** HCC backend Implementation for Caffe **

##Introduction: ##

This repository hosts the HCC backend implementation project for Caffe. To know what HCC is please refer here. Caffe framework currently has a CUDA backend support targeting NVidia devices. The goal of this project is to develop HCC counterparts targeting modern AMD devices. This project mainly targets the linux platform and makes use of the linux-based HCC compiler implementation hosted here.

##Prerequisites: ##

Hardware Requirements:

• CPU: mainstream brand, Better if with >=4 Cores Intel Haswell based CPU
• System Memory >= 4GB (Better if >10GB for NN application over multiple GPUs)
• Hard Drive > 200GB (Better if SSD or NVMe driver for NN application over multiple GPUs)
• Minimum GPU Memory (Global) > 2GB

GPU SDK and driver Requirements:

• dGPUs: AMD R9 Fury X, R9 Fury, R9 Nano
• APUs: AMD APU Kaveri or Carrizo

System software requirements:

• Ubuntu 14.04 trusty
• GCC 4.6 and later
• CPP 4.6 and later (come with GCC package)
• python 2.7 and later
• HCC 0.9 from here

Tools and Misc Requirements:

• git 1.9 and later
• cmake 2.6 and later (2.6 and 2.8 are tested)

Tested Environment so far:

This section enumerates the list of tested combinations of Hardware and system software

GPU Cards tested:

• Radeon R9 Nano
• Radeon R9 FuryX
• Radeon R9 Fury
• Kaveri and Carizo APU

Driver versions tested

• Boltzmann Early Release Driver for dGPU

  ROCM 1.0 Release : https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/README.md

• Traditional HSA driver for APU (Kaveri)

Desktop System Tested

• Supermicro SYS-7048GR-TR Tower 4 R9 Nano
• ASUS X99-E WS motherboard with 4 R9 Nano
• Gigabyte GA-X79S 2 AMD R9 Nano

Server System Tested

• Supermicro SYS 2028GR-THT 6 R9 NANO
• Supermicro SYS-1028GQ-TRT 4 R9 NANO
• Supermicro SYS-7048GR-TR Tower 4 R9 NANO

Installation Flow:

A. ROCM 1.0 Installation (If not done so far)

B. Pre-requisites Installation

C. HCCaffe Build

D. Unit Testing

Installation Steps in detail:

A. ROCM 1.0 Installation:

To Know more about ROCM refer https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/README.md

a. Installing Debian ROCM repositories

Before proceeding, make sure to completely uninstall any pre-release ROCm packages

Refer https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm#removing-pre-release-packages for instructions to remove pre-release ROCM packages

Steps to install rocm package are

  * wget -qO - http://packages.amd.com/rocm/apt/debian/rocm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
  
  * sudo sh -c 'echo deb [arch=amd64] http://packages.amd.com/rocm/apt/debian/ trusty main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rocm.list'
 
  * sudo apt-get update
  
  * sudo apt-get install rocm
  
  * Reboot the system

b. Once Reboot, verify the installation

To verify that the ROCm stack completed successfully you can execute to HSA vector_copy sample application:

   * cd /opt/rocm/hsa/sample
    
   * make
   
   * ./vector_copy

B. Pre-requisites Installation:

      sudo apt-get install libprotobuf-dev libleveldb-dev libsnappy-dev libopencv-dev libhdf5-serial-dev protobuf-compiler libatlas-base-dev libblas-dev libgflags-dev libgoogle-glog-dev liblmdb-dev libboost-all-dev

C. Hccaffe Build Steps:

HcCaffe currently could be built in one of the following two ways

i) Using prebuilt hcc-hsail compiler under /opt/rocm/hcc-hsail

                  (or)

ii) Using hcc-hsail built from source

(i) Using Prebuild hcc-hsail:

(Assumption /opt/rocm/hcc-hsail hosts the compiler)

* make

* make test

*(ii) Using HCC built from source:

• export MCWHCCBUILD=

• make -f Makefile.BuildHCC

• make test -f Makefile.BuildHCC

D. Unit Testing

After done with A, B and C, Now its time to test. Run the following commands to perform unit testing of different components of Caffe.

         ./build/test/test_all.testbin