TransferBench in RVS

TransferBench in RVS#

TransferBench is a low-level utility for measuring host-to-device, device-to-device, and NIC transfer performance on AMD platforms. It is vendored into RVS as a git submodule at external/TransferBench and built as part of the RVS build.

What ships in the RVS package#

Building RVS produces a single DEB or RPM that contains:

  • The rvs launcher and all RVS test modules, including pebb.so and pbqt.so, which use the TransferBench headers internally as their transfer backend.

  • The standalone TransferBench CLI binary, installed alongside rvs under the same prefix (for example /opt/rocm/extras-<major>/bin/TransferBench).

No separate TransferBench package needs to be installed.

Why the CLI is bundled#

The TransferBench CLI is bundled for compatibility. Existing tooling, scripts, and CI pipelines that invoke TransferBench directly continue to work after installing RVS, without requiring a second package.

For new work, the recommended entry points are:

  • RVS — use the pebb and pbqt modules with a YAML config to drive TransferBench through RVS’s standard CLI, result schema, and logging. See the User guide for the supported transfer_method, transferbench_test, executor, and related options.

  • The TransferBench API — headers live under external/TransferBench/src/header. Link against the headers from your own application when you need programmatic access to the transfer engine.

The standalone CLI should be reserved for reproducing legacy benchmark invocations or for ad-hoc one-off measurements outside an RVS run.

Build options#

The CLI is built by default. To skip it, pass:

cmake -DBUILD_TRANSFERBENCH_CLI=OFF ...

Skipping the CLI does not affect RVS’s pebb/pbqt modules — they consume the TransferBench headers from the submodule, not the CLI binary.

The set of GPU architectures the CLI is compiled for can be narrowed with:

cmake -DTRANSFERBENCH_GPU_TARGETS="gfx90a;gfx942;gfx950" ...

By default RVS builds the CLI for the same arch set RVS itself ships on.

Submodule layout#

ROCmValidationSuite/
  external/
    TransferBench/        # git submodule, pinned in the RVS tree
      src/
        client/Client.cpp     # CLI entry point
        header/               # public headers consumed by pebb/pbqt

After cloning RVS, initialise the submodule if you did not pass --recurse-submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Version pinning#

The TransferBench submodule is pinned to a specific commit in the RVS tree, so a given RVS tag always bundles a known-good TransferBench revision. To move to a newer TransferBench, update the submodule pointer in a normal pull request against RVS.

Further reading#

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