Improve cross-device usage about cuda.jl HOT 5 CLOSED

That is expected; memory allocated on one device cannot be simply accessed by another. You need unified memory for that, or a mapped host buffer.

The fact that explicit copy operations (as used by the I/O stack) still work, is unrelated. In fact, you can safely copy between arrays on different devices, which will use an appropriate mechanism (stage through CPU, or P2P copy).

from cuda.jl.

I don't want to access memory on one device from another. I just want operation on one device to give output on the same device, irrespective of current_device. I just want the following behavior from pytorch

import torch

device0 = torch.device("cuda:0")
device1 = torch.device("cuda:1")
x0 = torch.zeros(2, device=device0)
x1 = torch.ones(2, device=device1)

print(x0)      # tensor([0., 0.], device='cuda:0')
print(x0 - x0) # tensor([0., 0.], device='cuda:0')

print(x1)      # tensor([1., 1.], device='cuda:1')
print(x1 - x1) # tensor([0., 0.], device='cuda:1')

Can this be obtained with CUDA.jl?

from cuda.jl.

That is not how our model work. We follow the CUDA programming model, where switching devices is a global operation affecting where the computation happens, whereas in Torch arrays are owned by a device. That is just a different approach which comes with its own set of trade-offs.

from cuda.jl.

Actually, I think we can improve this by either erroring early, or using P2P to enable cross-device usage. Note however that I still want to keep the fact that we execute on the current active device vs. the one an array was allocated on.

from cuda.jl.

This now works on #2335:

julia> using CUDA

julia> CUDA.device!(0)
CuDevice(0): Tesla V100-PCIE-16GB

julia> x = CUDA.ones(2)

2-element CuArray{Float32, 1, CUDA.DeviceMemory}:
 1.0
 1.0

julia> CUDA.device!(1)
CuDevice(1): Tesla V100S-PCIE-32GB

julia> x
2-element CuArray{Float32, 1, CUDA.DeviceMemory}:
 1.0
 1.0

julia> y = x - x;

julia> CUDA.device(x)
CuDevice(0): Tesla V100-PCIE-16GB

julia> CUDA.device(y)
CuDevice(1): Tesla V100S-PCIE-32GB

julia> y
2-element CuArray{Float32, 1, CUDA.DeviceMemory}:
 0.0
 0.0

However, do note that we keep with the semantics that we're executing on the globally active device. Which means that you may run into the following if your devices are inaccessible to one another:

julia> CUDA.device!(0)
CuDevice(0): Tesla V100-PCIE-16GB

julia> x = CUDA.ones(2)
2-element CuArray{Float32, 1, CUDA.DeviceMemory}:
 1.0
 1.0

julia> CUDA.device!(3)
CuDevice(3): Tesla P100-PCIE-16GB

julia> x
2-element CuArray{Float32, 1, CUDA.DeviceMemory}:
 1.0
 1.0

julia> y = x - x;
ERROR: ArgumentError: cannot take the GPU address of inaccessible device memory.

You are trying to use memory from GPU 0 while executing on GPU 3.
P2P access between these devices is not possible; either switch execution to GPU 0
by calling `CUDA.device!(0)`, or copy the data to an array allocated on device 3.

from cuda.jl.