Conditionally Execute a function

[anishk25]

Hi, I am trying to execute a function in ArrayFire inside a gfor loop only if a certain condition is met. I have tried several ways to do this but none of them were successful. Here is a simple example of what I tried to do

Code: Select all

array do_something(array i){
   print(i);
   return i;
}

int main(){
    array A = seq(1,100);   

    gfor(array i, 100){
         array condition = (A(i) % 5 == 0);
          array exec = condition && do_something(A(i)); // execute the function do_something only if A(i) is a multiple of 5
    }
  return 0;
}


The above code prints all values contained in the array A. I thought with the operator &&, short circuiting applied. In other words if condition was 0 it will never even go to the second statement. Can someone please help me figure this out?

[pavanky]

Hi,


arrays can contain multiple elements. There is no right way to short circuit an entire array (for example part of it may be true, part of it may be false).
What we do is short circuit based on each element inside the CUDA code. This would mean both expressions have to be evaluated first.

As for conditional execution inside gfor, this is not permitted. GFOR needs to do the same operations for all elements.

So for example if you are doing something like this.

Code: Select all

for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
   if (i % 5 == 0) res(i) = do_something_1(i);
   else               res(i) = do_something_2(i);
}


it can be converted into GFOR code in the following manner.

Code: Select all

gfor (array ii, n) {
  array condition = (ii % 5 == 0);
  array true_part =  do_something_1(ii);
  array false_part = do_something_2(ii);
  // Do the masking
  res(ii) = condition * true_part + (1 - condition) * false_part;
}


This way all iterations of gfor do the same operation without divergence.