README

# StarPU --- Runtime system for heterogeneous multicore architectures.
#
# Copyright (C) 2009-2021  Université de Bordeaux, CNRS (LaBRI UMR 5800), Inria
#
# StarPU is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at
# your option) any later version.
#
# StarPU is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
#
# See the GNU Lesser General Public License in COPYING.LGPL for more details.
#
++=================++
|| I. Introduction ||
++=================++

+---------------------
| I.a. What is StarPU?

StarPU is a runtime system that offers support for heterogeneous multicore
machines. While many efforts are devoted to design efficient computation kernels
for those architectures (e.g. to implement BLAS kernels on GPUs),
StarPU not only takes care of offloading such kernels (and
implementing data coherency across the machine), but it also makes
sure the kernels are executed as efficiently as possible.

+------------------------
| I.b. What StarPU is not

StarPU is not a new language, and it does not extend existing languages either.
StarPU does not help to write computation kernels.

+---------------------------------
| I.c. (How) Could StarPU help me?

While StarPU will not make it easier to write computation kernels, it does
simplify their actual offloading as StarPU handle most low level aspects
transparently.

Obviously, it is crucial to have efficient kernels, but it must be noted that
the way those kernels are mapped and scheduled onto the computational resources
also affect the overall performance to a great extent.

StarPU is especially helpful when considering multiple heterogeneous processing
resources: statically mapping and synchronizing tasks in such a heterogeneous
environment is already very difficult, making it in a portable way is virtually
impossible. On the other hand, the scheduling capabilities of StarPU makes it
possible to easily exploit all processors at the same time while taking
advantage of their specificities in a portable fashion.

++==================++
|| II. Requirements ||
++==================++

 * make
 * gcc (version >= 4.1)
 * if CUDA support is enabled
   * CUDA (version >= 2.2)
   * CUBLAS (version >= 2.2)
 * if OpenCL support is enabled
   * AMD SDK >= 2.3 if AMD driver is used
   * CUDA >= 3.2 if NVIDIA driver is used
 * extra requirements for the svn version (we usually use the Debian testing
   versions)
   * autoconf (version >= 2.60)
   * automake
   * makeinfo
   * libtool (version >= 2)

 * Remark: It is strongly recommanded that you also install the hwloc library
   before installing StarPU. This permits StarPU to actually map the processing
   units according to the machine topology. For more details on hwloc, see
   http://www.open-mpi.org/projects/hwloc/ .

 * To build the StarPU-Top tool the following packages (along with
   their development files) are also required:
   * libqt4-dev >= 4.7
   * libqt4-network
   * libqt4-opengl
   * libqt4-sql
   * qt4-qmake

++=====================++
|| III. Getting StarPU ||
++=====================++

StarPU is available on https://gitlab.inria.fr/starpu/starpu

The GIT repository access can be checked out with the following command.

$ git clone git@gitlab.inria.fr:starpu/starpu.git

++=============================++
|| IV. Building and Installing ||
++=============================++

+---------------------------
| IV.a. For svn version only

Please skip this step if you are building from a tarball.

  $ ./autogen.sh

+-----------------------
| IV.b. For all versions

  $ ./configure
  $ make
  $ make install

+---------------------
| IV.c. Windows build:

StarPU can be built using MinGW or Cygwin.  To avoid the cygwin dependency,
we provide MinGW-built binaries.  The build process produces libstarpu.dll,
libstarpu.def, and libstarpu.lib, which should be enough to use it from e.g.
Microsoft Visual Studio.

Update the video drivers to the latest stable release available for your
hardware. Old ATI drivers (< 2.3) contain bugs that cause OpenCL support in
StarPU to hang or exhibit incorrect behaviour.

For details on the Windows build process, see the INSTALL file.

++======================================================++
|| V. Running StarPU Applications on Microsoft Visual C ||
++======================================================++

Batch files are provided to run StarPU applications under Microsoft
Visual C. They are installed in path_to_starpu/bin/msvc.

To execute a StarPU application, you first need to set the environment
variable STARPU_PATH.

c:\....> cd c:\cygwin\home\ci\starpu\
c:\....> set STARPU_PATH=c:\cygwin\home\ci\starpu\
c:\....> cd bin\msvc
c:\....> starpu_open.bat starpu_simple.c

The batch script will run Microsoft Visual C with a basic project file
to run the given application.

The batch script starpu_clean.bat can be used to delete all
compilation generated files.

The batch script starpu_exec.bat can be used to compile and execute a
StarPU application from the command prompt.

c:\....> cd c:\cygwin\home\ci\starpu\
c:\....> set STARPU_PATH=c:\cygwin\home\ci\starpu\
c:\....> cd bin\msvc
c:\....> starpu_exec.bat ..\..\..\..\examples\basic_examples\hello_world.c

MSVC StarPU Execution
...
/out:hello_world.exe
...
Hello world (params = {1, 2.00000})
Callback function got argument 0000042
c:\....>

++===================++
|| VI. Documentation ||
++===================++

Doxygen documentation is available in doc/doxygen. If the doxygen
tools are available on the machine, pdf and html documentation can be
generated by running

  $ make -C doc

++=============++
|| VII. Trying ||
++=============++

Some examples ready to run are installed into $prefix/lib/starpu/{examples,mpi}

++===============++
|| VIII. Upgrade ||
++===============++

To upgrade your source code from older version (there were quite a few
renamings), use the tools/dev/rename.sh script

++=============++
|| IX. Contact ||
++=============++

For any questions regarding StarPU, please contact the starpu-devel
mailing-list at starpu-devel@inria.fr.