Installing and building rocRAND#

This topic describes how to install or build rocRAND. The easiest method is to install the prebuilt packages from the ROCm repositories, but this chapter also describes how to build rocRAND from source.

Requirements#

rocRAND has the following prerequisites:

  • CMake (version 3.16 or later)

  • C++ compiler with C++17 support to build the library

    • gcc version 9 or later is recommended

    • Clang uses the development headers and libraries from gcc, so a recent version of it must still be installed when compiling with clang

  • C++ compiler with C++11 support to use the library

  • (Optional) Fortran compiler (This is only required for the Fortran wrapper. GFortran is recommended.)

  • (Optional) GoogleTest (This is only required to build and use the tests. Building the tests is enabled by default.)

    Use GTEST_ROOT to specify the GoogleTest location. For more information, see FindGTest.

    Note

    If GoogleTest is not already installed, it will be automatically downloaded and built.

The following additional components are required to use rocRAND on AMD platforms:

  • ROCm (see the ROCm installation guide)

  • A HIP-clang compiler, which must be set as the C++ compiler on the ROCm platform.

The following additional components are required to use rocRAND on NVIDIA CUDA platforms:

  • HIP

  • The latest CUDA SDK

Install using prebuilt packages#

To install the prebuilt rocRAND packages, you require a ROCm-enabled platform. For information on installing ROCm, see the ROCm installation guide. After installing ROCm or enabling the ROCm repositories, use the system package manager to install rocRAND.

For Ubuntu and Debian:

sudo apt-get install rocrand

For CentOS-based systems:

sudo yum install rocrand

For SLES:

sudo dnf install rocrand

These commands install rocRAND in the /opt/rocm directory.

Build rocRAND from source#

This section provides the information required to build rocRAND from source.

Obtaining the rocRAND source code#

The rocRAND source code is available from the rocRAND GitHub Repository. Use the branch that matches the ROCm version installed on the system. For example, on a system with ROCm 6.3 installed, use the following command to obtain the rocRAND version 6.3 source code:

git checkout -b rocm-6.3 https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/rocRAND.git

Building the library#

After downloading the source code, use the installation script to build rocRAND:

cd rocRAND
./install --install

This automatically builds all required dependencies, excluding HIP and Git, and installs the project to /opt/rocm. For further information, run the ./install --help command.

Building with CMake#

For a more detailed installation process, build rocRAND manually using CMake. This enables certain configuration options that are not available through the ./install script. To build rocRAND, use CMake with the following configuration:

cd rocrand; mkdir build; cd build
# Configure the project
CXX=<compiler> cmake [options] ..
# Build
make -j4
# Optionally, run the tests
ctest --output-on-failure
# Install
[sudo] make install

To build for the ROCm platform, <compiler> should be set to hipcc. To build for CUDA, <compiler> should be set to the host compiler. For CUDA, if the location of nvcc isn’t on the path, it might need to be passed explicitly using -DCMAKE_CUDA_COMPILER=<path-to-nvcc>. Additionally, the directory where FindHIP.cmake is installed needs to be passed explicitly using -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH. By default, this file is installed in /opt/rocm/hip/cmake.

In addition to the built-in CMake options, the following configuration options are available:

  • BUILD_FORTRAN_WRAPPER: Controls whether to build the Fortran wrapper. Defaults to OFF.

  • BUILD_TEST: Controls whether to build the rocRAND tests. Defaults to OFF.

  • BUILD_BENCHMARK: Controls whether to build the rocRAND benchmarks. Defaults to OFF.

  • BUILD_ADDRESS_SANITIZER Controls whether to build with address sanitization enabled. Defaults to OFF.

To install rocRAND with a non-standard installation location of ROCm, pass -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=</path/to/opt/rocm/> or set the environment variable ROCM_PATH to path/to/opt/rocm.

rocRAND with HIP on Windows#

rocRAND with HIP on Microsoft Windows has the following additional prerequisites:

  • Python 3.6 or higher (Only required for the install script)

  • Visual Studio 2019 with Clang support

  • Strawberry Perl

To install support for rocRAND and HIP on Windows, use the rmake.py Python script as follows:

git clone https://github.com/ROCm/rocRAND.git
cd rocRAND

# the -i option will install rocRAND to C:\hipSDK by default
python rmake.py -i

# the -c option will build all clients including unit tests
python rmake.py -c

Any existing GoogleTest library in the system (especially static GoogleTest libraries built with other compilers) might cause a build failure. If you encounter errors with the existing GoogleTest library or other dependencies, pass the DEPENDENCIES_FORCE_DOWNLOAD flag to CMake to help solve the problem.

To disable inline assembly optimizations in rocRAND for both the host library and the device functions provided in rocrand_kernel.h, set the CMake option ENABLE_INLINE_ASM to OFF.

Building the Python API wrapper#

This section provides the information required to build the rocRAND Python API wrapper.

Requirements#

The rocRAND Python API Wrapper requires the following dependencies:

  • rocRAND

  • Python 3.5

  • NumPy (will be installed automatically as a dependency if necessary)

Note

If rocRAND is built from source but is either not installed or installed in a non-standard directory, set the ROCRAND_PATH environment variable to the library location. For example:

export ROCRAND_PATH=~/rocRAND/build/library/

Installation#

The Python rocRAND module can be installed using pip:

cd rocrand/python/rocrand
pip install .

The tests can be executed as follows:

cd rocrand/python/rocrand
python tests/rocrand_test.py