Previously, most of the benchmarks just measured time spent reading or
writing the array on the device. The transfer only happened on the first
iteration and was then cached on the device.
This change clears out the array every iteration so that the array has
to be transferred afresh.
We have made several improvements to adding data into an `ArrayHandle`.
## Moving data from an `std::vector`
For numerous reasons, it is convenient to define data in a `std::vector`
and then wrap that into an `ArrayHandle`. It is often the case that an
`std::vector` is filled and then becomes unused once it is converted to an
`ArrayHandle`. In this case, what we really want is to pass the data off to
the `ArrayHandle` so that the `ArrayHandle` is now managing the data and
not the `std::vector`.
C++11 has a mechanism to do this: move semantics. You can now pass
variables to functions as an "rvalue" (right-hand value). When something is
passed as an rvalue, it can pull state out of that variable and move it
somewhere else. `std::vector` implements this movement so that an rvalue
can be moved to another `std::vector` without actually copying the data.
`make_ArrayHandle` now also takes advantage of this feature to move rvalue
`std::vector`s.
There is a special form of `make_ArrayHandle` named `make_ArrayHandleMove`
that takes an rvalue. There is also a special overload of
`make_ArrayHandle` itself that handles an rvalue `vector`. (However, using
the explicit move version is better if you want to make sure the data is
actually moved.)
## Make `ArrayHandle` from initalizer list
A common use case for using `std::vector` (particularly in our unit tests)
is to quickly add an initalizer list into an `ArrayHandle`. Now you can
by simply passing an initializer list to `make_ArrayHandle`.
## Deprecated `make_ArrayHandle` with default shallow copy
For historical reasons, passing an `std::vector` or a pointer to
`make_ArrayHandle` does a shallow copy (i.e. `CopyFlag` defaults to `Off`).
Although more efficient, this mode is inherintly unsafe, and making it the
default is asking for trouble.
To combat this, calling `make_ArrayHandle` without a copy flag is
deprecated. In this way, if you wish to do the faster but more unsafe
creation of an `ArrayHandle` you should explicitly express that.
This requried quite a few changes through the VTK-m source (particularly in
the tests).
## Similar changes to `Field`
`vtkm::cont::Field` has a `make_Field` helper function that is similar to
`make_ArrayHandle`. It also features the ability to create fields from
`std::vector`s and C arrays. It also likewise had the same unsafe behavior
by default of not copying from the source of the arrays.
That behavior has similarly been depreciated. You now have to specify a
copy flag.
The ability to construct a `Field` from an initializer list of values has
also been added.
- It also adds Google's benchmarch compare.py script
- It is installed to the build directory.
- It add a wrapper script called compare-benchmarks.py which:
- Let you run each of the benchmarks with different devices
- It adds a README.md explaining how to run the benchmarks
- BenchmarkDeviceAdapter input size range parametrized at compile time
Signed-off-by: Vicente Adolfo Bolea Sanchez <vicente.bolea@kitware.com>
VTK-m has been updated to replace old per device benchmark executables with a device
dependent shared library so that it's able to accept a device adapter at runtime through
the "--device=" argument.
The timer class now is asynchronous and device independent. it's using an
similiar API as vtkOpenGLRenderTimer with Start(), Stop(), Reset(), Ready(),
and GetElapsedTime() function. For convenience and backward compability, Each
Start() function call will call Reset() internally and each GetElapsedTime()
function call will call Stop() function if it hasn't been called yet for keeping
backward compatibility purpose.
Bascially it can be used in two modes:
* Create a Timer without any device info. vtkm::cont::Timer time;
* It would enable timers for all enabled devices on the machine. Users can get a
specific elapsed time by passing a device id into the GetElapsedtime function.
If no device is provided, it would pick the maximum of all timer results - the
logic behind this decision is that if cuda is disabled, openmp, serial and tbb
roughly give the same results; if cuda is enabled it's safe to return the
maximum elapsed time since users are more interested in the device execution
time rather than the kernal launch time. The Ready function can be handy here
to query the status of the timer.
* Create a Timer with a device id. vtkm::cont::Timer time((vtkm::cont::DeviceAdapterTagCuda()));
* It works as the old timer that times for a specific device id.
