Setting the board on debug mode for Profiling the NPU in NXP i.MX8M Plus board

Getting started with AI on NXP i.MX8M Plus
Introduction
Overview i.MX8M Plus hardware specifications Development tools Development kit DART-MX8M-PLUS Development kit Quick getting started Yocto minimal image Flashing SD card First steps on the board
Development
Gatesgarth and Hardknott Yocto versions Downloading Yocto images for NXP based BSP Building an imx-core-image Flashing SD card Integrating multimedia software stack Installing GStreamer Installing OpenCV Integrating Artificial Intelligence software stack Installing TensorFlow Lite for NXP based images Installing R2Inference Installing GstInference Developing software for the board Building the SDK Crosscompiling apps for GStreamer, TensorFlow Lite, and OpenCV Exploring TensorFlow Lite delegates for prototyping
Neural Processing Unit
Introduction Profiling the NPU Installing gputop Setting the board on debug mode Use Case experiments: Smart Parking Introduction to the use case License Plate Detection TinyYOLO version 3 Training a model compatible with GstInference License Plate Recognition Rosetta Getting the model prototyping Bash scripts for CPU usage and time estimation Serial experiments Parallel Experiments Results
GStreamer
Exploring Rosetta element for character recognition Example pipelines Smart Parking Video inferences Image inferences Video streaming
Contact Us

i.MX8M Plus debug mode

Before starting any application that you know is using the NPU, you can set up some flags in order to put the board in verbose mode, then you will have some extra outputs from the NPU driver, telling you how much time a certain model operation takes, or when is executing a CPU fallback due to some incompatible model operation.

This process is about exporting the following flags:

export CNN_PERF=1 NN_EXT_SHOW_PERF=1 VIV_VX_DEBUG_LEVEL=1 VIV_VX_PROFILE=1

After this, you can execute your accelerated application, and depending on the model, output like the following will be shown:

...

layer id: 12 layer name:TensorAdd operation[0]:VXNNE_OPERATOR_TENSOR_ADD target:VXNNE_OPERATION_TARGET_SH.
uid: 4
op_abs_id: 10
layer id: 15 layer name:TensorCopy operation[0]:unkown operation type target:VXNNE_OPERATION_TARGET_SH.
uid: 15
op_abs_id: 19
shader kernel name: tensorCopy_F16toF32_2D
execution time:               120 us

prev_ptrs = 0xaaaafdaf9a40
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab003adc80
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001cae00
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001cee00
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001d0e40
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001d2e80
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001d4280
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001d5680
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab001d6480
Releasing object array 0xaaab001f3740
Releasing object array 0xaaab004a17c0
Releasing object array 0xaaab004b1890
Releasing object array 0xaaab004c1960
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab007f0400
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab007f3140
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab007f5f40
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab007f8d00
prev_ptrs = 0xaaab007fbac0
Releasing object array 0xaaab0080e3b0
Releasing object array 0xaaab0081f120
Exit VX Thread: 0x83695120

...

Some execution time for each operations, unknown operations that will implicate on CPU fallback, and modified registers are specified in order to understand deeper the performance of your model on the NPU.