelerator Executable Functions

Functions that should be executable on an accelerator have to be annotated with the execution domain (one of ALPAKA_FN_HOST, ALPAKA_FN_ACC and ALPAKA_FN_HOST_ACC). They most probably also require access to the accelerator data and methods, such as indices and extents as well as functions to allocate shared memory and to synchronize all threads within a block. Therefore the accelerator has to be passed in as a templated constant reference parameter as can be seen in the following code snippet.

template<
    typename TAcc>
ALPAKA_FN_ACC auto doSomethingOnAccelerator(
    TAcc const & acc/*,
    ...*/)                  // Arbitrary number of parameters
-> int                      // Arbitrary return type
{
    //...
}

Kernel Definition

A kernel is a special function object which has to conform to the following requirements:

• it has to fulfill the std::is_trivially_copyable trait (has to be copyable via memcpy)

• the operator() is the kernel entry point * it has to be an accelerator executable function * it has to return void. * its first argument has to be the accelerator (templated for arbitrary accelerator backends).

The following code snippet shows a basic example of a kernel function object.

struct MyKernel
{
    template<
        typename TAcc>       // Templated on the accelerator type.
    ALPAKA_FN_ACC            // Macro marking the function to be executable on all accelerators.
    auto operator()(         // The function / kernel to execute.
        TAcc const & acc/*,  // The specific accelerator implementation.
        ...*/) const         // Must be 'const'.
    -> void
    {
        //...
    }
                      // Class can have members but has to be std::is_trivially_copyable.
                      // Classes must not have pointers or references to host memory!
};

The kernel function object is shared across all threads in all blocks. Due to the block execution order being undefined, there is no safe and consistent way of altering state that is stored inside of the function object. Therefore, the operator() of the kernel function object has to be const and is not allowed to modify any of the object members.

Index and Work Division

The alpaka::workdiv::getWorkDiv and the alpaka::idx::getIdx functions both return a vector of the dimensionality the accelerator has been defined with. They are parametrized by the origin of the calculation as well as the unit in which the values are calculated. For example, alpaka::workdiv::getWorkDiv<alpaka::Grid, alpaka::Threads>(acc) returns a vector with the extents of the grid in units of threads.

Memory Management

The memory allocation function of the alpaka library (alpaka::mem::buf::alloc<TElem>(device, extents)) is uniform for all devices, even for the host device. It does not return raw pointers but reference counted memory buffer objects that remove the necessity for manual freeing and the possibility of memory leaks. Additionally the memory buffer objects know their extents, their pitches as well as the device they reside on. This allows buffers that possibly reside on different devices with different pitches to be copied only by providing the buffer objects as well as the extents of the region to copy (alpaka::mem::view::copy(bufDevA, bufDevB, copyExtents).

Kernel Execution

The following source code listing shows the execution of a kernel by enqueuing the execution task into a queue.

// Define the dimensionality of the task.
using Dim = alpaka::dim::DimInt<1u>;
// Define the type of the indexes.
using Idx = std::size_t;
// Define the accelerator to use.
using Acc = alpaka::acc::AccCpuSerial<Dim, Idx>;
// Select the queue type.
using Queue = alpaka::queue::QueueCpuNonBlocking;

// Select a device to execute on.
auto devAcc(alpaka::pltf::getDevByIdx<alpaka::pltf::PltfCpu>(0));
// Create a queue to enqueue the execution into.
Queue queue(devAcc);

// Create a 1-dimensional work division with 256 blocks a 16 threads.
auto const workDiv(alpaka::workdiv::WorkDivMembers<Dim, Idx>(256u, 16u);
// Create an instance of the kernel function object.
MyKernel kernel;
// Enqueue the execution task into the queue.
alpaka::kernel::exec<Acc>(queue, workDiv, kernel/*, arguments ...*/);

The dimensionality of the task as well as the type for index and extent have to be defined explicitly. Following this, the type of accelerator to execute on, as well as the type of the queue have to be defined. For both of these types instances have to be created. For the accelerator this has to be done indirectly by enumerating the required device via the device manager, whereas the queue can be created directly.

To execute the kernel, an instance of the kernel function object has to be constructed. Following this, an execution task combining the work division (grid and block sizes) with the kernel function object and the bound invocation arguments has to be created. After that this task can be enqueued into a queue for immediate or later execution (depending on the queue used).