[gmx-users] Install on Windows 10 with AMD GPU

[Szilárd Páll]

Dear James,

Unfortunately, we have very little experience with OpenCL on Windows, so I
am afraid I can not advise you on specifics. However, note that the only
part of the former SDK that is needed is the OpenCL headers and loader
libraries (libOpenCL) which is open source software that can be obtained
from the standards body, KHronos. Not sure what the mechanism is for
Windows, but for Linux these components are in packaged in the standard
repositories of most distributions.

However, before going through a large effort of trying to get GROMACS
running on Windows + AMD + OpenCL, you might want to consider evaluating
the potential benefits of the hardware. As these cards are quite dated you
might find that they do not provide enough performance benefit to warrant
the effort required -- especially as, if you have a workstation with
significant CPU resources, you might find that GROMACS runs nearly as fast
or faster on the CPU only (that's because we have very efficient CPU SIMD
code for all compute-intensive work).

To do a hopefully easier quick performance evaluation, you could simply
boot a Linux distribution off of an external disk, you can find Linux
drivers for them for Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 at least which you can install and
see how well does the system perform.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
--
Szilárd


On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 9:11 AM James Burchfield <
james.burchfield at sydney.edu.au> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I was hoping to install  gromacs on a windows10 system that runs 2 AMD
> Firepro cards.
> I have managed to achieve almost everything in terms of setting up the
> compilation with the exception of OpenCl.
>
> The issue I have run into are in reference to the settings of
>
> CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH  (unsure if I need to put anything here)
> OpenCL_INCLUDE_DIR
> OpenCL_Library
>
> The cards I am running are~ 5years old Firepro W7100
> OpenCL version they are running is 2.0
>
>
> AMD no longer makes the OpenCL SDK
> Apparrently, most of the relevant stuff is now included with the drivers
> and headers can be  downloaded from GitHub
>
> I have tried
>
>   *   Installing the old SDK
>   *   Installing the newer "light" version of the SDK
>   *   Downloading the headers
>
> Whatever the case
> I cannot get it to work .
> I get an error saying that the minimum requirement is openCl 1.2.
> According to the AMD driver the cards are running opencl 2.0
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
>
> ________________________________
> Dr James Burchfield
> Group Leader - Molecular Imaging
> Metabolic Cybernetics Laboratory | School of Life and Environmental
> Sciences
> D17 - Charles Perkins Centre | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
> email: james.burchfield at sydney.edu.au<
> https://webmail.sydney.edu.au/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=dcc-mx2Vm9YdGp7rTcr5GrRHiQ9SDxLH3PlkEA8SH4UuqJopr4HSCG0AYQBpAGwAdABvADoAagBhAG0AZQBzAC4AYgB1AHIAYwBoAGYAaQBlAGwAZABAAHMAeQBkAG4AZQB5AC4AZQBkAHUALgBhAHUA&URL=mailto%3ajames.burchfield%40sydney.edu.au
> >
> phone: +61 (0) 403 977 448
> web: http://sydney.edu.au/perkins/research/groups/david-james-lab.shtml
> ________________________________
>
> --
> Gromacs Users mailing list
>
> * Please search the archive at
> http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-Users_List before
> posting!
>
> * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists
>
> * For (un)subscribe requests visit
> https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-users or
> send a mail to gmx-users-request at gromacs.org.
>