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Level Zero Loader APIs

Introduction

The Level Zero Loader will expose some additional APIs beyond what is defined in the Level Zero spec. The purpose of these APIs will generally be to access and set various loader configuration components.

This document does not cover APIs specific to individual layers (ie. tracing) or APIs defined in the Level Zero spec.

API Reference

Exposed Loader APIs will be defined in header files located in this repository at include/loader, and installed to <prefix>/include/level_zero/loader

zelGetLoaderVersion

This API is used to retrieve the version information of the loader itself. Unlike zelLoaderGetVersions, this API provides a simplified interface to get only the loader's version without needing to query all components.

  • *version Pointer to a zel_component_version_t structure that will be filled with the loader's version information. Must be a valid, non-null pointer.

This function:

  • Returns ZE_RESULT_SUCCESS on successful retrieval of the loader version
  • Returns ZE_RESULT_ERROR_INVALID_NULL_POINTER if version is nullptr
  • Returns ZE_RESULT_ERROR_UNINITIALIZED if the loader library cannot be found or loaded (only possible in static builds with misconfigured library paths)
  • Does not require zeInit() or zeInitDrivers() to be called prior to invocation
  • Works with both static and dynamic loader builds without initialization
  • Is thread-safe and can be called from multiple threads

The returned zel_component_version_t structure contains:

  • component_name: Set to "loader"
  • spec_version: The Level Zero API specification version (ZE_API_VERSION_CURRENT)
  • component_lib_version: The loader library version with major, minor, and patch fields

zelLoaderGetVersions

This API is used to retreive the version information of the loader itself and of any layers that are enabled.

  • *num_elems Is a pointer to the number of version components to get.
  • *versions Pointer to address to write version components to. If set to nullptr, num_elems will be set to the total number of version components available.

There are currently 3 versioned components assigned the following name strings:

  • "tracing layer"
  • "validation layer"
  • "loader"

zelLoaderTranslateHandle

When a system has multiple L0 drivers, raw handles returned from the L0 drivers are modified by the loader before being returned to the application. This allows the loader to determine which handles belong to which driver and forward API calls appropriately. In most cases the loader will perform this handle translation completely transparently to the application and no manual translation is ever needed.

In some rare cases when the application needs to occasionally bypass the loader, handle conflicts can arise. One such case is when an application wants to call a driver extension function whose address has been retreived with zeDriverGetExtensionFunctionAddress

To solve this issue, zelLoaderTranslateHandle is used to retrieve the raw driver handle associated with a loader handle.

  • handleType Type of the L0 handle to translate
  • *handleIn Input handle to translate
  • **handleOut Output location to store the translated handle

zelEnableTracingLayer

When a user wants to enable the Tracing Layer for API Tracing, one usually set ZE_ENABLE_TRACING_LAYER=1 before the call to zeInit(), however if one wanted to enable and disable tracing during runtime, the only way previously would be to enable tracing with the tracers disabled. This causes a performance hit due to the tracing layer intercepts.

To resolve this, the tracing layer additionally can be enabled thru this new api zelEnableTracingLayer. This will enable the api tracing layer until the program exits or the user calls zelDisableTracingLayer.

This call enables the tracing layer for all calls to the Loader after this call completes for all initialized drivers.

zelDisableTracingLayer

Disables the tracing layer intercepts at runtime by restoring the previous call path thru the loader before tracing was enabled.

This does not unload the tracing layer library such that one can call zelEnableTracingLayer and zelDisableTracingLayer as many times one needs to during the application.

NOTE: The each call to zelEnableTracingLayer tracks a reference count of how many calls to enable have been seen. The Tracing Layer intercepts will not be removed until the reference count has reached 0 indicating that all users of the tracing layer have called zelDisableTracingLayer.

zelGetTracingLayerState

Queries the current enabled state of the tracing layer at runtime.

This function allows applications to check whether the tracing layer is currently active, returning the state through a boolean pointer.

  • *enabled Pointer to a boolean that will be set to true if the tracing layer is currently enabled, or false if it is disabled.

The function returns:

  • ZE_RESULT_SUCCESS on successful query
  • ZE_RESULT_ERROR_INVALID_NULL_POINTER if the enabled pointer is null

This is a read-only, thread-safe operation that can be called multiple times concurrently. The tracing layer state is global to the process and reflects the current reference count maintained by zelEnableTracingLayer and zelDisableTracingLayer - the layer is considered enabled when the reference count is greater than zero.