What is ROCm?#
2024-12-19
9 min read time
ROCm is a software stack, composed primarily of open-source software, that provides the tools for programming AMD Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), from low-level kernels to high-level end-user applications.
Specifically, ROCm provides the tools for HIP (Heterogeneous-computing Interface for Portability), OpenCL and OpenMP. These include compilers, libraries for high-level functions, debuggers, profilers and runtimes.
ROCm components#
ROCm consists of the following components. For information on the license associated with each component, see ROCm licensing.
Libraries#
Machine Learning & Computer Vision#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Provides a programming model for writing performance critical kernels for machine learning workloads across multiple architectures |
|
Graph inference engine that accelerates machine learning model inference |
|
An open source deep-learning library |
|
Set of comprehensive computer vision and machine learning libraries, utilities, and applications |
|
Comprehensive high-performance computer vision library for AMD processors with HIP/OpenCL/CPU back-ends |
|
An augmentation library designed to decode and process images and videos |
|
High-performance SDK for access to video decoding features on AMD GPUs |
|
Library for decoding JPG images on AMD GPUs |
|
Provides access to rocDecode APIs in both Python and C/C++ languages |
Communication#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Standalone library that provides multi-GPU and multi-node collective communication primitives |
Math#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
C++ header-only library that provides an IEEE 754 conformant, 16-bit half-precision floating-point type, along with corresponding arithmetic operators, type conversions, and common mathematical functions |
|
BLAS-marshaling library that supports rocBLAS and cuBLAS backends |
|
Provides general matrix-matrix operations with a flexible API and extends functionalities beyond traditional BLAS library |
|
Fast Fourier transforms (FFT)-marshalling library that supports rocFFT or cuFFT backends |
|
Fortran interface library for accessing GPU Kernels |
|
Ports CUDA applications that use the cuRAND library into the HIP layer |
|
An LAPACK-marshalling library that supports rocSOLVER and cuSOLVER backends |
|
SPARSE-marshalling library that supports rocSPARSE and cuSPARSE backends |
|
SPARSE-marshalling library with multiple supported backends |
|
Sparse linear algebra library for exploring fine-grained parallelism on ROCm runtime and toolchains |
|
BLAS implementation (in the HIP programming language) on the ROCm runtime and toolchains |
|
Software library for computing fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) written in HIP |
|
Provides functions that generate pseudorandom and quasirandom numbers |
|
An implementation of LAPACK routines on ROCm software, implemented in the HIP programming language and optimized for AMD’s latest discrete GPUs |
|
Exposes a common interface that provides BLAS for sparse computation implemented on ROCm runtime and toolchains (in the HIP programming language) |
|
C++ library for accelerating mixed-precision matrix multiply-accumulate (MMA) operations |
|
Creates benchmark-driven backend libraries for GEMMs, GEMM-like problems, and general N-dimensional tensor contractions |
Primitives#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Thin header-only wrapper library on top of rocPRIM or CUB that allows project porting using the CUB library to the HIP layer |
|
AMD’s C++ library for accelerating tensor primitives based on the composable kernel library |
|
Header-only library for HIP parallel primitives |
|
Parallel algorithm library |
Tools#
System Management#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
C library for Linux that provides a user space interface for applications to monitor and control AMD devices |
|
Simplifies administration and addresses key infrastructure challenges in AMD GPUs in cluster and data-center environments |
|
Reports system information |
|
C library for Linux that provides a user space interface for applications to monitor and control GPU applications |
|
Detects and troubleshoots common problems affecting AMD GPUs running in a high-performance computing environment |
Performance#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Captures the performance characteristics of buffer copying and kernel read/write operations |
|
Kernel-level profiling for machine learning and high performance computing (HPC) workloads |
|
Comprehensive profiling and tracing of applications running on the CPU or the CPU and GPU |
|
Profiling tool for HIP applications |
|
Toolkit for developing analysis tools for profiling and tracing GPU compute applications. This toolkit is in beta and subject to change |
|
Intercepts runtime API calls and traces asynchronous activity |
Development#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Translates CUDA source code into portable HIP C++ |
|
Collection of CMake modules for common build and development tasks |
|
ROCm debugger API library |
|
Source-level debugger for Linux, based on the GNU Debugger (GDB) |
|
Prints the state of all AMD GPU wavefronts that caused a queue error by sending a SIGQUIT signal to the process while the program is running |
Compilers#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Compiler driver utility that calls Clang or NVCC and passes the appropriate include and library options for the target compiler and HIP infrastructure |
|
ROCm LLVM compiler infrastructure |
|
An out-of-tree Fortran compiler targeting LLVM |
Runtimes#
Component |
Description |
|---|---|
Contains source code for AMD’s compute language runtimes: HIP and OpenCL |
|
AMD’s GPU programming language extension and the GPU runtime |
|
User-mode API interfaces and libraries necessary for host applications to launch compute kernels on available HSA ROCm kernel agents |