OpenCL / AMD: Deep Learning [closed]

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Edit 1 See Mikael Rousson’s answer – Amazon is now the way forwards as you can “rent” computational power from them.

Edit 2 I’ve created a series of guides on how to set up Amazon EC2 Instances for Deep Learning with theano. It’s a lot more convenient than running on a personal machine.

Edit 3 It seems that TensorFlow is now far more widely accepted than theano so I have updated the guide accordingly.

I have been in the same situation as yourself as I have a MacBook Pro with Intel Iris graphics. I have spent the best part of a week looking through all possible workarounds and I would be more than welcome to alternatives to those that I offer.

The best solution I currently have is to:

  1. Install the python library tensorflow and utilise what GPU support there is and continue to update to the latest development versions.
  2. Use theano – and use existing GPU support similarly to tensorflow
  3. Buy an NVIDIA graphics card and use it on a PC
  4. If you absolutely need a solution in OpenCL and you are willing to code everything from a high level of understanding (no tutorials) look at DeepCL and possibly pyOpenCl.

I have found that any solution using OpenCL, e.g. pyOpenCl, doesn’t yet have user friendly interfaces for Deep Learning i.e. it will take longer to code it in an alternative method than to just code it fast and run on a CPU. With that said though, here are of the best alternative OpenCL libraries for deep learning:

  • Python – DeepCL
  • Jonathan’s Torch7 Utility Library – C++

In Development

  • tensorflow is adding OpenCL support once improvements to Eigen and other dependencies are finished
  • theano is adding support to OpenCL through clBLAS
  • Caffe is in development stages of adding OpenCL support but a bit behind theano in progress, it seems

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