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Abstract:

This live stream documents the challenging process of compiling AMD's ROCm GPU compute stack, specifically targeting AI workloads like llama.cpp, on a 64-core RISC-V system ("RISC-V Ripper" with 128GB RAM) and preparing builds for ARM64. The stream highlights the significant hurdles encountered, including extreme build and link times (especially on RISC-V), pervasive issues with CMake build system configurations across different ROCm components, inconsistent naming conventions for GPU target flags within the ROCm project, and numerous linker errors due to incorrect library paths and dependencies. Despite successfully compiling many ROCm components and llama.cpp itself with the HIP backend enabled after extensive debugging and patching over several weeks, a critical segmentation fault occurs during the compilation of rockSolver on the RISC-V platform, potentially related to the Clang compiler or experimental kernel features, ultimately blocking the final goal of running the AI workload on the RISC-V hardware. The session underscores the complexity and frustration involved in porting large, intricate software ecosystems to non-x86 architectures.

Building ROCm for AI on RISC-V: Debugging Builds & Chasing Errors

• 00:01:50 Hardware Overview: The setup includes over 100 CPU cores across systems, notably a powerful 64-core RISC-V machine ("RISC-V Ripper", Milk-V Pioneer) with 128GB RAM, alongside a Ryzen 7950X build machine and a smaller quad-core RISC-V board.
• 00:02:53 Main Goal: Compiling the AMD ROCm stack to run AI workloads (specifically llama.cpp) using HIP acceleration on the RISC-V prototype hardware.
• 00:07:32 Build System Frustrations: Early complaints about modern build systems (CMake, Rust, Python dependencies) leading to extremely long configuration times (9+ minutes) even before compilation starts.
• 00:11:42 Long Build Times Noted: Initial estimate for composable_kernel build is excessively long (15 hours), highlighting potential issues or inefficiencies.
• 00: Error: Column.new() missing 6 required positional arguments: 'cid', 'name', 'type', 'notnull', 'default_value', and 'is_pk'21:45 RISC-V Performance Bottleneck: CMake configuration steps demonstrate significant single-threaded performance limitations on the RISC-V system.
• 00:24:11 Inconsistent Build Flags: Attempts to build ROCm examples reveal major inconsistencies in how different AMD projects specify GPU build targets (e.g., HIP_ARCHITECTURES, GPU_TARGETS, AMD_GPU_TARGETS).
• 00:30:07 Linker Path Issues: Debugging linker errors requires manually adding library paths (-L) because ROCm components fail to find necessary libraries like hipBlas even when installed in standard locations (opt/rocm).
• 00:35:08 Hardcoded Paths & Symlinks: Issues traced back to hardcoded paths within ROCm tools (like Python scripts looking for opt/rocm/llvm/bin), initially worked around with symlinks, now being fixed more properly in CMake configurations.
• 01:09:04 Critical Build Flag Error: Discovers that a previous fix incorrectly changed the GPU target variable name, causing composable_kernel to attempt building for all supported GPU architectures instead of the selected ones, explaining the hours-long build times. This requires correction across multiple packages.
• 01:19:22 Further Build Failures: Even with corrected flags, builds fail due to library detection issues (hipconfig platform related) and potentially missing libraries.
• 01:20:40 Root Cause Analysis (hipconfig): Traces a path issue to how the hipconfig Perl script determines paths, which changes behavior if run via a symlink. Removing the unnecessary symlink resolves this specific problem.
• 01:44:14 Excessive Linking Times: RockBlas component exhibits extremely long linking times, taking over 45 minutes on the 64-core RISC-V system compared to ~8 minutes on the Ryzen 7950X.
• 01:57:51 llama.cpp HIP Build: Successfully configures and starts building llama.cpp with the ROCm/HIP backend enabled (-DLLAMA_HIPBLAS=ON).
• 02:05:23 Fixing hipconfig Script: Patches the hipconfig Perl script to correctly handle library paths on Linux, removing hardcoded /usr/lib assumptions.
• 02:18:07 Milestone: RockBlas Links on RISC-V: After ~45 minutes, the lengthy RockBlas linking process finally completes on the RISC-V Ripper.
• 02:34:46 Critical Failure: rockSolver Segfault on RISC-V: The rockSolver component fails to build on RISC-V, crashing with a segmentation fault inside the clang compiler frontend. This is a major blocker. The streamer suspects the experimental kernel (with vector support enabled) might be a factor.
• 03:14:17 Dependency Confirmed: llama.cpp build attempt confirms its dependency on the failing rockSolver package.
• 03:19:08 Debugging Other Components: Switches to fixing build issues with hipFFT and rockFFT on the Ryzen system, encountering more linker errors and build order problems.
• 03:42:30 RISC-V Build Halted: Powers down the RISC-V Ripper as progress is blocked by the rockSolver segmentation fault, which needs further investigation (potentially requiring a kernel rebuild without vector extensions). Work remains ongoing to fix dependencies and the rockSolver crash.