Feedback: nice feature disappears in OpenCL Code Builder

[Biao_W_]

Hi,

I have engaged in OpenCL development for three years.

Today I tried the new release OpenCL code builder.

It is disappointing somehow, for the following reason:

1. Filling the information of performance session is boring. Every time when I need to change some parameters of my OpenCL app I need to fill it again, I think it will be beneficial to provide command line tools. Also, when right click the performance session I can not view or change its properties. if I have many session with different configurations to profile, then it is not feasible to do it in GUI anymore. In addition, I think the GUI should provide a box asking develop to name the session rather than a name with date by default.
2. For the performance profiling results,  I can only profile host side profiling, but not the more interesting Kernel side profiling. For the two sub profiling options:
   1. "occupancy" , It showed me "You are using a shared context!" what does that mean? In my code only one context was created.
   2. "latency", crashed directly, show me my opition is incorrect  

      For the kernel profiling function, what I expected is something like GPU activity data, such as in Xtune,  then I could see how much GPU resources are utilized. Is there any tool now from Intel specilized for profiling OpenCL kernel performance on iGPU?

      Finally, following is my development setup.

      CPU: i5-4570R, OS: Win8.1, iGPU driver version 10.18.10.3960 (from device manager), OpenCL Code Builder Ultimate version. My code try to utilize iGPU (HD5200)

 Best,

Biao

[Robert_I_Intel]

Biao,

Sorry that you had such a bad experience with our tool: I communicated your feedback to our development team: they are working on improving the functionality. In your title you mentioned that some functionality that was there previously disappeared. Could you specify what are you missing?

Could you also please post screenshots for all the issues you are talking about, so I can forward it to the team as well?

For a more detailed OpenCL kernel performance analysis I highly recommend Intel® VTune™ Amplifier 2015, it has a 30 day free trial period, which should allow you to explore its benefits: VTune has nice OpenCL capabilities.

Thank you for being patient with our tools and providing feedback! We are trying hard to improve functionality and quality of our offerings.

[Robert_I_Intel]

Hi Biao,

Would it be possible to share your code with us, as we want to reproduce the issue, especially the crash you reported during "latency" analysis? If you could provide a small reproducer and steps to reproduce the problem, I would really appreciate it. Also, we can fix the problem in the next release.

[Robert_I_Intel]

Hi Biao,

Also, could you update to the 10.18.14.4080 driver from January 5th, 2015 and 1.3.0.43 version of the Code Builder from the most recent February 2015 release of Intel INDE and see if you can still see the issue.

Thank you!

[Biao_W_]

Hi Robert, 

Thanks for your prompt support and sorry for this delayed reply.

Robert Ioffe (Intel) wrote:

In your title you mentioned that some functionality that was there previously disappeared. Could you specify what are you missing?

I specify the features in the Vtune (not Xtune as my original thread) profiling tools, it shows GPU activity data. 

Robert Ioffe (Intel) wrote:

Could you also please post screenshots for all the issues you are talking about, so I can forward it to the team as well?

Thank you for being patient with our tools and providing feedback! We are trying hard to improve functionality and quality of our offerings.

Following are the two error screenshots for the kernel analysis of "cccupancy" and "latency", respectively.

I verified that the command line works under Microsoft cmd. However, when I fill the same "application",  "arguments" and  "working dir" within analysis session, my app starts, slashs, and then it disappears,  so I can not debug what is going wrong.

I suspect that the kernel for some reason not working properly under the profiling framework. But I can not figure out why, as in MS cmd tool it works.

Occupancy:

Latency:

[Biao_W_]

Robert Ioffe (Intel) wrote:

Hi Biao,

Also, could you update to the 10.18.14.4080 driver from January 5th, 2015 and 1.3.0.43 version of the Code Builder from the most recent February 2015 release of Intel INDE and see if you can still see the issue.

Thank you!

Hi Robert,

I have update the driver to 10.18.14.4080, same error happens.

Regarding the code builder, the version I had used it for my first experiment is 1.3.0.43.

Maybe here also answer your another question, I can not share my code with you, as it is under some NDA.

I think if I can get some support for how to debug the profiling session, then I am able to solve the problem and give you the feedback.

Best,

Biao

[Robert_I_Intel]

Biao,

Looks like the problem that your are reporting is caused by x64 build: development team is aware of the issue and fixed it in the upcoming INDE Update 2 release. Could you please try building in 32-bit mode and see if the problems disappear?

[Biao_W_]

Hi Robert,

If I switch to win32 mode it reports me many compilation errors, I don't think fix it in 32 bit is the right way to go.

When the upcoming INDE will be availabe?

Bests

[Robert_I_Intel]

Hi Biao,

We expect the INDE Update 2 to be released some time in Q2, most likely in the beginning of May.