Memory management

Memory management is an important part of the HIP runtime API, when creating high-performance applications. Both allocating and copying memory can result in bottlenecks, which can significantly impact performance.

The programming model is based on a system with a host and a device, each having its own distinct memory. Kernels operate on Device memory, while host functions operate on Host memory.

The runtime offers functions for allocating, freeing, and copying device memory, along with transferring data between host and device memory.

Here are the various memory management techniques:

• Coherence control

• Unified memory management

• Virtual memory management

• Stream Ordered Memory Allocator

Memory allocation

The API calls and the resulting allocations are listed here:

Memory coherence control

API	Data location	Allocation
System allocated	Host	Pageable
hipMallocManaged()	Host	Managed
hipHostMalloc()	Host	Pinned
hipMalloc()	Device	Pinned