CLOO: copy two dimensional array

Posted Monday, 26 April, 2010 - 07:31 by pragma in

Programming Support

Hi there,

I'm experimenting a bit with Cloo (very cool project) and ran into a problem:

I'm trying to copy a 2 dimensional float array onto the device something like

float[,] weights = new float[count, count];

obviously I can't copy it via:

ComputeBuffer<float> weightsBuffer = new ComputeBuffer<float>(context, ComputeMemoryFlags.CopyHostPointer, weights);

How can I copy this array to the device?

I could manually flatten the array :

 
float[] weightsFlat = new float[count* count];
int x = 0;
for (int i=0; i<count; i++)
   for (int j=0; j<count; j++)
      weightsFlat[x++] = weights[i,j];

but I would really want to avoid that.

greetings pragma

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The following seems to work:

ComputePlatform platform = ComputePlatform.Platforms[0];
ComputeContextPropertyList cpl = new ComputeContextPropertyList(platform);
ComputeContext context = new ComputeContext(ComputeDeviceTypes.Default, cpl, null, IntPtr.Zero);
float[,] arr = new float[,]
    {
        {1,2,3},
        {4,5,6},
        {7,8,9}
    };
IntPtr arrayPtr = Marshal.UnsafeAddrOfPinnedArrayElement(arr, 0);
ComputeBuffer<float> clBuffer = new ComputeBuffer<float>(context, ComputeMemoryFlags.CopyHostPointer, 9*sizeof(float), arrayPtr);
ComputeCommandQueue commands = new ComputeCommandQueue(context, context.Devices[0], ComputeCommandQueueFlags.None);
float[] flat = commands.Read(clBuffer, null);

Two things to keep in mind:
1) I'm not sure if the input array has to be pinned or rather I don't know if UnsafeAddrOfPinnedArrayElement does it and
2) coming back from the ComputeBuffer it might be hard to reconstruct the original 2D array.

Edit: I'm a total stick. You CAN reconstruct the 2D (and probably 3D, 4D, 5D, ...) array using the same pointer mechanism and this call:

commands.Read(clBuffer, trueOrFalse, 0, 9, arrayPtr, null);

Of course, another solution is to provide additional overloads for 2d and 3d arrays in Cloo. That's what OpenTK does for such functions, e.g. GL.BufferData:

BufferData(..., IntPtr data);                   // 1 item or nd-arrays (manual pin)
BufferData<T>(..., ref T data) where T struct; // 1 item or nd-arrays
BufferData<T>(..., T[] data) where T struct;   // 1d arrays
BufferData<T>(..., T[,] data) where T struct;  // 2d arrays
BufferData<T>(..., T[,,] data) where T struct; // 3d arrays
 
// Usage example. All methods below are equivalent.
float[,,] data = new float[1,2,3];
 
BufferData(..., ref data[0]); // ref T overload
BufferData(..., data);        // T[,,] overload
 
unsafe
{
    fixed (float*  data_ptr = data)
    {
        BufferData(..., (IntPtr)data_ptr); // IntPtr overload
    }
}
 
GCHandle data_ptr = GCHandle.Alloc(data, GCHandleType.Pinned);
try
{
    BufferData(..., data_ptr.AddrOfPinnedObject()); // IntPtr overload, slower than above
}
finally
{
    data_ptr.Free();
}

Of course, another solution is to provide additional overloads for 2d and 3d arrays in Cloo.
That's even a better idea.

Ah thank you.

i tried that Marshal.UnsafeAddrOfPinnedArrayElement thing and it seems to work :)

btw: it seems like you do have to pin it before retrieving the address

I know this is probably wayyy late for this. .NET has a method in the LINQ namespace called SelectMany. It works like this.

int[][] myArray = new int[50][];
for(int  i = 0; i < 50; i++)
{
      myArray[i] = new int[i];
}
 
//now we get to the good part
IEnumerable<int> m_En = myArray.SelectMany(x => x);
int[] flattened = m_En.ToArray();

you can do this for any dimensional arrays. I currently have it working on a 3d jagged array, taking the 0th index and casting the rest to an array. Works nicely and is relatively fast.

Home of the Open Toolkit library

CLOO: copy two dimensional array

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