cpufeature
Prototype of replacement for cpuinfo.py for high-performance Python modules. Detects CPU features such as:
- SIMD instruction support
- Number of cores (both virtual and physical)
- Cache sizes
It is fast, with an import+execution time of ~1 ms
It is written in C99. It supports Windows with MSVC and Linux with GCC/LLVM compilers. MacOSX should also work with GCC/LLVM but has not been tested.
It is licensed under Creative Commons Zero, so it may be freely incorporated as a submodule into your own projects.
It needs to be tested on a variety of machines.
Example
The module generates a dict called CPUFeature on import which contains useful information regarding optimization and compilation for the host. For my Intel i7-7820X Skylake CPU, it generates the following info:
> python -c "import cpufeature; cpufeature.print_features()" === CPU FEATURES ===
VendorId : GenuineIntel num_virtual_cores : 16 num_physical_cores : 8 num_threads_per_core : 2 cache_line_size : 64 cache_L1_size : 32768 cache_L2_size : 1048576 cache_L3_size : 11534336 OS_x64 : True OS_AVX : True OS_AVX512 : False MMX : True x64 : True ABM : True RDRAND : True BMI1 : True BMI2 : True ADX : True PREFETCHWT1 : False MPX : True SSE : True SSE2 : True SSE3 : True SSSE3 : True SSE4.1 : True SSE4.2 : True SSE4.a : False AES : True SHA : False AVX : True XOP : False FMA3 : True FMA4 : False AVX2 : True AVX512f : True AVX512pf : False AVX512er : False AVX512cd : True AVX512vl : True AVX512bw : True AVX512dq : True AVX512ifma : False AVX512vbmi : False
Notes on Fields
- If num_threads_per_core > 1 likely Intel Hyperthreading (or equivalent architecture) is present. The physical core count may be unreliable in virtual environments.
- Cache sizes are in bytes.
- For AVX2, check AVX2 and OS_AVX2.
- For AVX512, check AVX512f and OS_AVX512. Python support for AVX512 instructions is highly limited outside of compilation with ICC. MSVC does not have AVX512 support until MSVC2017.
Authors
- Based on FeatureDetector by Alexander Yee (https://github.com/Mysticial/FeatureDetector).
- Ported to Python by Robert A. McLeod, who added detection of cores, and cache sizes.
Release Notes
0.1.0
- Added detection of processors, cores, and cache sizes
- Created Python wrapper around FeatureDetector
- Reduced FeatureDetector to C99 for better cross-platform compatibility