CUVK

CellUniverse Vulkan implementation. This distribution is used to accelerate cell deformation, universe rendering and cost calculation.

Work in Progress

CUVK is still in progress. The current implementation is constrained by the capability of compute devices. Future works will aim at providing work-arounds under the limits of the device when viable.

Performance

The Python demo program (Release build) produced the following result on my machine, compared with the adapted CPU-based implementation:

Deformation

Run#	Baseline (ms)	CUVK (ms)	%Reduction
0	13.752	2.426	82.4
1	13.159	2.534	80.7
2	16.747	5.942	64.5
3	16.451	5.076	69.1
4	13.140	2.781	78.8
5	13.886	5.267	62.1
6	13.067	5.512	57.8
7	13.266	5.469	58.8
8	13.364	5.343	60.0
9	14.516	2.463	83.0
Median	13.558	5.172	61.9

Evaluation

Run#	Baseline (ms)	CUVK (ms)	%Reduction
0	10117.638	2837.001	72.0
1	8291.345	2267.195	72.6
2	8286.471	2315.688	72.1
3	8356.441	2252.020	73.1
4	8386.348	2284.402	72.8
5	8289.388	2230.294	73.1
6	8403.162	2238.656	73.4
7	8395.716	2287.414	72.8
8	8387.057	2246.775	73.2
9	8289.592	2192.331	73.6
Median	8371.395	2259.608	73.0

How to Reproduce

A handy PowerShell script scripts/Run-Benchmark.ps1 can be used to reproduce the result. Notice that the CPU-based algorithm is adapted to mock the API of CUVK. This can make the baseline different from the original implementation.

NOTE: my machine is defined as following:

• CPU: Intel Core i7 8650U
• RAM: 16GB 1866MHz PDDR3
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
• GRAM: 6GB GDDR5

C-API

CUVK's raw C-API and detailed documentation is covered in the header file include/cuvk/cuvk.h. Language bindings (e.g. for Java) can be created based on the C-API.

The following functions are exported:

• cuvkRedirectLog (NOT IMPLEMENTED YET) Redirect the logging stream to a file. By default the log in printed via standard error.
• cuvkInitialize Initialize CUVK.
• cuvkDeinitialize Deinitialize CUVK and release all resources.
• cuvkEnumeratePhysicalDevices (NOT IMPLEMENTED YET) Enumerate all physical device information in JSON. It can be helpful to choose which physical device to use when there are multiple Vulkan-enabled devices.
• cuvkCreateContext Create a context on the physical device and allocate all resources needed for computation and get a handle of it.
• cuvkDestroyContext Destroy the context with all related resources released.
• cuvkInvokeDeformation Creat, dispatch a deformation task and get a handle to the result.
• cuvkInvokeEvaluation Create, dispatch an evaluation task and get a handle to the result.
• cuvkPoll Poll a task, i.e., check if the task is finished, and if it's successfully finished.
• cuvkDestroyTask Destroy the task and release related resources.

NOTE Task creation in CUVK is asynchronous. Returning from invocation of a task neither imply that the Vulkan device has received the instructions, nor the data provided is transfered to the device. All host-owned resources must be kept alive until the poll returned a finished state (either OK or ERROR). Release data before task completion can lead to undefined behavior.

Python Language Binding

An naive Python language binding is attached in python/cuvk.py. Please refer to the demo program python/demo.py to see how to use it.