Assistance with using DirectML from Swift

[philipturner]

In whatever successor to S4TF I make, whether a fork or something entirely new, I would like to add DirectML acceleration. In prior conversation, you said you would be interested if I optimized my work for DirectX. Assuming I can transfer my experience from Metal to DirectX and speed-learn the Windows C++ API, I’ll face a problem. All I can test on is the Intel iGPU of my Mac mini running Bootcamp. DirectML spans GPUs from several vendors, most importantly discrete GPUs.

Although I have friends with PCs and others in the OSS community might pitch in, I’m not confident that they’ll respond back quickly. For serious bugs, I might need quick communication feedback loops with someone, and you’re very active on GitHub. In the future, would you have the capacity to test my DirectML acceleration on a variety of DX12 GPUs or assist me in any way?

Also, anything you can think of off the top of your mind to make learning Swift + Windows + DirectX easier?

[compnerd]

I am afraid that I wouldn't be able to help per se. I think that you should be able to use a VM for the testing though as DirectX is often available under emulation. Additionally, you can likely run things under wine if necessary. I would highly recommend that you try to buy a machine with a discrete GPU.

As to learning Swift + Windows + DirectX, I would say treat the three as individual things. Swift has a number of rather good resources for learning. As to the Windows specific bits, I would recommend that any basic Windows Programming guide (e.g. Windows Internals by Mark Russinovich), and a similar thing for DirectX (e.g. Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 12). But, generally speaking, each one of those items are large areas on their own and will require a fair amount of domain specific learning.

[philipturner]

I just need the knowledge to call into the DirectML API for kernels, much like you called into CTensorFlow. Does that still require a massive learning gap?

…

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 19, 2022, at 10:25 PM, Saleem Abdulrasool ***@***.***> wrote:  I am afraid that I wouldn't be able to help per se. I think that you should be able to use a VM for the testing though as DirectX is often available under emulation. Additionally, you can likely run things under wine if necessary. I would highly recommend that you try to buy a machine with a discrete GPU. As to learning Swift + Windows + DirectX, I would say treat the three as individual things. Swift has a number of rather good resources for learning. As to the Windows specific bits, I would recommend that any basic Windows Programming guide (e.g. Windows Internals by Mark Russinovich), and a similar thing for DirectX (e.g. Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 12). But, generally speaking, each one of those items are large areas on their own and will require a fair amount of domain specific learning. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[compnerd]

I think that you are underestimating the necessary domain knowledge required for an effort like that. DirectX is not entirely a standalone island, and the necessary background from other Windows technologies like GDI and COM is pretty invaluable to diagnosing things. I think that you will likely need to have some level of understanding of these pieces.

[philipturner]

I originally decided to plan for DirectML because you were displeased with my DL4S GPU acceleration being platform-specific. Given the high barrier to entry, I guess I won’t explore it until after Metal acceleration for S4TF is complete.

Although, I’m structuring the new backend in a way that would be compatible with DirectX (or anything, really). My hope is that in the future, someone else might add DirectML acceleration, although I doubt Microsoft will contribute to a fork of a dead project.

[philipturner]

Just curious, would using Windows Subsystem for Linux let me avoid some of the effort needed to learn the Windows API? There are now DirectX and DirectML bindings usable within WSL.

[compnerd]

No, that just changes the file format and the observable kernel and libc, none of which will matter when you are working with Swift code. It will however make interaction with the rest of the system more challenging as you are now dealing with a layer of indirection and you cannot see everything (e.g. handles do not map to file descriptors). So using WSL only makes everything more complicated.

[philipturner]

Compared to learning the Apple platform without any prior experience, how much more difficult is learning Windows? Also factoring in that I’m using C++ for Windows, while Apple has a high-level language with Swift.

[compnerd]

This is wildly off topic for this repository. I recommend that you do your own research.

[philipturner]

I'm sorry for acting outright immature at some times in the past, and sometimes wasting your time (as per my most recent comment here). Putting that aside, I have decided to use OpenCL instead of DirectX for a cross-platform S4TF backend. There is an awesome kernel repository, artyom-beilis/dlprimitives, which makes using DirectML on Windows largely unnecessary. Feel free to close this thread if you want.

[compnerd]

Ah, that seems like a reasonable path. It should also potentially simplify some of the platform specifics. Good luck with the undertaking!