How to compile Tensorflow with SSE4.2 and AVX instructions?

Question

This is the message received from running a script to check if Tensorflow is working:

I tensorflow/stream_executor/dso_loader.cc:125] successfully opened CUD         


        

Answer 1

I just ran into this same problem, it seems like Yaroslav Bulatov's suggestion doesn't cover SSE4.2 support, adding --copt=-msse4.2 would suffice. In the end, I successfully built with

bazel build -c opt --copt=-mavx --copt=-mavx2 --copt=-mfma --copt=-mfpmath=both --copt=-msse4.2 --config=cuda -k //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package

without getting any warning or errors.

Probably the best choice for any system is:

bazel build -c opt --copt=-march=native --copt=-mfpmath=both --config=cuda -k //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package

(Update: the build scripts may be eating -march=native, possibly because it contains an =.)

-mfpmath=both only works with gcc, not clang. -mfpmath=sse is probably just as good, if not better, and is the default for x86-64. 32-bit builds default to -mfpmath=387, so changing that will help for 32-bit. (But if you want high-performance for number crunching, you should build 64-bit binaries.)

I'm not sure what TensorFlow's default for -O2 or -O3 is. gcc -O3 enables full optimization including auto-vectorization, but that sometimes can make code slower.

---

What this does: --copt for bazel build passes an option directly to gcc for compiling C and C++ files (but not linking, so you need a different option for cross-file link-time-optimization)

x86-64 gcc defaults to using only SSE2 or older SIMD instructions, so you can run the binaries on any x86-64 system. (See https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/x86-Options.html). That's not what you want. You want to make a binary that takes advantage of all the instructions your CPU can run, because you're only running this binary on the system where you built it.

-march=native enables all the options your CPU supports, so it makes -mavx512f -mavx2 -mavx -mfma -msse4.2 redundant. (Also, -mavx2 already enables -mavx and -msse4.2, so Yaroslav's command should have been fine). Also if you're using a CPU that doesn't support one of these options (like FMA), using -mfma would make a binary that faults with illegal instructions.

TensorFlow's ./configure defaults to enabling -march=native, so using that should avoid needing to specify compiler options manually.

-march=native enables -mtune=native, so it optimizes for your CPU for things like which sequence of AVX instructions is best for unaligned loads.

This all applies to gcc, clang, or ICC. (For ICC, you can use -xHOST instead of -march=native.)