ComputeMux is a common API which allows multiple APIs such as OpenCL to map to particular hardware devices. In such cases there is considered to be a host, typically a CPU, and a device. device is usually multiple programmable cores with a common fast memory. The device is expected to execute kernels which are compiled through this API. This execution of kernels offloads work from the host. The device or host can be multi-core and utilize that aspect.
There is a runtime aspect to this that allows management of commands, which normally part of the host. This allows creation of batches of commands which must be executed on the device. These batches can also be seen as graphs of commands based on data dependencies. These batches may be run entirely on the device.
Hardware interfaces are expected to support:
Allocation of memory on the device (the memory allocations are known as buffers)
Reading and writing to memory in the device from the host (although this should be infrequent, usually large and can be via DMA)
Executing programs (known as kernels) on the device using previously allocated buffers.
The execution of the kernel is expected to do the same work across different data inputs and may run in parallel. This can map to hardware in different ways. Conceptually work is split across a potentially large number of work items and each kernel is defined at the work item level.
Each work item has a unique identifier and is expected to be executed as part of a work group, each item working effectively in parallel, with some synchronization if needed. A work group typically would run on a single core. Work groups are expected to run asynchronously from each other. This is described in more detail here.
For an understanding of mapping device memory to ComputeMux concepts, see here
The other major part of ComputeMux is the compiler aspect. This sits on top of an LLVM backend. The kernels themselves either are produced by the clang library based on source kernel code such as OpenCL or come from lower level intermediate languages such as SPIR-V which has a good mapping to and from LLVM. From the ComputeMux target perspective an LLVM module will be used as an input.
The ComputeMux target specific part can provide a number of passes to prepare the kernels in the module for running on the target architecture, before it passes it to the compiler backend to produce some form of object code. This object code may have further processing to form some form of executable. The executable shall be passed to the device, probably through a driver interface. There a number of utility passes which are provided to assist in writing this part.
Whether the final executable targets the work item level or the work group level depends on the hardware and is described in more detail here. Additional information such as scheduling will likely be passed into the function as well as the kernel arguments.
More detailed requirements, including memory, atomics, floating point and synchronization are detailed in the sections below.
