Best way to detect compatible GPU availability

[aag]

Is there a way to determine GPU availability, using the API? Alternatively, is there a way to use HETERO plugin in a way that won't lead to exception when GPU isn't available?

At present, creating a HETERO plugin (HETERO: GPU, CPU), and then calling plugin.loadNetwork leads to an exception being thrown:

Exception in loadNetwork Cannot find plugin to use :Tried load plugin : clDNNPlugin, error: Plugin clDNNPlugin cannot be loaded: cannot load plugin: clDNNPlugin from : Cannot load library 'libclDNNPlugin.so': /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1: version `OPENCL_2.0' not fou

Ideally, we wouldn't event attempt to use HETERO plugin, if there's no GPU available; but there's no API to detect that, as far as I can see. Better yet, HETERO plugin should be able to deal with GPU not being there, and fall back to CPU-only.

Thanks for any ideas/direction.

[Shubha_R_Intel]

Dear Alex A.,

All you have to do is check the result of executableNetwork = ie.LoadNetwork(network, deviceName);. If there is a problem with your GPU, then this API will return an error.

Thanks,

Shubha

[aag]

That is exactly what we're doing now, however, it is suboptimal: there's no way (to the best of my understanding) to distinguish "no GPU" error from any other errors, so any debug/error logging when GPU isn't present will be similar to that of legitimate errors.

Additionally, it seems that LoadNetwork dumps quite a bit of output to stdout -

"layer1 is GPU
layer2 is CPU
etc"

which happens before LoadNetwork errors out.

 

Shubha R. (Intel) wrote:

Dear Alex A.,

All you have to do is check the result of executableNetwork = ie.LoadNetwork(network, deviceName);. If there is a problem with your GPU, then this API will return an error.

Thanks,

Shubha

[Shubha_R_Intel]

Dear Alex A.,

OpenCL APIs undoubtedly have a better way to detect GPUs. You might check on the OpenCL forum

But within OpenVino, what I suggested is really the only way. The developers are working on API enhancements though, so in the future this might change.

Thanks for your patience,

Shubha

[om77]

Hi Alex,

We had a similar request and decided to use OpenCL to detect GPU.

It still needs to have something (like API ncDeviceCreate in NCS SDK) to detect unplugged Myriad.

I agree with you that an exception generation during ie.LoadNetwork is not acceptable way.

[Shubha_R_Intel]

Dear om77,

Yep, we hear you. The OpenVino developers do realize that the API needs enhancement. But glad you found the OpenCL method to help you out (as I suggested also to Alex).

Thanks,

Shubha