InfiniTrain Backends

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InfiniTrain Backends provides out-of-tree accelerator backends for InfiniTrain. It keeps vendor-specific SDK integration, runtime support, collective communication, and kernels outside the framework core while implementing InfiniTrain's PrivateUse1 backend interfaces.

Each provider is isolated under backends/<provider> and normally consumes the InfiniTrain submodule pinned to v0.7.0. One build tree selects one provider, and a process may register at most one provider for DeviceType::kPrivateUse1.

Supported Backends

Backend	Runtime	Collectives	Model examples
MACA	MACA	MCCL (optional)	GPT-2, LLaMA 3, Mixtral

The model sources normally come from the pinned InfiniTrain submodule. Each backend supplies the runtime, kernels, collective implementation, and build integration needed to run its supported examples on the corresponding accelerator. See the linked backend guides for setup and usage.

Common Requirements

• Linux
• CMake: 3.28 or newer
• Git with submodule support
• A C++20 compiler and vendor SDK compatible with the selected backend

Additional dependencies and SDK setup are documented in each backend's guide.

Build Options

These options apply across backends. Provider-specific options are documented in the corresponding backend guide.

Option	Default	Description
INFINITRAIN_BACKEND	Required	Provider selected from backends/<provider>
INFINITRAIN_SOURCE_DIR	third_party/InfiniTrain	InfiniTrain source tree, normally the pinned submodule
INFINITRAIN_BACKENDS_BUILD_EXAMPLES	ON for a top-level build	Build provider-enabled InfiniTrain examples
BUILD_TEST	OFF	Build InfiniTrain's unit tests and variants for the selected provider

Use a separate build directory for each provider so compiler and SDK cache entries do not leak between them. Top-level builds enable backend examples by default.

For development against another InfiniTrain checkout, add -DINFINITRAIN_SOURCE_DIR=/path/to/InfiniTrain to the configure command. The selected checkout must implement the PrivateUse1 extension API expected by the backend.

PrivateUse1 providers require USE_CUDA=OFF; configuration fails rather than silently overriding an explicit USE_CUDA=ON. Unit tests for the selected provider use the PrivateUse1 device type and PRIVATEUSE1/* GTest prefix, independent of the provider's name.

Architecture

backends/<provider>/
  README.md              provider setup and usage guide
  cmake/                 compiler and vendor SDK setup before project()
  include/               public provider API
  src/backend.cc         provider metadata registration entry point
  src/common/            provider-internal shared helpers
  src/runtime/           device, stream, event, and allocator integration
  src/kernels/           provider kernel implementations and registration
  src/ccl/               optional collective communication integration
  examples/              CMake adapters for upstream InfiniTrain examples
  scripts/               provider model-run configuration and wrappers

third_party/InfiniTrain/ framework source, normally a pinned git submodule

The root build selects and includes backends/<provider>/cmake/pre_project.cmake before its first project() call. This lets each provider select its compiler and prepare SDK-specific dependency probes without adding vendor branches to the root CMakeLists.txt.

When adding this repository as a third-party library with add_subdirectory(), select the compiler required by the provider in the parent project before enabling the C++ language. After setting up the vendor SDK environment, use the following order in the parent's CMakeLists.txt, replacing the compiler path and provider name:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.28)

set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER "/path/to/vendor/compiler" CACHE FILEPATH "")
set(INFINITRAIN_BACKEND "<provider>" CACHE STRING "")

project(MyTrainingApp LANGUAGES CXX)
add_subdirectory(third_party/InfiniTrain-Backends)

CMake cannot replace a compiler after a language has been enabled.

Development checks

See formatting and static checks for clang-format, clang-tidy and IWYU setup, scope and manual usage (in Chinese).

License

InfiniTrain Backends is released under the MIT License.