Guidelines for porting Stand-alone DSP applications to OpenCL¶

For C66x DSP developers moving to OpenCL from a standalone DSP application environment, the following guidelines will be helpful for the transition.

Heap Memory Management¶

Within an OpenCL application, memory management for the C66x DSP is most naturally accomplished through the use of OpenCL buffers defined in the host application. OpenCL buffers can be defined in DDR, MSMC, and L2 memory regions. See OpenCL Buffers for details. If OpenCL buffers are use, this eliminates the need for heap management on the DSP, i.e. calls to malloc, call, free, etc…

However, when porting existing code to run under an OpenCL kernel, it is sometimes convenient to allow existing heap management calls to continue to exist. To support this there is a small (<= 8MB) heap available on the DSP’s that can be used to service malloc type calls. This heap will be in DDR and will be shared across the DSP cores. If multiple work-groups (DSPs) are accessing the same location, then it is up to the application to ensure synchronization to prevent race conditions.

If the size of the small heap is insufficient for your needs or you would like a heap in on-chip shared memory, We have added some additional built-in functions that allow you to create your own dynamically size heaps using a Buffer passed into your kernel. Please see User Defined DSP Heap Extension for details.

Note

The size of the small heap may vary from platform to platform and possibly from release to release on the same platform.

Stack Usage¶

OpenCL C kernels and any call tree originating from a kernel inherit a stack from the OpenCL runtime executing on the DSPs. To limit the amount of on-chip L2 memory that is reserved on the DSP, this stack is small, currently 10K bytes. Auto (function scope) variables and private data should be therefore kept to a minimum. Additionally, call tree depth must be limited. Recursion is not allowed in OpenCL C code. If OpenCL C code calls standard C code, then recursion should not be used in the standard C code.

Note

The size of the stack may vary from platform to platform and possibly from release to release on the same platform.

Boot Routine Dependencies¶

OpenCL C does not run a boot setup for dispatch of kernels, therefore dependencies on items that typically run before main is called or after main returns in a standalone DSP application are not supported in an OpenCL C environment. This would include:

C++ constructors and destructors

atexit registered functions

TI-RTOS Kernel (SYS/BIOS) Tasks

Some XDC constructs

Linker Command Files¶

The OpenCL C compiler does perform a link of OpenCL C code, any called C code, and built-in function libraries. However, the addresses bound into the resultant .out file are not explicitly honored when the .out file is dynamically loaded for execution. This decouples the compilation of OpenCL C code from the underlying memory map of the platform.

In this environment, a user linker command file is typically not needed. The exception would be the case where you have a named section and would like to force allocation of that section to either DDR, MSMC, or L2 SRAM. In this case you have two options.

Rather than use your own section names, map your data to one of these pre-existing sections:

Section Name Memory Range Mapped To

.mem_ddr DDR3

.mem_msm MSMC

.mem_l2 L2SRAM
Use your own linker command file to place your section names and pass the linker command file name as a build option to the OpenCL C compiler clocl.
```
SECTIONS
{
    my_ddr_section  > DDR
    my_msmc_section > MSMC
    my_l2_section   > L2SRAM
}
```

OpenCL dynamically loads OpenCL C code (including any called standard C code) so any attempt to bind to specific addresses in your linker command file will be ignored.

Note

Any code or data placed in the .mem_xxx section will reserve memory from the specified memory range for the lifetime of the OpenCL C program in which it exists. For example, if the .mem_l2 section is used to place a data table of size 64Kb, then from the time the OpenCL C program is loaded until it is unloaded, the amount of L2 memory available for local buffers will be reduced by 64Kb.

Section Name	Memory Range Mapped To
.mem_ddr	DDR3
.mem_msm	MSMC
.mem_l2	L2SRAM