Advanced installation guide

Compilation

The build system for aihwkit is based on cmake, making use of scikit-build for generating the Python packages.

Some of the dependencies and tools are Python-based. For convenience, we suggest creating a virtual environment as a way to isolate your environment:

$ python3 -m venv aihwkit_env
$ cd aihwkit_env
$ source bin/activate
(aihwkit_env) $

Note

The following sections assume that the command line examples are executed in the activated aihwkit_env environment.

Dependencies

For compiling aihwkit, the following dependencies are required:

Dependency

Version

Notes

C++11 compatible compiler

cmake

3.18+

pybind11

2.5.0+

Installing from pip is not supported 1

scikit-build

0.11.0+

Python 3 development headers

3.6+

BLAS implementation

OpenBLAS or Intel MKL

CUDA

9.0+

Optional, for GPU-enabled simulator

Nvidia CUB

1.8.0

Optional, for GPU-enabled simulator

googletest

1.10.0

Optional, for building the C++ tests

PyTorch

1.5+

The libtorch library and headers are needed 2

Please refer to your operative system documentation for instructions on how to install the different dependencies. The following section contains quick instructions for several operative systems:

Debian-based

On a Debian-based operative system, the following commands can be used for installing the minimal dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-pybind11 python3-dev libopenblas-dev
$ pip install cmake scikit-build torch

OSX

On an OSX-based system, the following commands can be used for installing the minimal dependencies (note that Xcode needs to be installed):

$ brew install pybind11
$ brew install openblas
$ pip install cmake scikit-build torch

miniconda

On a miniconda-based system, the following commands can be used for installing the minimal dependencies 3:

$ conda install cmake openblas pybind11 scikit-build
$ conda install pytorch -c pytorch

Installing and compiling

Once the dependencies are in place, the following command can be used for installing For compiling and installing the Python package, the following command can be used:

$ pip install -v aihwkit

This command will:

  • download the source tarball for the library.

  • invoke scikit-build

  • which in turn will invoke cmake for the compilation.

  • execute the commands in verbose mode, for helping troubleshooting issues.

If there are any issue with the dependencies or the compilation, the output of the command will help diagnosing the issue.

Note

Please note that the instruction on this page refer to installing as an end user. If you are planning to contribute to the project, an alternative setup and tips can be found at the Development setup section that is more tuned towards the needs of a development cycle.

1

The current (2.5.0) version of pybind1 does not include the necessary cmake helpers on its pip release. It is recommended to either install pybind11 using your operative system package manager or compile and install it manually.

2

This library uses PyTorch as both a build dependency and a runtime dependency. Please ensure that your torch installation includes libtorch and the development headers - they are included by default if installing torch from pip.

3

Please note that currently support for conda-based distributions is experimental, and further commands might be needed.