**Ascend NPU** is a range of AI processors using Neural Processing Unit. It will efficiently handle matrix-matrix multiplication, dot-product and scalars.
**CANN** (Compute Architecture for Neural Networks) is a heterogeneous computing architecture for AI scenarios, providing support for multiple AI frameworks on the top and serving AI processors and programming at the bottom. It plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between upper and lower layers, and is a key platform for improving the computing efficiency of Ascend AI processors. Meanwhile, it offers a highly efficient and easy-to-use programming interface for diverse application scenarios, allowing users to rapidly build AI applications and services based on the Ascend platform.
**Llama.cpp + CANN**
The llama.cpp CANN backend is designed to support Ascend NPU. It utilize the ability of AscendC and ACLNN which are intergrated to CANN Toolkit and kernels to using Ascend NPU directly.
## News
- 2024.11
- Support F16 and F32 data type model for Ascend 310P NPU.
- 2024.8
- Support `Q4_0` and `Q8_0` data type for Ascend NPU.
# download driver from https://www.hiascend.com/hardware/firmware-drivers/community according to your system
# and install driver.
sudo sh Ascend-hdk-910b-npu-firmware_x.x.x.x.X.run --full
```
If the following messaage appers, firmware is installed successfully.
```sh
Firmware package installed successfully!
```
3.**Install CANN toolkit and kernels**
CANN toolkit and kernels can be obtained from the official [CANN Toolkit](https://www.hiascend.com/zh/developer/download/community/result?module=cann) page.
Please download the corresponding version that satified your system. The minimum version required is 8.0.RC2.alpha002 and here is the install command.
./build/bin/llama-cli -m path_to_model -p "Building a website can be done in 10 simple steps:" -n 400 -e -ngl 33 -sm none -mg 0
```
- Use multiple devices:
```sh
./build/bin/llama-cli -m path_to_model -p "Building a website can be done in 10 simple steps:" -n 400 -e -ngl 33 -sm layer
```
### **GitHub contribution**:
Please add the **[CANN]** prefix/tag in issues/PRs titles to help the CANN-team check/address them without delay.
## Updates
### Basic Flash Attention Support
The basic FA kernel with aclnnops has been added in aclnn_ops.cpp.
Currently, the FA only supports the cases with FP16 KV tensors and NO logit softcap.
Since the aclnn interface for flash attention cannot support the logit softcap, we will only update the quantized version in the future.
Authors from Peking University: Bizhao Shi (bshi@pku.edu.cn), Yuxin Yang (yxyang@pku.edu.cn), Ruiyang Ma (ruiyang@stu.pku.edu.cn), and Guojie Luo (gluo@pku.edu.cn).
We would like to thank Tuo Dai, Shanni Li, and all of the project maintainers from Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd for their help during the code development and pull request.
## Environment variable setup
### GGML_CANN_MEM_POOL
Specifies the memory pool management strategy, Default is vmm.
- vmm: Utilizes a virtual memory manager pool. If hardware support for VMM is unavailable, falls back to the legacy (leg) memory pool.
- prio: Employs a priority queue-based memory pool management.
- leg: Uses a fixed-size buffer pool.
### GGML_CANN_DISABLE_BUF_POOL_CLEAN
Controls automatic cleanup of the memory pool. This option is only effective when using the prio or leg memory pool strategies.
### GGML_CANN_WEIGHT_NZ
Converting the matmul weight format from ND to NZ to improve performance. Enabled by default.
### GGML_CANN_ACL_GRAPH
Operators are executed using ACL graph execution, rather than in op-by-op (eager) mode. Enabled by default. This option is only effective if `USE_ACL_GRAPH` was enabled at compilation time. To enable it, recompile using:
Maximum number of compiled CANN graphs kept in the LRU cache, default is 12. When the number of cached graphs exceeds this capacity, the least recently used graph will be evicted.
### GGML_CANN_PREFILL_USE_GRAPH
Enable ACL graph execution during the prefill stage, default is false. This option is only effective when FA is enabled.
Enable operator fusion during computation, default is false. This option fuses compatible operators (e.g., ADD + RMS_NORM) to reduce overhead and improve performance.