Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Unable to set the backend to opencl

Open
#230 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
backend

Research direction

Reproduce the Python import and af.set_backend('opencl') sequence, then inspect arrayfire/library.py around set_backend at line 658 and the backend-loading path. Compare the Python behavior with the reported ArrayFire.jl OpenCL load; done means the Python sequence no longer raises the reported RuntimeError and a regression test covers it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

I use the following driver for my card with mesa-opencl-icd loader and radeon driver.

0d:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M / R5 M330 / M430 / Radeon 520 Mobile] (rev 83)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M / R5 M330 / M430 / Radeon 520 Mobile]

Installed Arrayfire and made sure that all the libraries are loaded. Using the ArrayFire.jl, arrayfire loads in Julia perfectly and runs on my AMD card.

ArrayFire v3.7.1 (OpenCL, 64-bit Linux, build d9d9b65)
[0] Clover: AMD HAINAN (DRM 2.50.0, 5.4.0-33-generic, LLVM 9.0.1), 2048 MB

But, in my Python the array fire loads with the following info:

ArrayFire v3.7.1 (CPU, 64-bit Linux, build d9d9b65)
[0] Intel: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-5010U CPU @ 2.10GHz

I also use the following in my .bashrc to update my environment:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/arrayfire/lib64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

When I try to change the backend, I get the following error:

>>> af.set_backend('opencl')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/saipavanchitta/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/arrayfire/library.py", line 658, in set_backend
    raise RuntimeError("Can not change backend to %s after loading %s" % (name, backend.name()))
RuntimeError: Can not change backend to opencl after loading cpu

Is there something that I am missing?

Dominant language
Python
Stars
422
Forks
63
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from arrayfire/arrayfire-python

All issues in arrayfire/arrayfire-python

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.