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GPEmu: A GPU emulator for rapid, low-cost deep learning prototyping [pdf]

82 points by matt_d 1y ago

mdaniel 1y ago
Sadly, no licensing in the repo and I have no idea what the licensing weight the associated fields in setup.py carry <https://github.com/mengwanguc/gpemu/blob/27e9534ee0c3d594030e2519d4a418b3f0a7860f/gpemu/gpemu/setup.py#L18 https://github.com/mengwanguc/gpemu/blob/27e9534ee0c3d594030...>
- 0points 1y ago
  MIT is a well known foss license.
  - devturn 1y ago
    Nobody here is doubting that. Your parent comment said: > I have no idea what the licensing weight the associated fields in setup.py carry That's a valid concern. I had the same question myself.
    - immibis 1y ago
      The relevant weight is: if the author of the copyrighted work sues you in a court of law, will the evidence convince the judge that the author gave you permission to do so?
      - IX-103 1y ago
        That assumes you are willing to pay for lawyers. If not, the relevant weight is "will the author (or any subsequent copyright owners) sue you".
        immibis 1y ago
        If I sued you for wearing green pants, would you stop wearing green pants?
almostgotcaught 1y ago
> To emulate DL workloads without actual GPUs, we replace GPU- related steps (steps #3–5, and Step 2 if GPU-based) with simple sleep(T) calls, where T represents the projected time for each step. This is a model (of GPU arch/system/runtime/etc) being used to feed downstream analysis. Pretty silly because if you're going to model these things (which are extremely difficult to model!) you should at least have real GPUs around to calibrate/recalibrate the model.
socalgal2 1y ago
What is the difference between a gpu emulator and maybe specifically GPEmu and say llvmpipe?
sailingparrot 1y ago
I was thinking about building something like this because this would be *very useful* if it worked well, so got excited for a sec, but this does not seem to be an active project, last commit 10 months ago.
Retr0id 1y ago
Does it not work out more expensive to emulate a GPU vs just renting time on a real one?
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  I imagine this is only true for high throughput loads. For development a full GPU is likely a waste.
- sailingparrot 1y ago
  This isn't actually an emulator in the proper sense of the word. This does not give you correct outputs, but it will try to simulate the actual time it would take a real GPU to perform the series of operation you care about. This could be useful e.g. for performance profiling, optimization etc.
Propheciple 1y ago
[dead]

82 points by matt_d 1y ago

Sadly, no licensing in the repo and I have no idea what the licensing weight the associated fields in setup.py carry <https://github.com/mengwanguc/gpemu/blob/27e9534ee0c3d594030e2519d4a418b3f0a7860f/gpemu/gpemu/setup.py#L18 https://github.com/mengwanguc/gpemu/blob/27e9534ee0c3d594030...>

0points 1y ago
MIT is a well known foss license.
- devturn 1y ago
  Nobody here is doubting that. Your parent comment said: > I have no idea what the licensing weight the associated fields in setup.py carry That's a valid concern. I had the same question myself.
  - immibis 1y ago
    The relevant weight is: if the author of the copyrighted work sues you in a court of law, will the evidence convince the judge that the author gave you permission to do so?
    - IX-103 1y ago
      That assumes you are willing to pay for lawyers. If not, the relevant weight is "will the author (or any subsequent copyright owners) sue you".
      - immibis 1y ago
        If I sued you for wearing green pants, would you stop wearing green pants?

almostgotcaught 1y ago

> To emulate DL workloads without actual GPUs, we replace GPU- related steps (steps #3–5, and Step 2 if GPU-based) with simple sleep(T) calls, where T represents the projected time for each step. This is a model (of GPU arch/system/runtime/etc) being used to feed downstream analysis. Pretty silly because if you're going to model these things (which are extremely difficult to model!) you should at least have real GPUs around to calibrate/recalibrate the model.

socalgal2 1y ago

What is the difference between a gpu emulator and maybe specifically GPEmu and say llvmpipe?

sailingparrot 1y ago

I was thinking about building something like this because this would be *very useful* if it worked well, so got excited for a sec, but this does not seem to be an active project, last commit 10 months ago.

Retr0id 1y ago

Does it not work out more expensive to emulate a GPU vs just renting time on a real one?

MangoToupe 1y ago
I imagine this is only true for high throughput loads. For development a full GPU is likely a waste.
sailingparrot 1y ago
This isn't actually an emulator in the proper sense of the word. This does not give you correct outputs, but it will try to simulate the actual time it would take a real GPU to perform the series of operation you care about. This could be useful e.g. for performance profiling, optimization etc.

Propheciple 1y ago

[dead]