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Automatic placeholder requirements

Proposal ID CP028
Name Automatic placeholder requirements
Date of Creation 17 April 2020
Revision 0.1
Latest Update 28 April 2020
Target SYCL Next (after 1.2.1)
Current Status Work in Progress
Reply-to Peter Žužek [email protected]
Original author Peter Žužek [email protected]
Contributors Gordon Brown [email protected], Ruyman Reyes [email protected]

Overview

This proposal allows placeholders to be automatically registered when used in explicit memory functions. It also provides convenience versions of those functions on the queue class.

Revisions

0.1

  • Initial proposal

Motivation

A separate proposal deprecated accessor::placeholder, making it easier to construct placeholder accessors.

An example on how this can be used to copy data from an accessor to a host pointer:

// Assume buf of type buffer<int, 1>
// Assume hostPtr of type int*

// Create the placeholder
accessor<int, 1, access::mode::read> acc{buf};

queue q;
q.submit([&](handler& cgh){
  // Register placeholder with the command group
  cgh.require(acc);

  // Perform the copy
  cgh.copy(acc, hostPtr);
});

At the point of calling cgh.copy the SYCL runtime knows where data is requested. Calling cgh.require shouldn't really be necessary at that point because the copy function could just call require on its own. That would allow us to simplify the command group:

q.submit([&](handler& cgh){
  // Perform the copy
  cgh.copy(acc, hostPtr);
});

Everything is automatically handled by the SYCL runtime. However, we could go one step further, and provide convenience member functions on the queue, allowing us to skip the submission lambda (just like the new queue member functions in the USM proposal):

// Perform the copy
q.copy(acc, hostPtr);

Changes

In the accessor section, add the following paragraph:

Any member function of the \codeinline{queue} or the \codeinline{handler}
that accepts an \codeinline{accessor} automatically creates
a \textbf{requirement} for the command group.
This is not true for member functions that enqueue a kernel - 
\codeinline{single_task}, \codeinline{parallel_for}, \codeinline{parallel_for_work_group} -
in those cases it is still required to manually register the placeholder
with the command group.

In the section on explicit memory, add the following paragraph:

The same members functions listed in Table~\ref{table.members.handler.copy}
are also available as member functions of the \codeinline{queue} class,
but they can only accept \keyword{placeholder} accessors.

Limitations

There is a temptation to extend this automatic registration to member functions of the handler that perform kernel enqueues: single_task, parallel_for, parallel_for_work_group. However, that might prove a bit more difficult because the accessors are captured inside a function object and C++ doesn't yet provide proper facilities for inspecting that object - static reflection would be needed. Therefore it is our concern that extending the proposal to kernel enqueues may not be implementable on the SYCL host device.