1/// 2/// Copyright (c) 2017-2021 Arm Limited. 3/// 4/// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT 5/// 6/// Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy 7/// of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to 8/// deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the 9/// rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or 10/// sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is 11/// furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: 12/// 13/// The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all 14/// copies or substantial portions of the Software. 15/// 16/// THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR 17/// IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, 18/// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE 19/// AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER 20/// LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, 21/// OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE 22/// SOFTWARE. 23/// 24namespace arm_compute 25{ 26/** 27@page architecture Library Architecture 28 29@tableofcontents 30 31@section architecture_core_vs_runtime Core vs Runtime libraries 32 33The Core library is a low level collection of algorithms implementations, it is designed to be embedded in existing projects and applications: 34 35- It doesn't allocate any memory (All the memory allocations/mappings have to be handled by the caller). 36- It doesn't perform any kind of multi-threading (but provide information to the caller about how the workload can be split). 37 38The Runtime library is a very basic wrapper around the Core library which can be used for quick prototyping, it is basic in the sense that: 39 40- It allocates images and tensors by using standard malloc(). 41- It multi-threads Arm® Neon™ code in a very basic way using a very simple pool of threads. 42- For OpenCL it uses the default CLScheduler command queue for all mapping operations and kernels. 43 44For maximum performance, it is expected that the users would re-implement an equivalent to the runtime library which suits better their needs (With a more clever multi-threading strategy, load-balancing between Arm® Neon™ and OpenCL, etc.) 45 46@section architecture_fast_math Fast-math support 47 48Compute Library supports different types of convolution methods, fast-math flag is only used for the Winograd algorithm. 49When the fast-math flag is enabled, both Arm® Neon™ and CL convolution layers will try to dispatch the fastest implementation available, which may introduce a drop in accuracy as well. The different scenarios involving the fast-math flag are presented below: 50- For FP32: 51 - no-fast-math: Only supports Winograd 3x3,3x1,1x3,5x1,1x5,7x1,1x7 52 - fast-math: Supports Winograd 3x3,3x1,1x3,5x1,1x5,7x1,1x7,5x5,7x7 53- For fp16: 54 - no-fast-math: No Winograd support 55 - fast-math: Supports Winograd 3x3,3x1,1x3,5x1,1x5,7x1,1x7,5x5,7x7 56 57@section bf16_acceleration BF16 acceleration 58 59Required toolchain: android-ndk-r23-beta5 or later. 60 61To build for BF16: "neon" flag should be set "=1" and "arch" has to be "=armv8.6-a", "=armv8.6-a-sve", or "=armv8.6-a-sve2". For example: 62 63 scons arch=armv8.6-a-sve neon=1 opencl=0 extra_cxx_flags="-fPIC" benchmark_tests=0 validation_tests=0 validation_examples=1 os=android Werror=0 toolchain_prefix=aarch64-linux-android29 64 65To enable BF16 acceleration when running FP32 "fast-math" has to be enabled and that works only for Neon convolution layer using cpu gemm. 66In this scenario on CPU: the CpuGemmConv2d kernel performs the conversion from FP32, type of input tensor, to BF16 at block level to exploit the arithmetic capabilities dedicated to BF16. Then transforms back to FP32, the output tensor type. 67 68@section architecture_thread_safety Thread-safety 69 70Although the library supports multi-threading during workload dispatch, thus parallelizing the execution of the workload at multiple threads, the current runtime module implementation is not thread-safe in the sense of executing different functions from separate threads. 71This lies to the fact that the provided scheduling mechanism wasn't designed with thread-safety in mind. 72As it is true with the rest of the runtime library a custom scheduling mechanism can be re-implemented to account for thread-safety if needed and be injected as the library's default scheduler. 73 74@section architecture__algorithms Algorithms 75 76All computer vision algorithms in this library have been implemented following the [OpenVX 1.1 specifications](https://www.khronos.org/registry/vx/specs/1.1/html/). Please refer to the Khronos documentation for more information. 77 78@section architecture_images_tensors Images, padding, border modes and tensors 79 80Most kernels and functions in the library process images, however, in order to be future proof most of the kernels actually accept tensors. See below for more information about how they are related. 81 82@attention Each memory object can be written by only one kernel, however it can be read by several kernels. Writing to the same object from several kernels will result in undefined behavior. The kernel writing to an object must be configured before the kernel(s) reading from it. 83 84@subsection architecture_images_tensors_padding_and_border Padding and border modes 85 86Several algorithms require a neighborhood around the current pixel to compute it's value. This means the algorithm will not be able to process the borders of the image unless you give it more information about how those border pixels should be processed. The @ref BorderMode enum is used for this purpose. 87 88You have 3 types of @ref BorderMode : 89 90- @ref BorderMode::UNDEFINED : Neighbor pixels outside of the image are treated as undefined. As a result all the pixels which are on the border will have a value which is undefined. 91- @ref BorderMode::REPLICATE : Neighbor pixels outside of the image are treated as having the same value as the closest valid pixel. 92- @ref BorderMode::CONSTANT : Neighbor pixels outside of the image are treated as having the same constant value. (The user can choose what this value should be). 93 94Moreover both OpenCL and Arm® Neon™ use vector loads and stores instructions to access the data in buffers, so in order to avoid having special cases to handle for the borders all the images and tensors used in this library must be padded. 95 96@subsubsection architecture_images_tensors_padding Padding 97 98There are different ways padding can be calculated: 99 100- Accurate padding: 101 102@note It's important to call allocate @b after the function is configured: if the image / tensor is already allocated then the function will shrink its execution window instead of increasing the padding. (See below for more details). 103 104- Manual padding / no padding / auto padding: You can allocate your images / tensors up front (before configuring your functions). In that case the function will use whatever padding is available and will shrink its execution window if there isn't enough padding available (which translates into a smaller valid region for the output). See also @ref architecture_images_tensors_valid_region). 105If you don't want to manually set the padding but still want to allocate your objects upfront then you can use auto_padding. It guarantees that the allocation will have enough padding to run any of the provided functions. 106 107@code{.cpp} 108Image src{}, dst{}; 109NEScale scale{}; 110 111// Create an empty grayscale 640x480 image 112src.allocator()->init(TensorInfo(640, 480, Format::U8)); 113 114constexpr int scale_factor = 2; 115TensorInfo dst_tensor_info(src.info()->dimension(0) / scale_factor, src.info()->dimension(1) / scale_factor, 116 Format::U8); 117 118// Configure the destination image 119dst.allocator()->init(dst_tensor_info); 120 121// Configure Scale function object: 122scale.configure(&src, &dst, ScaleKernelInfo{ 123 InterpolationPolicy::NEAREST_NEIGHBOR, 124 BorderMode::UNDEFINED, 125 PixelValue(), 126 SamplingPolicy::CENTER, 127 false 128}); 129 130// Allocate all the images 131src.allocator()->allocate(); 132dst.allocator()->allocate(); 133// Fill the input image with the content of the PPM image if a filename was provided: 134fill_image(src); 135 136// Run the scale operation: 137scale.run(); 138@endcode 139 140The full example is provided in examples/neon_scale.cpp 141 142@warning Some kernels need up to 3 neighbor values to calculate the value of a given pixel. Therefore, to be safe, we use a 4-pixel padding all around the image. In addition, some kernels read and write up to 32 pixels at the same time. To cover that case as well we add an extra 32 pixels of padding at the end of each row. As a result auto padded buffers waste a lot of memory and are less cache friendly. It is therefore recommended to use accurate padding or manual padding wherever possible. 143 144@subsubsection architecture_images_tensors_valid_region Valid regions 145 146Some kernels (like edge detectors for example) need to read values of neighboring pixels to calculate the value of a given pixel, it is therefore not possible to calculate the values of the pixels on the edges. 147 148Another case is: if a kernel processes 8 pixels per iteration and the image's dimensions are not a multiple of 8 and not enough padding is available then the kernel will not be able to process the pixels near the right edge. As a result these pixels will be left undefined. 149 150In order to know which pixels have been calculated, each kernel sets a valid region for each output image or tensor. See also @ref TensorInfo::valid_region(), @ref ValidRegion 151 152@subsection architecture_images_tensors_tensors Tensors 153 154Tensors are multi-dimensional arrays with a maximum of @ref Coordinates::num_max_dimensions dimensions. 155 156Depending on the number of dimensions tensors can be interpreted as various objects. A scalar can be represented as a zero-dimensional tensor and a vector of numbers can be represented as an one-dimensional tensor. Further, an image is actually just a 2D tensor, a 3D tensor can be seen as an array of images and a 4D tensor as a 2D array of images, etc. 157 158@note Most algorithms process images (i.e a 2D slice of the tensor), therefore only padding along the X and Y axes is required (2D slices can be stored contiguously in memory). 159 160@subsection architecture_images_tensors_description_conventions Images and Tensors description conventions 161 162Image objects are defined by a @ref Format and dimensions expressed as [width, height, batch] 163 164Tensors are defined by a @ref DataType plus a number of channels (Always expected to be 1 for now) and their dimensions are expressed as [width, height, feature_maps, batch]. 165 166In other words, the lower three dimensions of a tensor specify a single input in [width, height, feature_maps], while any other specified dimension represents a batch in the appropriate dimension space. 167For example, a tensor with dimensions [128, 128, 64, 16] represents a 1D batch space with 16 batches of 128 elements in width and height and 64 feature maps each. 168Each kernel specifies the expected layout of each of its tensors in its documentation. 169 170@note Unless specified otherwise in the kernel's or function's documentation all tensors and images parameters passed must have identical dimensions. 171 172@note Unless specified otherwise in the kernel's or function's documentation the number of channels for tensors is expected to be 1 (For images, the number of channels is inferred from the @ref Format). 173 174@attention Regardless of the @ref DataType used by a tensor the @ref ITensor::buffer() method will always return a uint8_t pointer, and all the metadata in @ref TensorInfo will be expressed in bytes. It is the user's responsibility to cast the pointer to the correct type. 175 176For example, to read the element located at the coordinates (x,y) of a float tensor: 177 178@code{.cpp} 179float value = *reinterpret_cast<float*>(input.buffer() + input.info()->offset_element_in_bytes(Coordinates(x,y))); 180@endcode 181 182@subsection architecture_images_tensors_working_with_objects Working with Images and Tensors using iterators 183 184The library provides some iterators to access objects' data. 185Iterators are created by associating a data object (An image or a tensor for example) with an iteration window. 186 187Iteration windows are defined by an array of dimensions, each of which consists of a start, end and step. 188 189The @ref execute_window_loop function takes an execution window, a lambda function and one or more iterators. 190It will iterate through every element of the execution window and for each element it will update the iterators accordingly and call the lambda function. 191 192Here are a couple of examples of how to use the iterators to fill / read tensors: 193 194@snippet examples/neon_copy_objects.cpp Copy objects example 195 196@subsection architecture_images_tensors_sub_tensors Sub-tensors 197 198Sub-tensors are aliases to existing Tensors, as a result creating a sub-tensor does not result in any underlying memory allocation. 199 200Sub-tensors can be used to access a sub-set of the parent tensor, something that can be useful in case different operations need to be performed on different parts of a tensor. 201 202Moreover, sub-tensors can be used to perform zero copy tensor concatenation. 203 204The API for creating a sub-tensor is the following: 205@code{.cpp} 206SubTensor(ITensor *parent, const TensorShape &tensor_shape, const Coordinates &coords) 207@endcode 208 209Where \a parent is the parent tensor which we want to create an alias for, \a tensor_shape is the shape of the sub-tensor and \a coords are the starting indexing coordinates of the sub-tensor within the parent tensor. 210 211@note Two sub-tensor concrete classes for different targets are currently supported : @ref CLSubTensor and @ref SubTensor 212 213@warning Limitation of the sub-tensor is that it cannot be extracted spatially, meaning sub-tensors should have the same width and height as the parent tensor. The main reasons for this is the fact that individual kernels might need to operate with a step size that is not a multiple of the sub-tensor spatial dimension. This could lead to elements being overwritten by different kernels operating on different sub-tensors of the same underlying tensor. 214 215@section architecture_memory_manager MemoryManager 216 217@ref IMemoryManager is a memory managing interface that can be used to reduce the memory requirements of a given pipeline by recycling temporary buffers. 218 219@subsection architecture_memory_manager_component MemoryGroup, MemoryPool and MemoryManager Components 220 221@subsubsection architecture_memory_manager_component_memory_group MemoryGroup 222 223@ref IMemoryGroup defines the memory managing granularity. 224 225MemoryGroup binds a number of objects to a bucket of memory requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for an operation or list of operations to be executed. 226 227Requesting backing memory for a specific group can be done using @ref IMemoryGroup::acquire and releasing the memory back using @ref IMemoryGroup::release. 228 229@subsubsection architecture_memory_manager_component_memory_pool MemoryPool 230 231@ref IMemoryPool defines a pool of memory that can be used to provide backing memory to a memory group. 232 233@note @ref BlobMemoryPool is currently implemented which models the memory requirements as a vector of distinct memory blobs. 234 235@subsubsection architecture_memory_manager_component_memory_manager_components MemoryManager Components 236 237@ref IMemoryManager consists of two components: 238- @ref ILifetimeManager that keeps track of the lifetime of the registered objects of the memory groups and given an @ref IAllocator creates an appropriate memory pool that fulfils the memory requirements of all the registered memory groups. 239- @ref IPoolManager that safely manages the registered memory pools. 240 241@note @ref BlobLifetimeManager is currently implemented which models the memory requirements as a vector of distinct memory blobs. 242 243@subsection architecture_memory_manager_working_with_memory_manager Working with the Memory Manager 244Using a memory manager to reduce the memory requirements of a pipeline can be summed in the following steps: 245 246Initially a memory manager must be set-up: 247@code{.cpp} 248Allocator allocator{}; // Create an allocator to use for the backing memory allocation 249auto lifetime_mgr = std::make_shared<BlobLifetimeManager>(); // Create Lifetime Manager 250auto pool_mgr = std::make_shared<PoolManager>(); // Create Pool Manager 251auto mm = std::make_shared<MemoryManagerOnDemand>(lifetime_mgr, pool_mgr); // Create Memory Manager 252@endcode 253 254Once done, memory groups can be registered to use the memory manager: 255@code{.cpp} 256MemoryGroup memory_group(mm); // Create a memory group and set the memory manager to use 257@endcode 258 259@note If a memory manager is not specified then all allocation will be immediate instead of deferred through the memory manager. 260 261Next step is to set objects to be managed by the memory group. It is important though to note that the lifetime of an object is tracked from the @ref MemoryGroup::manage() and the @ref TensorAllocator::allocate calls. 262@ref MemoryGroup::manage flags that the object will be needed starting now and when @ref TensorAllocator::allocate is called it signals the end of the object lifetime. 263@code{.cpp} 264Tensor tmp1, tmp2, tmp3; // Create example tensors 265memory_group.manage(&tmp1); // Start managing object tmp1 and start its lifetime 266memory_group.manage(&tmp2); // Start managing object tmp2 and start its lifetime 267 268operation1.configure(&tmp1, &tmp2); // Configure a function/kernel using tmp1 and tmp2 269 270tmp1.allocator()->allocate(); // Flag that the lifetime of object tmp1 has ended 271 272memory_group.manage(&tmp3); // Start managing object tmp3 and start its lifetime 273 274operation2.configure(&tmp2, &tmp3); // Configure a function/kernel using tmp2 and tmp3 275 276tmp2.allocator()->allocate(); // Flag that the lifetime of object tmp2 has ended 277tmp3.allocator()->allocate(); // Flag that the lifetime of object tmp3 has ended 278@endcode 279 280@warning The configuration step should be done sequentially by a single thread so that all the lifetimes are captured correctly. 281 282When configuration of all the operations is finished then the memory manager have to be populated: 283@code{.cpp} 284mm->populate(&allocator), 2 /* num_pools */); // Populate memory manager pools 285@endcode 286 287Finally, during execution of the pipeline the memory of the appropriate memory group should be requested before running: 288@code{.cpp} 289memory_group.acquire(); // Request memory for the group 290 291operation1.run(); // Run operation1 292operation2.run(); // Run operation2 293 294memory_group.release(); // Release memory so that it can be reused 295@endcode 296@note Execution of a pipeline can be done in a multi-threading environment as memory acquisition/release are thread safe. 297@note If you are handling sensitive data and it's required to zero out the memory buffers before freeing, make sure to also zero out the intermediate buffers. You can access the buffers through the memory group's mappings. 298 299@subsection architecture_memory_manager_function_support Function support 300 301Most of the library's function have been ported to use @ref IMemoryManager for their internal temporary buffers. 302 303If that is the case, a memory manager can be passed to them during construction to reuse memory among these functions. 304@code{.cpp} 305// Setup Memory Manager 306CLBufferAllocator allocator{}; // Create an allocator to use for the backing memory allocation 307auto lifetime_mgr = std::make_shared<BlobLifetimeManager>(); // Create Lifetime Manager 308auto pool_mgr = std::make_shared<PoolManager>(); // Create Pool Manager 309auto mm = std::make_shared<MemoryManagerOnDemand>(lifetime_mgr, pool_mgr); // Create Memory Manager 310 311// Create two convolution layers and use the memory manager to manager their internal temporary buffers 312CLConvolutionLayer conv1(mm), conv2(mm); 313 314// Configure layers 315conv1.configure(...); 316conv2.configure(...); 317 318// Populate memory manager 319mm->populate(&allocator), 1 /* num_pools */); // Populate memory manager pools 320 321// Run layers (Memory will be recycled for internal buffers for conv1 and conv2 322conv1.run(); 323conv2.run(); 324@endcode 325 326@section architecture_import_memory Import Memory Interface 327 328The implemented @ref TensorAllocator and @ref CLTensorAllocator objects provide an interface capable of importing existing memory to a tensor as backing memory. 329 330A simple Arm® Neon™ example can be the following: 331@code{.cpp} 332// External backing memory 333void* external_ptr = ...; 334 335// Create and initialize tensor 336Tensor tensor; 337tensor.allocator()->init(tensor_info); 338 339// Import existing pointer as backing memory 340tensor.allocator()->import_memory(external_ptr); 341@endcode 342 343It is important to note the following: 344- Ownership of the backing memory is not transferred to the tensor itself. 345- The tensor mustn't be memory managed. 346- Padding requirements should be accounted by the client code. In other words, if padding is required by the tensor after the function configuration step, then the imported backing memory should account for it. Padding can be checked through the @ref TensorInfo::padding() interface. 347 348@section architecture_opencl_tuner OpenCL Tuner 349 350OpenCL kernels when dispatched to the GPU take two arguments: 351- The Global Workgroup Size (GWS): That's the number of times to run an OpenCL kernel to process all the elements we want to process. 352- The Local Workgroup Size (LWS): That's the number of elements we want to run in parallel on a GPU core at a given point in time. 353 354The LWS can be required by an algorithm (For example if it contains memory barriers or uses local memory) but it can also be used for performance reasons to tweak the performance of a kernel: the execution time of the overall kernel might vary significantly depending on how the GWS is broken down. 355 356However, there is no universal rule regarding which LWS is best for a given kernel, so instead we created the @ref CLTuner. 357 358When the @ref CLTuner is enabled ( Target = 2 for the graph examples), the first time an OpenCL kernel is executed the Compute Library will try to run it with a variety of LWS values and will remember which one performed best for subsequent runs. At the end of the run the @ref graph::Graph will try to save these tuning parameters to a file. 359 360However this process takes quite a lot of time, which is why it cannot be enabled all the time. @ref CLTuner supports three modes of tuning with different trade-offs between the time taken to tune and the kernel execution time achieved using the best LWS found. In the Exhaustive mode, it searches all the supported values of LWS. This mode takes the longest time to tune and is the most likely to find the optimal LWS. Normal mode searches a subset of LWS values to yield a good approximation of the optimal LWS. It takes less time to tune than Exhaustive mode. Rapid mode takes the shortest time to tune and finds an LWS value that is at least as good or better than the default LWS value. The mode affects only the search for the optimal LWS and has no effect when the LWS value is imported from a file. 361 362But, when the @ref CLTuner is disabled ( Target = 1 for the graph examples), the @ref graph::Graph will try to reload the file containing the tuning parameters, then for each executed kernel the Compute Library will use the fine tuned LWS if it was present in the file or use a default LWS value if it's not. 363 364@section architecture_cl_queue_priorities OpenCL Queue Priorities 365 366OpenCL 2.1 exposes the `cl_khr_priority_hints` extensions that if supported by an underlying implementation allows the user to specify priority hints to the created command queues. 367Is important to note that this does not specify guarantees or the explicit scheduling behavior, this is something that each implementation needs to expose. 368 369In some cases, priority queues can be used when there is an implicit internal priority between graphics and compute queues and thus allow some level of priority control between them. 370At the moment three priority level can be specified: 371- CL_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH_KHR 372- CL_QUEUE_PRIORITY_MED_KHR 373- CL_QUEUE_PRIORITY_LOW_KHR 374 375Compute Library allows extraction of the internal OpenCL queue or the ability to inject directly a user-defined queue to the @ref CLScheduler. 376This way the user can utilize this extension to define priorities between the queues and setup the OpenCL scheduler mechanism to utilize them. 377 378@code{.cpp} 379cl_queue_properties queue_properties[] = {CL_QUEUE_PRIORITY_KHR, CL_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH_KHR, 0}; 380cl_command_queue priority_queue = clCreateCommandQueueWithProperties(ctx, dev, queue_properties, &error); 381CLScheduler::get().set_queue(::cl::CommandQueue(priority_queue)); 382@endcode 383 384@section architecture_weights_manager Weights Manager 385 386@ref IWeightsManager is a weights managing interface that can be used to reduce the memory requirements of a given pipeline by reusing transformed weights across multiple function executions. 387@ref IWeightsManager is responsible for managing weight tensors alongside with their transformations. 388@ref ITransformWeights provides an interface for running the desired transform function. This interface is used by the weights manager. 389 390@subsection architecture_weights_manager_working_with_weights_manager Working with the Weights Manager 391Following is a simple example that uses the weights manager: 392 393Initially a weights manager must be set-up: 394@code{.cpp} 395auto wm = std::make_shared<IWeightsManager>(); // Create a weights manager 396@endcode 397 398Once done, weights can be managed, configured and run: 399@code{.cpp} 400wm->manage(weights); // Manage the weights 401wm->acquire(weights, &_reshape_weights_managed_function); // Acquire the address of the transformed weights based on the transform function 402wm->run(weights, &_reshape_weights_managed_function); // Run the transpose function 403@endcode 404 405@section programming_model Programming Model 406@subsection programming_model_functions Functions 407 408Functions will automatically allocate the temporary buffers mentioned above, and will automatically multi-thread kernels' executions using the very basic scheduler described in the previous section. 409 410Simple functions only call a single kernel (e.g NEConvolution3x3), while more complex ones consist of several kernels pipelined together (e.g @ref NEFullyConnectedLayer ). Check their documentation to find out which kernels are used by each function. 411 412@code{.cpp} 413//Create a function object: 414MyFunction function; 415// Initialize the function with the input/output and options you want to use: 416function.configure( input, output, option0, option1); 417// Execute the function: 418function.run(); 419@endcode 420 421@warning The Compute Library requires Arm® Mali™ OpenCL DDK r8p0 or higher (OpenCL kernels are compiled using the -cl-arm-non-uniform-work-group-size flag) 422 423@note All OpenCL functions and objects in the runtime library use the command queue associated with CLScheduler for all operations, a real implementation would be expected to use different queues for mapping operations and kernels in order to reach a better GPU utilization. 424 425@subsection programming_model_scheduler OpenCL Scheduler 426 427The Compute Library runtime uses a single command queue and context for all the operations. 428 429The user can get / set this context and command queue through CLScheduler's interface. 430 431The user can get / set the target GPU device through the CLScheduler's interface. 432 433@attention Make sure the application is using the same context as the library as in OpenCL it is forbidden to share objects across contexts. This is done by calling @ref CLScheduler::init() or @ref CLScheduler::default_init() at the beginning of your application. 434 435@attention Make sure the scheduler's target is not changed after function classes are created. 436 437@subsection programming_model__events_sync OpenCL events and synchronization 438 439In order to block until all the jobs in the CLScheduler's command queue are done executing the user can call @ref CLScheduler::sync() or create a sync event using @ref CLScheduler::enqueue_sync_event() 440 441@subsection programming_model_cl_neon OpenCL / Arm® Neon™ interoperability 442 443You can mix OpenCL and Arm® Neon™ kernels and functions. However it is the user's responsibility to handle the mapping/unmapping of OpenCL objects. 444 445@section architecture_experimental Experimental Features 446 447@subsection architecture_experimental_run_time_context Run-time Context 448 449Some of the Compute Library components are modelled as singletons thus posing limitations to supporting some use-cases and ensuring a more client-controlled API. 450Thus, we are introducing an aggregate service interface @ref IRuntimeContext which will encapsulate the services that the singletons were providing and allow better control of these by the client code. 451Run-time context encapsulates a list of mechanisms, some of them are: scheduling, memory management, kernel caching and others. 452Consequently, this will allow finer control of these services among pipelines when Compute Library is integrated in higher level frameworks. 453 454This feature introduces some changes to our API. 455All the kernels/functions will now accept a Runtime Context object which will allow the function to use the mentioned services. 456 457Finally, we will try to adapt our code-base progressively to use the new mechanism but will continue supporting the legacy mechanism to allow a smooth transition. Changes will apply to all our backends: Neon™ and OpenCL. 458 459@subsection architecture_experimental_clvk CLVK 460 461Compute Library offers experimental support for [CLVK](https://github.com/kpet/clvk). If CLVK is installed in the system, users can select the backend when running a graph example with --target=clvk. 462If no target is specified and more that one OpenCL implementations are present, Compute Library will pick the first available. 463 464@section architecture_experimental_api Experimental Application Programming Interface 465 466@subsection architecture_experimental_api_overview Overview 467 468In this section we present Compute Library's experimental application programming interface (API) architecture along with 469a detailed explanation of its components. Compute Library's API consists of multiple high-level operators and 470even more internally distinct computational blocks that can be executed on a command queue. 471Operators can be bound to multiple Tensor objects and executed concurrently or asynchronously if needed. 472All operators and associated objects are encapsulated in a Context-based mechanism, which provides all related 473construction services. 474 475@subsection architecture_experimental_api_objects Fundamental objects 476 477Compute Library consists of a list of fundamental objects that are responsible for creating and orchestrating operator execution. 478Below we present these objects in more detail. 479 480@subsubsection architecture_experimental_api_objects_context AclContext or Context 481 482AclContext or Context acts as a central creational aggregate service. All other objects are bound to or created from a context. 483It provides, internally, common facilities such as 484- allocators for object creation or backing memory allocation 485- serialization interfaces 486- any other modules that affect the construction of objects (e.g., program cache for OpenCL). 487 488The followings sections will describe parameters that can be given on the creation of Context. 489 490@paragraph architecture_experimental_api_object_context_target AclTarget 491Context is initialized with a backend target (AclTarget) as different backends might have a different subset of services. 492Currently the following targets are supported: 493- #AclCpu: a generic CPU target that accelerates primitives through SIMD technologies 494- #AclGpuOcl: a target for GPU acceleration using OpenCL 495 496@paragraph architecture_experimental_api_object_context_execution_mode AclExecutionMode 497An execution mode (AclExecutionMode) can be passed as an argument that affects the operator creation. 498At the moment the following execution modes are supported: 499- #AclPreferFastRerun: Provides faster re-run. It can be used when the operators are expected to be executed multiple 500times under the same execution context 501- #AclPreferFastStart: Provides faster single execution. It can be used when the operators will be executed only once, 502thus reducing their latency is important (Currently, it is not implemented) 503 504@paragraph architecture_experimental_api_object_context_capabilities AclTargetCapabilities 505Context creation can also have a list of capabilities of hardware as one of its parameters. This is currently 506available only for the CPU backend. A list of architecture capabilities can be passed to influence the selection 507of the underlying kernels. Such capabilities can be for example the enablement of SVE or the dot product 508instruction explicitly. 509@note The underlying hardware should support the given capability list. 510 511@paragraph architecture_experimental_api_object_context_allocator Allocator 512An allocator object that implements @ref AclAllocator can be passed to the Context upon its creation. 513This user-provided allocator will be used for allocation of any internal backing memory. 514 515@note To enable interoperability with OpenCL, additional entrypoints are provided 516to extract (@ref AclGetClContext) or set (@ref AclSetClContext) the internal OpenCL context. 517 518@subsubsection architecture_experimental_api_objects_tensor AclTensor or Tensor 519 520A tensor is a mathematical object that can describe physical properties like matrices. 521It can be also considered a generalization of matrices that can represent arbitrary 522dimensionalities. AclTensor is an abstracted interface that represents a tensor. 523 524AclTensor, in addition to the elements of the physical properties they represent, 525also contains the information such as shape, data type, data layout and strides to not only 526fully describe the characteristics of the physical properties but also provide information 527how the object stored in memory should be traversed. @ref AclTensorDescriptor is a dedicated 528object to represent such metadata. 529 530@note The allocation of an AclTensor can be deferred until external memory is imported 531as backing memory to accomplish a zero-copy context. 532 533@note To enable interoperability with OpenCL, additional entrypoints are provided 534to extract (@ref AclGetClMem) the internal OpenCL memory object. 535 536As Tensors can reside in different memory spaces, @ref AclMapTensor and @ref AclUnmapTensor entrypoints 537are provided to map Tensors in and out of the host memory system, respectively. 538 539@subsubsection architecture_experimental_api_objects_queue AclQueue or Queue 540 541AclQueue acts as a runtime aggregate service. It provides facilities to schedule 542and execute operators using underlying hardware. It also contains services like 543tuning mechanisms (e.g., Local workgroup size tuning for OpenCL) that can be specified 544during operator execution. 545 546@note To enable interoperability with OpenCL, additional entrypoints are provided 547to extract (@ref AclGetClQueue) or set (@ref AclSetClQueue) the internal OpenCL queue. 548 549@subsection architecture_experimental_api_internal Internal 550@subsubsection architecture_experimental_api_internal_operator_vs_kernels Operators vs Kernels 551 552Internally, Compute Library separates the executable primitives in two categories: kernels and operators 553which operate in a hierarchical way. 554 555A kernel is the lowest-level computation block whose responsibility is performing a task on a given group of data. 556For design simplicity, kernels computation does NOT involve the following: 557 558- Memory allocation: All the memory manipulation should be handled by the caller. 559- Multi-threading: The information on how the workload can be split is provided by kernels, 560so the caller can effectively distribute the workload to multiple threads. 561 562On the other hand, operators combine one or multiple kernels to achieve more complex calculations. 563The responsibilities of the operators can be summarized as follows: 564 565- Defining the scheduling policy and dispatching of the underlying kernels to the hardware backend 566- Providing information to the caller required by the computation (e.g., memory requirements) 567- Allocation of any required auxiliary memory if it isn't given by its caller explicitly 568 569@subsection architecture_experimental_build_multi_isa Build multi-ISA binary 570 571Selecting multi_isa when building Compute Library, will create a library that contains all the supported ISA features. 572Based on the CPU support, the appropriate kernel will be selected at runtime for execution. Currently this option is 573only supported with armv8.2-a as the base architecture. 574 575@subsection architecture_experimental_per_operator_build Per-operator build 576 577Dependencies for all operators have been explicitly defined, this provides the ability to users to generate Compute Library 578binaries that include a user-defined list of operators. 579 580An experimental flag 'build_config' has been introduced where a JSON configuration file can be provided and consumed. 581An example config looks like: 582@code{.py} 583{ 584 "operators": [ 585 "Activation", 586 "DepthwiseConv2d", 587 "Conv2d", 588 "Permute", 589 "Pool2d", 590 "Reshape" 591 ], 592 "data_types": [ 593 "NHWC" 594 ] 595} 596@endcode 597 598Supported data-types options are: 599- "NHWC" 600- "NCHW" 601 602The list of supported operators can be found in filelist.json in the root of Compute Library repo. 603 604@subsection architecture_experimental_build_high_priority_operators Build high priority operators 605 606Selecting high_priority when building Compute Library, one new library will be created: libarm_compute_hp and 607will contain a selected subset of the libary operators. Currently the operators are staticly set. 608 609*/ 610} // namespace arm_compute 611