Build and install on Windows

Build and install on Windows#

To build rocBLAS as part of the ROCm Core SDK, see TheRock build instructions. TheRock is the recommended way to build ROCm components from source.

Alternatively, you can build rocBLAS standalone using the following instructions.

Prerequisites#

rocBLAS requires a ROCm-enabled platform. For more information, see ROCm Core SDK components.

Building and installing rocBLAS#

If necessary, follow these instructions to build rocBLAS from source. The rocBLAS codebase for the HIP SDK is the same as the one used for the Linux ROCm distribution. However, because these two distributions have different stacks, the code and build process have subtle variations.

Requirements#

64GB of system memory is normally required for a full rocBLAS build. This value can be lower if you build rocBLAS with a different Tensile logic target. See the --logic command from rmake.py --help.

Download rocBLAS#

The rocBLAS source code, which is the same as the ROCm Linux version, is available from the rocBLAS folder of the rocm-libraries GitHub. The ROCm HIP SDK version might appear in the default installation path, but you can run the HIP SDK compiler to display the version from the bin/ folder:

hipcc --version

The HIP version has major, minor, and patch fields, possibly followed by a build-specific identifier. For example, the HIP version might be 5.4.22880-135e1ab4. This corresponds to major release = 5, minor release = 4, patch = 22880, and build identifier 135e1ab4. The GitHub branches at the rocBLAS site have names like release/rocm-rel-major.minor, where the major and minor releases have the same meaning as in the ROCm version.

To download rocBLAS, including all projects in the rocm-libraries repository, use the following commands.

git clone -b release/rocm-rel-x.y https://github.com/ROCm/rocm-libraries.git
cd rocm-libraries/projects/rocblas

Replace x.y in the above command with the version of HIP SDK installed on your machine. For example, if you have HIP 7.0 installed, use -b release/rocm-rel-7.0. You can add the SDK tools to your path using an entry like this:

%HIP_PATH%\bin

To limit your local checkout to only the rocBLAS and Tensile projects, configure sparse-checkout before cloning. This uses the Git partial clone feature (--filter=blob:none) to reduce how much data is downloaded. Use the following commands for a sparse checkout:

git clone --no-checkout --filter=blob:none https://github.com/ROCm/rocm-libraries.git
cd rocm-libraries
git sparse-checkout init --cone
git sparse-checkout set projects/rocblas shared/tensile
git checkout develop # or use the branch you want to work with

The checkout above omits other top-level trees (for example shared/ctest). If you build the test client (BUILD_CLIENTS_TESTS=ON) and want YAML-based CTest labels and the installed CTestTestfile.cmake from the shared categorization helpers, add shared/ctest to the git sparse-checkout set list (or use a full clone). Without shared/ctest present under ROCM_LIBRARIES_ROOT, ROCBLAS_ENABLE_CTEST defaults to OFF. If you turn ROCBLAS_ENABLE_CTEST ON explicitly, configuration requires both clients/gtest/test_categories.yaml and shared/ctest/TestCategories.cmake to exist.

Note

To build ROCm 6.4 and older, use the rocBLAS repository at ROCm/rocBLAS. For more information, see the documentation associated with the release you want to build.

Building rocBLAS#

The following sections list the steps to build rocBLAS using the rmake.py script, which can install the dependencies. You can build either:

  • The dependencies and library

  • The dependencies, library, and client

You only need the dependencies and library to call rocBLAS from your code. The client contains the test and benchmark code. rmake.py prints the full cmake command used to configure rocBLAS to the screen based on your rmake command line options. The full cmake command can be used in build scripts to bypass the Python helper script and use a fixed set of build options.

Library dependencies#

The dependencies installed by the Python script rdeps.py are listed in the rdeps.xml configuration file. Passing the -d flag to rmake.py installs the dependencies the same way that running rdeps.py directly does. rdeps.py uses vcpkg and pip to install the build dependencies. vcpkg is cloned into either the location defined by the environment variable VCPKG_PATH or the default C:\github\vckpg directory if the variable is undefined. pip is installed into your current Python 3 environment.

The top-level CMakeLists.txt file lists the minimum version requirement for CMake. The version of CMake installed with Visual Studio 2022 meets this requirement. The vcpkg version tag is specified at the top of the rdeps.py file.

However, for the host reference BLAS test and benchmark clients, it is recommended that you manually download and install the AMD ILP64 version of AOCL-BLAS 4.2. If you download and run the full Windows AOCL installer into the default location (C:\Program Files\AMD\AOCL-Windows\), then the CMakeLists.txt file for the client can find the reference BLAS.

Note

If you use OpenBLAS with the vcpkg version from rdeps.py instead of the AOCL reference library, you might experience rocblas-test stress test failures due to 32-bit integer overflow on the host reference code. If this occurs, exclude the ILP64 stress tests using the command line argument --gtest_filter=-*stress*.

Building the library dependencies and library#

Common examples of how to use rmake.py to build the library dependencies and library are shown in the table below:

Note

You can run rmake.py from the projects\rocblas directory.

Command

Description

./rmake.py -h

Help information.

./rmake.py -d

Build the library dependencies and library in your local directory. The -d flag only needs to be used once.

./rmake.py

Build the library. It is assumed the dependencies have been built.

./rmake.py -i

Build the library, then build and install the rocBLAS package. To keep rocBLAS in your local tree, do not use the -i flag.

Building the library, client, and all dependencies#

The client executables (.exe files) are listed in the table below:

Executable name

Description

rocblas-test

Runs GoogleTest tests to validate the library

rocblas-bench

An executable to benchmark or test the functions

rocblas-example-sscal

Example C code that calls the rocblas_sscal function

Common ways to use rmake.py to build the dependencies, library, and client are listed in this table.

Command

Description

./rmake.py -h

Help information.

./rmake.py -dc

Build the library dependencies, client dependencies, library, and client in your local directory. The -d flag only needs to be used once. For subsequent invocations of rmake.py, it is not necessary to rebuild the dependencies.

./rmake.py -c

Build the library and client in your local directory. It is assumed the dependencies have been installed.

./rmake.py -idc

Build the library dependencies, client dependencies, library, and client, then build and install the rocBLAS package. To keep rocBLAS in your local directory, do not use the -i flag.

./rmake.py -ic

Build and install the rocBLAS package and build the client. To keep rocBLAS in your local directory, do not use the -i flag.

./rmake.py -t /path/to/Tensile

tensile_tag.txt has been deprecated so use this option to build a folder that has a different Tensile commit than the rocBLAS commit.

Building the clients without the library#

The rocBLAS clients can be built on their own by using rmake.py with a pre-existing rocBLAS library.

The version of the rocBLAS clients being built should match the version of the installed rocBLAS. You can determine the version of the installed rocBLAS in the HIP SDK directory from the file include\rocblas\internal\rocblas-version.h. If you have installed the grep utility, you can find the version of rocBLAS being built by running the grep "VERSION_STRING" CMakeLists.txt command in the rocBLAS directory where you are building the clients.

Command

Description

./rmake.py --clients-only

Build the rocBLAS clients and use the installed rocBLAS library at HIP_PATH if no --library-path is specified.

./rmake.py --clients-only --library-path /path/to/rocBLAS

Build the rocBLAS clients and use the rocBLAS library at the specified location.
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