Running RCCL using Docker

To use Docker to run RCCL, Docker must already be installed on the system. To build the Docker image and run the container, follow these steps.

1. Build the Docker image

   The Dockerfile.ubuntu file is located in the docker directory of the RCCL project. Run the following commands from the projects/rccl directory of the rocm-systems repository.

   By default, the Dockerfile uses docker.io/rocm/dev-ubuntu-22.04:latest as the base Docker image. It then installs RCCL and rccl-tests (in both cases, it uses the version from the develop branch).

   Use this command to build the Docker image:

   docker build -t rccl-tests -f docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu --pull .
   

   The base Docker image, rccl repository, rccl-tests repository, and GPU targets can be modified by using --build-arg in the docker build command above. For example, to use a different base Docker image and target a specific GPU architecture, use this command:

   docker build -t rccl-tests -f docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu --build-arg="ROCM_IMAGE_NAME=rocm/dev-ubuntu-24.04" --build-arg="ROCM_IMAGE_TAG=6.4.2" --build-arg="GPU_TARGETS=gfx942" --pull .
   

2. Launch an interactive Docker container on a system with AMD GPUs:

   docker run --rm --device=/dev/kfd --device=/dev/dri --group-add video --ipc=host --network=host --cap-add=SYS_PTRACE --security-opt seccomp=unconfined -it rccl-tests /bin/bash
   

   To run, for example, the all_reduce_perf test from rccl-tests on 8 AMD GPUs from inside the Docker container, use this command for ROCm 6.4.2 or later:

   mpirun --allow-run-as-root -np 8 --mca pml ucx --mca btl ^openib -x NCCL_DEBUG=VERSION /workspace/rccl-tests/build/all_reduce_perf -b 1 -e 16G -f 2 -g 1
   

   For ROCm 6.4.1 or earlier:

   mpirun --allow-run-as-root -np 8 --mca pml ucx --mca btl ^openib -x NCCL_DEBUG=VERSION -x HSA_NO_SCRATCH_RECLAIM=1 /workspace/rccl-tests/build/all_reduce_perf -b 1 -e 16G -f 2 -g 1
   

For more information on the rccl-tests options, see the Usage guidelines in the GitHub repository.