Function rcudnn::cudaHostAlloc

pub unsafe extern "C" fn cudaHostAlloc(
    pHost: *mut *mut c_void, 
    size: usize, 
    flags: u32
) -> cudaError

\brief Allocates page-locked memory on the host

Allocates \p size bytes of host memory that is page-locked and accessible to the device. The driver tracks the virtual memory ranges allocated with this function and automatically accelerates calls to functions such as ::cudaMemcpy(). Since the memory can be accessed directly by the device, it can be read or written with much higher bandwidth than pageable memory obtained with functions such as ::malloc(). Allocating excessive amounts of pinned memory may degrade system performance, since it reduces the amount of memory available to the system for paging. As a result, this function is best used sparingly to allocate staging areas for data exchange between host and device.

The \p flags parameter enables different options to be specified that affect the allocation, as follows.

• ::cudaHostAllocDefault: This flag’s value is defined to be 0 and causes ::cudaHostAlloc() to emulate ::cudaMallocHost().
• ::cudaHostAllocPortable: The memory returned by this call will be considered as pinned memory by all CUDA contexts, not just the one that performed the allocation.
• ::cudaHostAllocMapped: Maps the allocation into the CUDA address space. The device pointer to the memory may be obtained by calling ::cudaHostGetDevicePointer().
• ::cudaHostAllocWriteCombined: Allocates the memory as write-combined (WC). WC memory can be transferred across the PCI Express bus more quickly on some system configurations, but cannot be read efficiently by most CPUs. WC memory is a good option for buffers that will be written by the CPU and read by the device via mapped pinned memory or host->device transfers.

All of these flags are orthogonal to one another: a developer may allocate memory that is portable, mapped and/or write-combined with no restrictions.

In order for the ::cudaHostAllocMapped flag to have any effect, the CUDA context must support the ::cudaDeviceMapHost flag, which can be checked via ::cudaGetDeviceFlags(). The ::cudaDeviceMapHost flag is implicitly set for contexts created via the runtime API.

The ::cudaHostAllocMapped flag may be specified on CUDA contexts for devices that do not support mapped pinned memory. The failure is deferred to ::cudaHostGetDevicePointer() because the memory may be mapped into other CUDA contexts via the ::cudaHostAllocPortable flag.

Memory allocated by this function must be freed with ::cudaFreeHost().

\param pHost - Device pointer to allocated memory \param size - Requested allocation size in bytes \param flags - Requested properties of allocated memory

\return ::cudaSuccess, ::cudaErrorInvalidValue, ::cudaErrorMemoryAllocation \notefnerr \note_init_rt \note_callback

\sa ::cudaSetDeviceFlags, \ref ::cudaMallocHost(void**, size_t) “cudaMallocHost (C API)”, ::cudaFreeHost, ::cudaGetDeviceFlags, ::cuMemHostAlloc