xref: /libCEED/README.md (revision 0219ea01e2c00bd70a330a05b50ef0218d6ddcb0)
1# libCEED: the CEED API Library
2
3[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/CEED/libCEED.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/CEED/libCEED)
4[![Code Coverage](https://codecov.io/gh/CEED/libCEED/branch/master/graphs/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/gh/CEED/libCEED/)
5[![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-BSD%202--Clause-orange.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause)
6[![Doxygen](https://codedocs.xyz/CEED/libCEED.svg)](https://codedocs.xyz/CEED/libCEED/)
7
8## Code for Efficient Extensible Discretization
9
10This repository contains an initial low-level API library for the efficient
11high-order discretization methods developed by the ECP co-design [Center for
12Efficient Exascale Discretizations (CEED)](http://ceed.exascaleproject.org).
13While our focus is on high-order finite elements, the approach is mostly
14algebraic and thus applicable to other discretizations in factored form, as
15explained in the API documentation portion of the [Doxygen documentation](https://codedocs.xyz/CEED/libCEED/md_doc_libCEEDapi.html).
16
17One of the challenges with high-order methods is that a global sparse matrix is
18no longer a good representation of a high-order linear operator, both with
19respect to the FLOPs needed for its evaluation, as well as the memory transfer
20needed for a matvec.  Thus, high-order methods require a new "format" that still
21represents a linear (or more generally non-linear) operator, but not through a
22sparse matrix.
23
24The goal of libCEED is to propose such a format, as well as supporting
25implementations and data structures, that enable efficient operator evaluation
26on a variety of computational device types (CPUs, GPUs, etc.). This new operator
27description is based on algebraically [factored form](https://codedocs.xyz/CEED/libCEED/md_doc_libCEEDapi.html),
28which is easy to incorporate in a wide variety of applications, without significant
29refactoring of their own discretization infrastructure.
30
31The repository is part of the [CEED software suite][ceed-soft], a collection of
32software benchmarks, miniapps, libraries and APIs for efficient exascale
33discretizations based on high-order finite element and spectral element methods.
34See http://github.com/ceed for more information and source code availability.
35
36The CEED research is supported by the [Exascale Computing Project][ecp]
37(17-SC-20-SC), a collaborative effort of two U.S. Department of Energy
38organizations (Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security
39Administration) responsible for the planning and preparation of a [capable
40exascale ecosystem](https://exascaleproject.org/what-is-exascale), including
41software, applications, hardware, advanced system engineering and early testbed
42platforms, in support of the nation’s exascale computing imperative.
43
44For more details on the CEED API see http://ceed.exascaleproject.org/ceed-code/.
45
46## Building
47
48The CEED library, `libceed`, is a C99 library with no external dependencies.  It
49can be built using
50
51    make
52
53or, with optimization flags
54
55    make OPT='-O3 -march=skylake-avx512 -ffp-contract=fast'
56
57These optimization flags are used by all languages (C, C++, Fortran) and this
58makefile variable can also be set for testing and examples (below).
59
60The library attempts to automatically detect support for the AVX
61instruction set using gcc-style compiler options for the host.
62Support may need to be manually specified via
63
64    make AVX=1
65
66or
67
68    make AVX=0
69
70if your compiler does not support gcc-style options, if you are cross
71compiling, etc.
72
73## Testing
74
75The test suite produces [TAP](https://testanything.org) output and is run by:
76
77    make test
78
79or, using the `prove` tool distributed with Perl (recommended)
80
81    make prove
82
83## Backends
84
85There are multiple supported backends, which can be selected at runtime in the examples:
86
87|  CEED resource           | Backend                                           |
88| :----------------------- | :------------------------------------------------ |
89| `/cpu/self/ref/serial`   | Serial reference implementation                   |
90| `/cpu/self/ref/blocked`  | Blocked refrence implementation                   |
91| `/cpu/self/ref/memcheck` | Memcheck backend, undefined value checks          |
92| `/cpu/self/opt/serial`   | Serial optimized C implementation                 |
93| `/cpu/self/opt/blocked`  | Blocked optimized C implementation                |
94| `/cpu/self/avx/serial`   | Serial AVX implementation                         |
95| `/cpu/self/avx/blocked`  | Blocked AVX implementation                        |
96| `/cpu/self/xsmm/serial`  | Serial LIBXSMM implementation                     |
97| `/cpu/self/xsmm/blocked` | Blocked LIBXSMM implementation                    |
98| `/cpu/occa`              | Serial OCCA kernels                               |
99| `/gpu/occa`              | CUDA OCCA kernels                                 |
100| `/omp/occa`              | OpenMP OCCA kernels                               |
101| `/ocl/occa`              | OpenCL OCCA kernels                               |
102| `/gpu/cuda/ref`          | Reference pure CUDA kernels                       |
103| `/gpu/cuda/reg`          | Pure CUDA kernels using one thread per element    |
104| `/gpu/cuda/shared`       | Optimized pure CUDA kernels using shared memory   |
105| `/gpu/cuda/gen`          | Optimized pure CUDA kernels using code generation |
106| `/gpu/magma`             | CUDA MAGMA kernels                                |
107
108The `/cpu/self/*/serial` backends process one element at a time and are intended for meshes
109with a smaller number of high order elements. The `/cpu/self/*/blocked` backends process
110blocked batches of eight interlaced elements and are intended for meshes with higher numbers
111of elements.
112
113The `/cpu/self/ref/*` backends are written in pure C and provide basic functionality.
114
115The `/cpu/self/opt/*` backends are written in pure C and use partial e-vectors to improve performance.
116
117The `/cpu/self/avx/*` backends rely upon AVX instructions to provide vectorized CPU performance.
118
119The `/cpu/self/xsmm/*` backends rely upon the [LIBXSMM](http://github.com/hfp/libxsmm) package
120to provide vectorized CPU performance. The LIBXSMM backend does not use BLAS or MKL; however,
121if LIBXSMM was linked to MKL, this can be specified with the compilation flag `MKL=1`.
122
123The `/cpu/self/ref/memcheck` backend relies upon the [Valgrind](http://valgrind.org/) Memcheck tool
124to help verify that user QFunctions have no undefined values. To use, run your code with
125Valgrind and the Memcheck backend, e.g. `valgrind ./build/ex1 -ceed /cpu/self/ref/memcheck`. A
126'development' or 'debugging' version of Valgrind with headers is required to use this backend.
127
128The `/*/occa` backends rely upon the [OCCA](http://github.com/libocca/occa) package to provide
129cross platform performance.
130
131The `/gpu/cuda/*` backends provide GPU performance strictly using CUDA.
132
133The `/gpu/magma` backend relies upon the [MAGMA](https://bitbucket.org/icl/magma) package.
134
135## Examples
136
137libCEED comes with several examples of its usage, ranging from standalone C
138codes in the `/examples/ceed` directory to examples based on external packages,
139such as MFEM, PETSc, and Nek5000. Nek5000 v18.0 or greater is required.
140
141To build the examples, set the `MFEM_DIR`, `PETSC_DIR` and `NEK5K_DIR` variables
142and run:
143
144```console
145# libCEED examples on CPU and GPU
146cd examples/ceed
147make
148./ex1 -ceed /cpu/self
149./ex1 -ceed /gpu/occa
150cd ../..
151
152# MFEM+libCEED examples on CPU and GPU
153cd examples/mfem
154make
155./bp1 -ceed /cpu/self -no-vis
156./bp3 -ceed /gpu/occa -no-vis
157cd ../..
158
159# Nek5000+libCEED examples on CPU and GPU
160cd examples/nek
161make
162./nek-examples.sh -e bp1 -ceed /cpu/self -b 3
163./nek-examples.sh -e bp3 -ceed /gpu/occa -b 3
164cd ../..
165
166# PETSc+libCEED examples on CPU and GPU
167cd examples/petsc
168make
169./bps -problem bp1 -ceed /cpu/self
170./bps -problem bp2 -ceed /gpu/occa
171./bps -problem bp3 -ceed /cpu/self
172./bps -problem bp4 -ceed /gpu/occa
173./bps -problem bp5 -ceed /cpu/self
174./bps -problem bp6 -ceed /gpu/occa
175cd ../..
176
177cd examples/navier-stokes
178make
179./navierstokes -ceed /cpu/self
180./navierstokes -ceed /gpu/occa
181cd ../..
182```
183
184The above code assumes a GPU-capable machine with the OCCA backend
185enabled. Depending on the available backends, other Ceed resource specifiers can
186be provided with the `-ceed` option.
187
188## Benchmarks
189
190A sequence of benchmarks for all enabled backends can be run using
191
192```console
193make benchmarks
194```
195
196The results from the benchmarks are stored inside the `benchmarks/` directory
197and they can be viewed using the commands (requires python with matplotlib):
198
199```console
200cd benchmarks
201python postprocess-plot.py petsc-bps-bp1-*-output.txt
202python postprocess-plot.py petsc-bps-bp3-*-output.txt
203```
204
205Using the `benchmarks` target runs a comprehensive set of benchmarks which may
206take some time to run. Subsets of the benchmarks can be run using the scripts in the `benchmarks` folder.
207
208For more details about the benchmarks, see
209[`benchmarks/README.md`](benchmarks/README.md)
210
211
212## Install
213
214To install libCEED, run
215
216    make install prefix=/usr/local
217
218or (e.g., if creating packages),
219
220    make install prefix=/usr DESTDIR=/packaging/path
221
222Note that along with the library, libCEED installs kernel sources, e.g. OCCA
223kernels are installed in `$prefix/lib/okl`. This allows the OCCA backend to
224build specialized kernels at run-time. In a normal setting, the kernel sources
225will be found automatically (relative to the library file `libceed.so`).
226However, if that fails (e.g. if `libceed.so` is moved), one can copy (cache) the
227kernel sources inside the user OCCA directory, `~/.occa` using
228
229    $(OCCA_DIR)/bin/occa cache ceed $(CEED_DIR)/lib/okl/*.okl
230
231This will allow OCCA to find the sources regardless of the location of the CEED
232library. One may occasionally need to clear the OCCA cache, which can be accomplished
233by removing the `~/.occa` directory or by calling `$(OCCA_DIR)/bin/occa clear -a`.
234
235### pkg-config
236
237In addition to library and header, libCEED provides a [pkg-config][pkg-config1]
238file that can be used to easily compile and link. [For example][pkg-config2], if
239`$prefix` is a standard location or you set the environment variable
240`PKG_CONFIG_PATH`,
241
242    cc `pkg-config --cflags --libs ceed` -o myapp myapp.c
243
244will build `myapp` with libCEED.  This can be used with the source or
245installed directories.  Most build systems have support for pkg-config.
246
247## Contact
248
249You can reach the libCEED team by emailing [ceed-users@llnl.gov](mailto:ceed-users@llnl.gov)
250or by leaving a comment in the [issue tracker](https://github.com/CEED/libCEED/issues).
251
252## Copyright
253
254The following copyright applies to each file in the CEED software suite, unless
255otherwise stated in the file:
256
257> Copyright (c) 2017, Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. Produced at the
258> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. LLNL-CODE-734707. All Rights reserved.
259
260See files LICENSE and NOTICE for details.
261
262[ceed-soft]:   http://ceed.exascaleproject.org/software/
263[ecp]:         https://exascaleproject.org/exascale-computing-project
264[pkg-config1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pkg-config
265[pkg-config2]: https://people.freedesktop.org/~dbn/pkg-config-guide.html#faq
266