"Hello world" in C++ AMP

  • Article

We think of our matrix multiplication example as "Hello world", but it didn't sit quite well with me. It was missing the essential ingredients for a "Hello world" demo which are: to be simple, require a complete code listing, fit on a single slide, and output the text "Hello world". So in this blog post I'll share an alternative one that has those ingredients.

Preparation

In Visual Studio 11 Beta (or later)

  1. Select "File" -> "New" -> "Project..." menu
  2. Select the "Empty Project" template and press "OK"
  3. Select the "Project" -> "Add New Item..." menu
  4. Select the "C++ File (.cpp)" item template and press "Add"

You now have an empty "Source.cpp" code file and have made no changes to any configuration of the project system or the compiler.

"Hello world" code

Type in (or copy paste) the following 14 lines of simplistic code and you are done!

   #include <iostream> 
  #include <amp.h> 
  using namespace concurrency; 
  int main() 
  { 
    int v[11] = {'G', 'd', 'k', 'k', 'n', 31, 'v', 'n', 'q', 'k', 'c'};

    array_view<int> av(11, v); 
    parallel_for_each(av.extent, [=](index<1> idx) restrict(amp) 
    { 
      av[idx] += 1; 
    });

    for(unsigned int i = 0; i < 11; i++) 
      std::cout << static_cast<char>(av[i]); 
  }

...and this is the "Hello world" output when run from the command line.

Hello world

Note

The naive code above does not exhibit any performance benefits compared to a serial CPU implementation. The reason is that the amount of data is not large enough and the body of the loop is not performing expensive operations, to pay for the synchronization and data transfer overhead. The code does serve its purpose of understanding the main elements of the C++ AMP programming model, and that is left as an exercise to the reader; to aid you with that exercise, the program is using: index, extent, restrict, parallel_for_each, and array_view. You can also watch a screencast introducing these with the "Hello World" example.

HelloWorld_AMP.zip

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 04, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2012
    @Castaa, glad you liked it. @ “I tried these instructions in the newest beta and I get an error”, that is a harmless IntelliSense error that you can ignore (or filter out in that window) - sorry, known Beta error. If you get an actual compiler error that prevents building and executing, please let us know.

  • Anonymous
    May 06, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2012
    Failed to generate debug information when compiling the call graph for the concurrency::parallel_for_each at: what't wrong

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2012
    by the way, i have installed vs ultimate 2012 Version 11.0.50727.1 RTMREL

  • Anonymous
    November 26, 2012
    Do you get this error when compiling the "Hello world" code from the blog post above? Also, what is the configuration you are building "Win32/x64"? Also some details about your environment would be helpful.

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2012
    it seems my own computer can build and run Hello World, but the desktop with the same dev environment  can not. I could find the reason. Never mind, thanks for your rely.

  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2013
    so good, thanks