llvm/docs/CompileCudaWithLLVM.rst

=========================
Compiling CUDA with clang
=========================

.. contents::
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Introduction
============

This document describes how to compile CUDA code with clang, and gives some
details about LLVM and clang's CUDA implementations.

This document assumes a basic familiarity with CUDA. Information about CUDA
programming can be found in the
`CUDA programming guide
<http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-c-programming-guide/index.html>`_.

Compiling CUDA Code
===================

Prerequisites
-------------

CUDA is supported in llvm 3.9, but it's still in active development, so we
recommend you `compile clang/LLVM from HEAD
<http://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html>`_.

Before you build CUDA code, you'll need to have installed the appropriate
driver for your nvidia GPU and the CUDA SDK.  See `NVIDIA's CUDA installation
guide <https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/index.html>`_
for details.  Note that clang `does not support
<https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26966>`_ the CUDA toolkit as installed
by many Linux package managers; you probably need to install nvidia's package.

You will need CUDA 7.0 or 7.5 to compile with clang.  CUDA 8 support is in the
works.

Invoking clang
--------------

Invoking clang for CUDA compilation works similarly to compiling regular C++.
You just need to be aware of a few additional flags.

You can use `this <https://gist.github.com/855e277884eb6b388cd2f00d956c2fd4>`_
program as a toy example.  Save it as ``axpy.cu``.  (Clang detects that you're
compiling CUDA code by noticing that your filename ends with ``.cu``.
Alternatively, you can pass ``-x cuda``.)

To build and run, run the following commands, filling in the parts in angle
brackets as described below:

.. code-block:: console

  $ clang++ axpy.cu -o axpy --cuda-gpu-arch=<GPU arch> \
      -L<CUDA install path>/<lib64 or lib>             \
      -lcudart_static -ldl -lrt -pthread
  $ ./axpy
  y[0] = 2
  y[1] = 4
  y[2] = 6
  y[3] = 8

* ``<CUDA install path>`` -- the directory where you installed CUDA SDK.
  Typically, ``/usr/local/cuda``.

  Pass e.g. ``-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64`` if compiling in 64-bit mode; otherwise,
  pass e.g. ``-L/usr/local/cuda/lib``.  (In CUDA, the device code and host code
  always have the same pointer widths, so if you're compiling 64-bit code for
  the host, you're also compiling 64-bit code for the device.)

* ``<GPU arch>`` -- the `compute capability
  <https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus>`_ of your GPU. For example, if you
  want to run your program on a GPU with compute capability of 3.5, specify
  ``--cuda-gpu-arch=sm_35``.

  Note: You cannot pass ``compute_XX`` as an argument to ``--cuda-gpu-arch``;
  only ``sm_XX`` is currently supported.  However, clang always includes PTX in
  its binaries, so e.g. a binary compiled with ``--cuda-gpu-arch=sm_30`` would be
  forwards-compatible with e.g. ``sm_35`` GPUs.

  You can pass ``--cuda-gpu-arch`` multiple times to compile for multiple archs.

The `-L` and `-l` flags only need to be passed when linking.  When compiling,
you may also need to pass ``--cuda-path=/path/to/cuda`` if you didn't install
the CUDA SDK into ``/usr/local/cuda``, ``/usr/local/cuda-7.0``, or
``/usr/local/cuda-7.5``.

Flags that control numerical code
---------------------------------

If you're using GPUs, you probably care about making numerical code run fast.
GPU hardware allows for more control over numerical operations than most CPUs,
but this results in more compiler options for you to juggle.

Flags you may wish to tweak include:

* ``-ffp-contract={on,off,fast}`` (defaults to ``fast`` on host and device when
  compiling CUDA) Controls whether the compiler emits fused multiply-add
  operations.

  * ``off``: never emit fma operations, and prevent ptxas from fusing multiply
    and add instructions.
  * ``on``: fuse multiplies and adds within a single statement, but never
    across statements (C11 semantics).  Prevent ptxas from fusing other
    multiplies and adds.
  * ``fast``: fuse multiplies and adds wherever profitable, even across
    statements.  Doesn't prevent ptxas from fusing additional multiplies and
    adds.

  Fused multiply-add instructions can be much faster than the unfused
  equivalents, but because the intermediate result in an fma is not rounded,
  this flag can affect numerical code.

* ``-fcuda-flush-denormals-to-zero`` (default: off) When this is enabled,
  floating point operations may flush `denormal
  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormal_number>`_ inputs and/or outputs to 0.
  Operations on denormal numbers are often much slower than the same operations
  on normal numbers.

* ``-fcuda-approx-transcendentals`` (default: off) When this is enabled, the
  compiler may emit calls to faster, approximate versions of transcendental
  functions, instead of using the slower, fully IEEE-compliant versions.  For
  example, this flag allows clang to emit the ptx ``sin.approx.f32``
  instruction.

  This is implied by ``-ffast-math``.

Detecting clang vs NVCC from code
=================================

Although clang's CUDA implementation is largely compatible with NVCC's, you may
still want to detect when you're compiling CUDA code specifically with clang.

This is tricky, because NVCC may invoke clang as part of its own compilation
process!  For example, NVCC uses the host compiler's preprocessor when
compiling for device code, and that host compiler may in fact be clang.

When clang is actually compiling CUDA code -- rather than being used as a
subtool of NVCC's -- it defines the ``__CUDA__`` macro.  ``__CUDA_ARCH__`` is
defined only in device mode (but will be defined if NVCC is using clang as a
preprocessor).  So you can use the following incantations to detect clang CUDA
compilation, in host and device modes:

.. code-block:: c++

  #if defined(__clang__) && defined(__CUDA__) && !defined(__CUDA_ARCH__)
    // clang compiling CUDA code, host mode.
  #endif

  #if defined(__clang__) && defined(__CUDA__) && defined(__CUDA_ARCH__)
    // clang compiling CUDA code, device mode.
  #endif

Both clang and nvcc define ``__CUDACC__`` during CUDA compilation.  You can
detect NVCC specifically by looking for ``__NVCC__``.

Optimizations
=============

CPU and GPU have different design philosophies and architectures. For example, a
typical CPU has branch prediction, out-of-order execution, and is superscalar,
whereas a typical GPU has none of these. Due to such differences, an
optimization pipeline well-tuned for CPUs may be not suitable for GPUs.

LLVM performs several general and CUDA-specific optimizations for GPUs. The
list below shows some of the more important optimizations for GPUs. Most of
them have been upstreamed to ``lib/Transforms/Scalar`` and
``lib/Target/NVPTX``. A few of them have not been upstreamed due to lack of a
customizable target-independent optimization pipeline.

* **Straight-line scalar optimizations**. These optimizations reduce redundancy
  in straight-line code. Details can be found in the `design document for
  straight-line scalar optimizations <https://goo.gl/4Rb9As>`_.

* **Inferring memory spaces**. `This optimization
  <https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/blob/master/lib/Target/NVPTX/NVPTXInferAddressSpaces.cpp>`_
  infers the memory space of an address so that the backend can emit faster
  special loads and stores from it.

* **Aggressive loop unrooling and function inlining**. Loop unrolling and
  function inlining need to be more aggressive for GPUs than for CPUs because
  control flow transfer in GPU is more expensive. They also promote other
  optimizations such as constant propagation and SROA which sometimes speed up
  code by over 10x. An empirical inline threshold for GPUs is 1100. This
  configuration has yet to be upstreamed with a target-specific optimization
  pipeline. LLVM also provides `loop unrolling pragmas
  <http://clang.llvm.org/docs/AttributeReference.html#pragma-unroll-pragma-nounroll>`_
  and ``__attribute__((always_inline))`` for programmers to force unrolling and
  inling.

* **Aggressive speculative execution**. `This transformation
  <http://llvm.org/docs/doxygen/html/SpeculativeExecution_8cpp_source.html>`_ is
  mainly for promoting straight-line scalar optimizations which are most
  effective on code along dominator paths.

* **Memory-space alias analysis**. `This alias analysis
  <http://reviews.llvm.org/D12414>`_ infers that two pointers in different
  special memory spaces do not alias. It has yet to be integrated to the new
  alias analysis infrastructure; the new infrastructure does not run
  target-specific alias analysis.

* **Bypassing 64-bit divides**. `An existing optimization
  <http://llvm.org/docs/doxygen/html/BypassSlowDivision_8cpp_source.html>`_
  enabled in the NVPTX backend. 64-bit integer divides are much slower than
  32-bit ones on NVIDIA GPUs due to lack of a divide unit. Many of the 64-bit
  divides in our benchmarks have a divisor and dividend which fit in 32-bits at
  runtime. This optimization provides a fast path for this common case.

Publication
===========

| `gpucc: An Open-Source GPGPU Compiler <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2854041>`_
| Jingyue Wu, Artem Belevich, Eli Bendersky, Mark Heffernan, Chris Leary, Jacques Pienaar, Bjarke Roune, Rob Springer, Xuetian Weng, Robert Hundt
| *Proceedings of the 2016 International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO 2016)*
| `Slides for the CGO talk <http://wujingyue.com/docs/gpucc-talk.pdf>`_

Tutorial
========

`CGO 2016 gpucc tutorial <http://wujingyue.com/docs/gpucc-tutorial.pdf>`_

Obtaining Help
==============

To obtain help on LLVM in general and its CUDA support, see `the LLVM
community <http://llvm.org/docs/#mailing-lists>`_.