Using CMake

Applies to Linux and Windows

2024-09-11

16 min read time

Most components in ROCm support CMake. Projects depending on header-only or library components typically require CMake 3.5 or higher whereas those wanting to make use of the CMake HIP language support will require CMake 3.21 or higher.

Finding dependencies

Note

For a complete reference on how to deal with dependencies in CMake, refer to the CMake docs on find_package and the Using Dependencies Guide to get an overview of CMake related facilities.

In short, CMake supports finding dependencies in two ways:

• In Module mode, it consults a file Find<PackageName>.cmake which tries to find the component in typical install locations and layouts. CMake ships a few dozen such scripts, but users and projects may ship them as well.

• In Config mode, it locates a file named <packagename>-config.cmake or <PackageName>Config.cmake which describes the installed component in all regards needed to consume it.

ROCm predominantly relies on Config mode, one notable exception being the Module driving the compilation of HIP programs on NVIDIA runtimes. As such, when dependencies are not found in standard system locations, one either has to instruct CMake to search for package config files in additional folders using the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH variable (a semi-colon separated list of file system paths), or using <PackageName>_ROOT variable on a project-specific basis.

There are nearly a dozen ways to set these variables. One may be more convenient over the other depending on your workflow. Conceptually the simplest is adding it to your CMake configuration command on the command line via -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=.... . AMD packaged ROCm installs can typically be added to the config file search paths such as:

• Windows: -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=${env:HIP_PATH}

• Linux: -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/rocm

ROCm provides the respective config-file packages, and this enables find_package to be used directly. ROCm does not require any Find module as the config-file packages are shipped with the upstream projects, such as rocPRIM and other ROCm libraries.

For a complete guide on where and how ROCm may be installed on a system, refer to the installation guides for Linux and Windows.

Using HIP in CMake

ROCm components providing a C/C++ interface support consumption via any C/C++ toolchain that CMake knows how to drive. ROCm also supports the CMake HIP language features, allowing users to program using the HIP single-source programming model. When a program (or translation-unit) uses the HIP API without compiling any GPU device code, HIP can be treated in CMake as a simple C/C++ library.

Using the HIP single-source programming model

Source code written in the HIP dialect of C++ typically uses the .hip extension. When the HIP CMake language is enabled, it will automatically associate such source files with the HIP toolchain being used.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.21) # HIP language support requires 3.21
cmake_policy(VERSION 3.21.3...3.27)
project(MyProj LANGUAGES HIP)
add_executable(MyApp Main.hip)

Should you have existing CUDA code that is from the source compatible subset of HIP, you can tell CMake that despite their .cu extension, they’re HIP sources. Do note that this mostly facilitates compiling kernel code-only source files, as host-side CUDA API won’t compile in this fashion.

add_library(MyLib MyLib.cu)
set_source_files_properties(MyLib.cu PROPERTIES LANGUAGE HIP)

CMake itself only hosts part of the HIP language support, such as defining HIP-specific properties, etc. while the other half ships with the HIP implementation, such as ROCm. CMake will search for a file hip-lang-config.cmake describing how the the properties defined by CMake translate to toolchain invocations. If one installs ROCm using non-standard methods or layouts and CMake can’t locate this file or detect parts of the SDK, there’s a catch-all, last resort variable consulted locating this file, -D CMAKE_HIP_COMPILER_ROCM_ROOT:PATH= which should be set the root of the ROCm installation.

Note

Imported targets defined by hip-lang-config.cmake are for internal use only.

If the user doesn’t provide a semi-colon delimited list of device architectures via CMAKE_HIP_ARCHITECTURES, CMake will select some sensible default. It is advised though that if a user knows what devices they wish to target, then set this variable explicitly.

Consuming ROCm C/C++ libraries

Libraries such as rocBLAS, rocFFT, MIOpen, etc. behave as C/C++ libraries. Illustrated in the example below is a C++ application using MIOpen from CMake. It calls find_package(miopen), which provides the MIOpen imported target. This can be linked with target_link_libraries

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5) # find_package(miopen) requires 3.5
cmake_policy(VERSION 3.5...3.27)
project(MyProj LANGUAGES CXX)
find_package(miopen)
add_library(MyLib ...)
target_link_libraries(MyLib PUBLIC MIOpen)

Note

Most libraries are designed as host-only API, so using a GPU device compiler is not necessary for downstream projects unless they use GPU device code.

Consuming the HIP API in C++ code

Consuming the HIP API without compiling single-source GPU device code can be done using any C++ compiler. The find_package(hip) provides the hip::host imported target to use HIP in this scenario.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5) # find_package(hip) requires 3.5
cmake_policy(VERSION 3.5...3.27)
project(MyProj LANGUAGES CXX)
find_package(hip REQUIRED)
add_executable(MyApp ...)
target_link_libraries(MyApp PRIVATE hip::host)

When mixing such CXX sources with HIP sources holding device-code, link only to hip::host. If HIP sources don’t have .hip as their extension, use set_source_files_properties(<hip_sources>… PROPERTIES LANGUAGE HIP) on them. Linking to hip::host will set all the necessary flags for the CXX sources while HIP sources inherit all flags from the built-in language support. Having HIP sources in a target will turn the LINKER_LANGUAGE into HIP.

Compiling device code in C++ language mode

Attention

The workflow detailed here is considered legacy and is shown for understanding’s sake. It pre-dates the existence of HIP language support in CMake. If source code has HIP device code in it, it is a HIP source file and should be compiled as such. Only resort to the method below if your HIP-enabled CMake code path can’t mandate CMake version 3.21.

If code uses the HIP API and compiles GPU device code, it requires using a device compiler. The compiler for CMake can be set using either the CMAKE_C_COMPILER and CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER variable or using the CC and CXX environment variables. This can be set when configuring CMake or put into a CMake toolchain file. The device compiler must be set to a compiler that supports AMD GPU targets, which is usually Clang.

The find_package(hip) provides the hip::device imported target to add all the flags necessary for device compilation.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.8) # cxx_std_11 requires 3.8
cmake_policy(VERSION 3.8...3.27)
project(MyProj LANGUAGES CXX)
find_package(hip REQUIRED)
add_library(MyLib ...)
target_link_libraries(MyLib PRIVATE hip::device)
target_compile_features(MyLib PRIVATE cxx_std_11)

Note

Compiling for the GPU device requires at least C++11.

This project can then be configured with the following CMake commands:

• Windows: cmake -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:PATH=${env:HIP_PATH}\bin\clang++.exe

• Linux: cmake -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:PATH=/opt/rocm/bin/amdclang++

Which use the device compiler provided from the binary packages of ROCm HIP SDK and repo.radeon.com respectively.

When using the CXX language support to compile HIP device code, selecting the target GPU architectures is done via setting the GPU_TARGETS variable. CMAKE_HIP_ARCHITECTURES only exists when the HIP language is enabled. By default, this is set to some subset of the currently supported architectures of AMD ROCm. It can be set to the CMake option -D GPU_TARGETS="gfx1032;gfx1035".

ROCm CMake packages

Component	Package	Targets
HIP	hip	hip::host, hip::device
rocPRIM	rocprim	roc::rocprim
rocThrust	rocthrust	roc::rocthrust
hipCUB	hipcub	hip::hipcub
rocRAND	rocrand	roc::rocrand
rocBLAS	rocblas	roc::rocblas
rocSOLVER	rocsolver	roc::rocsolver
hipBLAS	hipblas	roc::hipblas
rocFFT	rocfft	roc::rocfft
hipFFT	hipfft	hip::hipfft
rocSPARSE	rocsparse	roc::rocsparse
hipSPARSE	hipsparse	roc::hipsparse
rocALUTION	rocalution	roc::rocalution
RCCL	rccl	rccl
MIOpen	miopen	MIOpen
MIGraphX	migraphx	migraphx::migraphx, migraphx::migraphx_c, migraphx::migraphx_cpu, migraphx::migraphx_gpu, migraphx::migraphx_onnx, migraphx::migraphx_tf

Using CMake presets

CMake command lines depending on how specific users like to be when compiling code can grow to unwieldy lengths. This is the primary reason why projects tend to bake script snippets into their build definitions controlling compiler warning levels, changing CMake defaults (CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE or BUILD_SHARED_LIBS just to name a few) and all sorts anti-patterns, all in the name of convenience.

Load on the command-line interface (CLI) starts immediately by selecting a toolchain, the set of utilities used to compile programs. To ease some of the toolchain related pains, CMake does consult the CC and CXX environmental variables when setting a default CMAKE_C[XX]_COMPILER respectively, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a fair number of variables related to just the toolchain itself (typically supplied using toolchain files ), and then we still haven’t talked about user preference or project-specific options.

IDEs supporting CMake (Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, CLion, etc.) all came up with their own way to register command-line fragments of different purpose in a setup-and-forget fashion for quick assembly using graphical front-ends. This is all nice, but configurations aren’t portable, nor can they be reused in Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines. CMake has condensed existing practice into a portable JSON format that works in all IDEs and can be invoked from any command line. This is CMake Presets.

There are two types of preset files: one supplied by the project, called CMakePresets.json which is meant to be committed to version control, typically used to drive CI; and one meant for the user to provide, called CMakeUserPresets.json, typically used to house user preference and adapting the build to the user’s environment. These JSON files are allowed to include other JSON files and the user presets always implicitly includes the non-user variant.

Using HIP with presets

Following is an example CMakeUserPresets.json file which actually compiles the amd/rocm-examples suite of sample applications on a typical ROCm installation:

{
  "version": 3,
  "cmakeMinimumRequired": {
    "major": 3,
    "minor": 21,
    "patch": 0
  },
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "layout",
      "hidden": true,
      "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/build/${presetName}",
      "installDir": "${sourceDir}/install/${presetName}"
    },
    {
      "name": "generator-ninja-multi-config",
      "hidden": true,
      "generator": "Ninja Multi-Config"
    },
    {
      "name": "toolchain-makefiles-c/c++-amdclang",
      "hidden": true,
      "cacheVariables": {
        "CMAKE_C_COMPILER": "/opt/rocm/bin/amdclang",
        "CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER": "/opt/rocm/bin/amdclang++",
        "CMAKE_HIP_COMPILER": "/opt/rocm/bin/amdclang++"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "clang-strict-iso-high-warn",
      "hidden": true,
      "cacheVariables": {
        "CMAKE_C_FLAGS": "-Wall -Wextra -pedantic",
        "CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS": "-Wall -Wextra -pedantic",
        "CMAKE_HIP_FLAGS": "-Wall -Wextra -pedantic"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm",
      "displayName": "Ninja Multi-Config ROCm",
      "inherits": [
        "layout",
        "generator-ninja-multi-config",
        "toolchain-makefiles-c/c++-amdclang",
        "clang-strict-iso-high-warn"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "buildPresets": [
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-debug",
      "displayName": "Debug",
      "configuration": "Debug",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm"
    },
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-release",
      "displayName": "Release",
      "configuration": "Release",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm"
    },
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-debug-verbose",
      "displayName": "Debug (verbose)",
      "configuration": "Debug",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm",
      "verbose": true
    },
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-release-verbose",
      "displayName": "Release (verbose)",
      "configuration": "Release",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm",
      "verbose": true
    }
  ],
  "testPresets": [
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-debug",
      "displayName": "Debug",
      "configuration": "Debug",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm",
      "execution": {
        "jobs": 0
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "ninja-mc-rocm-release",
      "displayName": "Release",
      "configuration": "Release",
      "configurePreset": "ninja-mc-rocm",
      "execution": {
        "jobs": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

Note

Getting presets to work reliably on Windows requires some CMake improvements and/or support from compiler vendors. (Refer to Add support to the Visual Studio generators and Sourcing environment scripts .)