Installation and Building for Linux

Installation and Building for Linux#

Prerequisites#

A ROCm enabled platform. Find more information on the System requirements (Linux) page.

Installing Prebuilt Packages#

rocBLAS can be installed on Ubuntu(R) or Debian using:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rocblas

rocBLAS can be installed on CentOS using:

sudo yum update
sudo yum install rocblas

rocBLAS can be installed on SLES using:

sudo dnf upgrade
sudo dnf install rocblas

rocBLAS can be installed on Fedora using:

sudo dnf install rocblas
sudo dnf install rocblas-devel

Once installed, rocBLAS can be used just like any other library with a C API. The rocblas.h header file must be included in the user code to make calls into rocBLAS, and the rocBLAS shared library will become link-time and run-time dependent for the user application.

The header files rocblas.h and rocblas_module.f90 are installed in /opt/rocm/include/rocblas. The library file librocblas.so is installed in /opt/rocm/lib.

Static Library#

Note for non-standard static library builds there is an additional runtime dependency which is the entire subdirectory rocblas/ located in the /opt/rocm/lib folder. This runtime folder can be moved elsewhere if setting the environment variable ROCBLAS_TENSILE_LIBPATH to the new location, or if running an executable linked against the static library librocblas.a the same directory as the executable will be searched for the rocblas subdirectory. The contents of the files in this rocblas/ subdirectory are read at execution time much like shared library files would be. They contain GPU code objects and their meta-data.

Building and Installing rocBLAS#

For most users, building from source is not necessary, as rocBLAS can be used after installing the prebuilt packages as described above. However, you can use following instructions to build rocBLAS from source if necessary.

Requirements#

As a rule, 64GB of system memory is required for a full rocBLAS fat binary build. This value can be lower if rocBLAS is built for specific architectures using the -a option to install.sh. More information is available from ./install.sh --help.

Download rocBLAS#

The rocBLAS source code is available at the rocBLAS github page. Check the ROCm version on your system. For Ubuntu(R), use:

apt show rocm-libs -a

For Centos, use:

yum info rocm-libs

The ROCm version has major, minor, and patch fields, possibly followed by a build specific identifier. For example, ROCm version could be 4.0.0.40000-23; this corresponds to major = 4, minor = 0, patch = 0, build identifier 40000-23. There are GitHub branches at the rocBLAS site with names rocm-major.minor.x where major and minor are the same as in the ROCm version. To download rocBLAS, you can use the following command:

git clone -b release/rocm-rel-x.y https://github.com/ROCm/rocBLAS.git
cd rocBLAS

Replace x.y in the above command with the version of ROCm installed on your machine. For example, if you have ROCm 6.2 installed, then replace release/rocm-rel-x.y with release/rocm-rel-6.2.

Below are steps to build using install.sh script. The user can build either:

dependencies + library
dependencies + library + client

You only need (dependencies + library) if you call rocBLAS from your code. The client contains the test and benchmark code.

Library Dependencies#

CMake has a minimum version requirement listed in the file install.sh. See --cmake_install flag in install.sh to upgrade automatically.

Dependencies are listed in the script install.sh. Passing the -d flag to install.sh installs the dependencies.

However, for the test and benchmark clients’ host reference BLAS, it is recommended that you manually download and install AMD’s ILP64 version of AOCL-BLAS 4.2 gcc from https://www.amd.com/en/developer/aocl.html. If you download and install the full AOCL packages into their default locations, or only download the BLIS archive files and extract into the build directory deps subfolder, then this reference BLAS should be found by the clients CMakeLists.txt. Note, if you only use the install.sh -d dependency script based BLIS download and install, you may experience rocblas-test stress test failures due to 32-bit integer overflow on the host unless you exclude the stress tests via command line argument --gtest_filter=-*stress*.

Build Library dependencies + Library#

Common uses of install.sh to build (library dependencies + library) are in the table below:

Command	Description
`./install.sh -h`	Help information.
`./install.sh -d`	Build library dependencies and library in your local directory. The -d` flag only needs to be used once. For subsequent invocations of install.sh` it is not necessary to rebuild the dependencies.
`./install.sh`	Build library in your local directory. It is assumed dependencies have been built.
`./install.sh -i`	Build library, then build and install rocBLAS package in `/opt/rocm/rocblas`. You will be prompted for sudo access. This will install for all users. If you want to keep rocBLAS in your local directory, you do not need the `-i` flag.

Build Library Dependencies + Client Dependencies + Library + Client#

Some client executables are listed in the table below:

executable name	description
rocblas-test	runs Google Tests to test the library
rocblas-bench	executable to benchmark or test functions
rocblas-example-sscal	example C code calling rocblas_sscal function

Common uses of install.sh to build (dependencies + library + client) are in the table below:

Command	Description
`./install.sh -h`	Help information.
`./install.sh -dc`	Build library dependencies, client dependencies, library, and client in your local directory. The `-d` flag only needs to be used once. For subsequent invocations of `install.sh` it is not necessary to rebuild the dependencies.
`./install.sh -c`	Build library and client in your local directory. It is assumed the dependencies have been built.
`./install.sh -idc`	Build library dependencies, client dependencies, library, client, then build and install the rocBLAS package. You will be prompted for sudo access. It is expected that if you want to install for all users you use the `-i` flag. If you want to keep rocBLAS in your local directory, you do not need the `-i` flag.
`./install.sh -ic`	Build and install rocBLAS package, and build the client. You will be prompted for sudo access. This will install for all users. If you want to keep rocBLAS in your local directory, you do not need the `-i` flag.

Build Clients without Library#

The rocBLAS clients can be built on their own using install.sh with a preexisting rocBLAS library.

Note that the version of the rocBLAS clients being built should match the version of the installed rocBLAS. Find the version of the installed rocBLAS in the installed rocBLAS directory in the file include/internal/rocblas-version.h. Find the version of rocBLAS being built by running grep"VERSION_STRING" CMakeLists.txt in the rocBLAS directory being built.

Command	Description
`./install.sh --clients-only`	Build rocBLAS clients and use an installed rocBLAS library at ROCM_PATH (`/opt/rocm` if not specified).
`./install.sh --clients-only` `--library-path /path/to/rocBLAS`	Build rocBLAS clients and use a rocBLAS library at the specified location.