CPU Dispatcher Control

oneDNN uses JIT code generation to implement most of its functionality and will choose the best code based on detected processor features. Sometimes it is necessary to control which features oneDNN detects. This is sometimes useful for debugging purposes or for performance exploration.

Build-time Controls

At build-time, support for this feature is controlled via cmake option ONEDNN_ENABLE_MAX_CPU_ISA.

CMake Option

Supported values (defaults in bold)

Desc

ONEDNN_ENABLE_MAX_CPU_ISA

ON , OFF

Enables CPU dispatcher controls

Run-time Controls

When the feature is enabled at build-time, the ONEDNN_MAX_CPU_ISA environment variable can be used to limit processor features oneDNN is able to detect to certain Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and older instruction sets. It can also be used to enable ISAs with initial support in the library that are otherwise disabled by default.

Environment variable

Value

Desc

ONEDNN_MAX_CPU_ISA

SSE41

Intel Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.1 (Intel SSE4.1)

AVX

Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel AVX)

AVX2

Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel AVX2)

AVX2_VNNI

Intel AVX2 with Intel Deep Learning Boost (Intel DL Boost)

AVX512_MIC

Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512) with AVX512CD, AVX512ER, and AVX512PF extensions

AVX512_MIC_4OPS

Intel AVX-512 with AVX512_4FMAPS and AVX512_4VNNIW extensions

AVX512_CORE

Intel AVX-512 with AVX512BW, AVX512VL, and AVX512DQ extensions

AVX512_CORE_VNNI

Intel AVX-512 with Intel DL Boost

AVX512_CORE_BF16

Intel AVX-512 with Intel DL Boost and bfloat16 support

AVX512_CORE_AMX

Intel AVX-512 with Intel DL Boost and bfloat16 support and Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) with 8-bit integer and bfloat16 support

ALL

No restrictions (default)

Note

The ISAs are partially ordered:

  • SSE41 < AVX < AVX2,

  • AVX2 < AVX512_MIC < AVX512_MIC_4OPS,

  • AVX2 < AVX512_CORE < AVX512_CORE_VNNI < AVX512_CORE_BF16 < AVX512_CORE_AMX,

  • AVX2 < AVX2_VNNI.

This feature can also be managed at run-time with the following functions:

  • dnnl::set_max_cpu_isa function allows changing the ISA at run-time. The limitation is that it is possible to set the value only once. This ensures that the JIT-ed code observe consistent CPU features both during generation and execution. In addition, it is advised to call this function before any other oneDNN API. This is because the first internal ISA query will disable the ability to change the ISA. Once disabled, changing the ISA will return an error.

  • dnnl::get_effective_cpu_isa function returns the currently used CPU ISA which is the highest available CPU ISA by default.

Function settings take precedence over environment variables.