CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE

Hello

I’m getting a great support here on forum, but just a moment ago I encountered situation which is confusing so just started another thread.

Theoritically I should be able to run my kernel with 512 work items in workgroup. But it seems that when I specify local_work_size=512 for clEnqueueNDRangeKernel then no work is done and nearly 10 000 runs of my kernel are done surprisingly fast. When I decrease value of local_work_size to 256 kernel runs normally and performs computations.

This is part of device query for OpenCL:

 ---------------------------------
 Device Quadro NVS 140M
 ---------------------------------
  CL_DEVICE_NAME:                       Quadro NVS 140M
  CL_DEVICE_VENDOR:                     NVIDIA Corporation
  CL_DRIVER_VERSION:                    260.99
  CL_DEVICE_VERSION:                    OpenCL 1.0 CUDA
  CL_DEVICE_TYPE:                       CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS:          2
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_DIMENSIONS:   3
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_SIZES:        512 / 512 / 64
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE:        512
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_CLOCK_FREQUENCY:        800 MHz
  CL_DEVICE_ADDRESS_BITS:               32
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_MEM_ALLOC_SIZE:         128 MByte
  CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_SIZE:            113 MByte
  CL_DEVICE_ERROR_CORRECTION_SUPPORT:   no
  CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_TYPE:             local
  CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_SIZE:             16 KByte
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_CONSTANT_BUFFER_SIZE:   64 KByte
  CL_DEVICE_QUEUE_PROPERTIES:           CL_QUEUE_OUT_OF_ORDER_EXEC_MODE_ENABLE
  CL_DEVICE_QUEUE_PROPERTIES:           CL_QUEUE_PROFILING_ENABLE
  CL_DEVICE_IMAGE_SUPPORT:              1
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_READ_IMAGE_ARGS:        128
  CL_DEVICE_MAX_WRITE_IMAGE_ARGS:       8
  CL_DEVICE_SINGLE_FP_CONFIG:           INF-quietNaNs round-to-nearest round-to-zero round-to-inf fma

Is it possible that driver/OpenCL is just giving me wrong information here about maximum allowed number of work items in work group?

Theoritically I should be able to run my kernel with 512 work items in workgroup.

I believe you are confusing the maximum work size supported by the device with the maximum work size that can be used to run a particular kernel. For a very complex kernel, the maximum work size will be smaller than the maximum that the device can support for a very simple kernel.

That’s why in OpenCL there are two different queries. One of them is clGetDeviceInfo(…, CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, …) – this is the maximum for the device. The other one is clGetKernelWorkGroupInfo(…, CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, …) – this one is the maximum value you can pass to clEnqueueNDRangeKernel() for this kernel.

Is CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE guaranteed to be less than or equal to CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, or would one have to explicily take the minimum of the two?

Is CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE guaranteed to be less than or equal to CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, or would one have to explicily take the minimum of the two?

Technically speaking, I don’t think the spec guarantees that CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE must be less than or equal to CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE.

However, the spec describes CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE as the “maximum work-group size that can be used to execute a kernel on a specific device
given by <device>”, and that’s all the application cares about.

CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE is pretty much irrelevant.

According to documentation here clGetKernelWorkGroupInfo I wrote a query and after executing it:

uint result;
size_t size_ret;
clGetKernelWorkGroupInfo(OpenCL, NULL, CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, sizeof(uint), (void*)&result, &size_ret);

result is 320.

Running my kernel with global_work_size=640 & local_work_size=320 provides right computations. Still computations are not faster than on CPU, but this is subject for separate thread…

Thanks