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Pre-built binaries are available on our releases page

clSPARSE

an OpenCL© library implementing Sparse linear algebra. This project is a result of a collaboration between AMD Inc. and Vratis Ltd..

Introduction to clSPARSE

At this time, clSPARSE provides these fundamental sparse operations for OpenCL:

  • Sparse Matrix - dense Vector multiply (SpM-dV)
  • Sparse Matrix - dense Matrix multiply (SpM-dM)
  • Iterative conjugate gradient solver (CG)
  • Iterative biconjugate gradient stabilized solver (BiCGStab)
  • Dense to CSR conversions (& converse)
  • COO to CSR conversions (& converse)
  • Functions to read matrix market files in COO or CSR format

True in spirit with the other clMath libraries, clSPARSE exports a “C” interface to allow projects to build wrappers around clSPARSE in any language they need. A great deal of thought and effort went into designing the API’s to make them less ‘cluttered’ compared to the older clMath libraries. OpenCL state is not explicitly passed through the API, which enables the library to be forward compatible when users are ready to switch from OpenCL 1.2 to OpenCL 2.0 (OpenCL 2.0 support not completely finished)

The API’s are designed such that users are in control of where input and output buffers live, and they maintain control of when data transfers to/from device memory happen, so that there are no performance surprises.

Google Groups

Two mailing lists have been created for the clMath projects:

API semantic versioning

Good software is typically the result of the loop of feedback and iteration; software interfaces no less so. clSPARSE follows the semantic versioning guidelines, and while the major version number remains '0', the public API should not be considered stable. We release clSPARSE as beta software (0.y.z) early to the community to elicit feedback and comment. This comes with the expectation that with feedback, we may incorporate breaking changes to the API that might require early users to recompile, or rewrite portions of their code as we iterate on the design.

Samples

clSPARSE contains a directory of simple OpenCL samples that demonstrate the use of the API in both C and C++. The superbuild script for clSPARSE also builds the samples as an external project, to demonstrate how an application would find and link to clSPARSE with cmake.

clSPARSE library documentation

API documentation is not yet available, but the samples above give an excellent starting point to basic library operations.

Contributing code

Please refer to and read the Contributing document for guidelines on how to contribute code to this open source project. Code in the /master branch is considered to be stable and new library releases are made when commits are merged into /master. Active development and pull-requests should be made to the /develop branch.

Build

clSPARSE is primarily written with C++ using C++11 core features. It does export a 'C' interface for compatibility with other languages.

How to build clSPARSE for your platform

A Build primer is available on the wiki, which describes how to use cmake to generate platforms specific build files

Compiling for Windows

  • Windows® 7/8
  • Visual Studio 2013 and above
  • CMake 2.8.12 (download from Kitware)
  • Solution (.sln) or
  • Nmake makefiles
  • An OpenCL SDK, such as APP SDK 3.0

Compiling for Linux

  • GCC 4.8 and above
  • CMake 2.8.12 (install with distro package manager )
    • Unix makefiles or
    • KDevelop or
    • QT Creator
  • An OpenCL SDK, such as APP SDK 3.0

Compiling for Mac OSX

  • CMake 2.8.12 (install via brew)
  • Unix makefiles or
  • XCode
  • An OpenCL SDK (installed via xcode-select --install)

Bench & Test infrastructure dependencies

  • Googletest v1.7
  • Boost v1.58