1.10. Troubleshooting and tips¶

1.10.1. What to compile¶

The general recommendation is that you should only try to compile the critical paths in your code. If you have a piece of performance-critical computational code amongst some higher-level code, you may factor out the performance-critical code in a separate function and compile the separate function with Numba. Letting Numba focus on that small piece of performance-critical code has several advantages:

it reduces the risk of hitting unsupported features;
it reduces the compilation times;
it allows you to evolve the higher-level code which is outside of the compiled function much easier.

1.10.2. My code doesn’t compile¶

There can be various reasons why Numba cannot compile your code, and raises an error instead. One common reason is that your code relies on an unsupported Python feature, especially in nopython mode. Please see the list of Supported Python features. If you find something that is listed there and still fails compiling, please report a bug.

The other reason is that you asked for nopython mode, and type inference has failed on some piece of your code. For example, let’s consider this trivial function:

@jit(nopython=True)
def f(x, y):
    return x + y

If you call it with two numbers, Numba is able to infer the types properly:

>>> f(1, 2)
3

If however you call it with a tuple and a number, Numba is unable to say what the result of adding a tuple and number is, and therefore compilation errors out:

>>> f(1, (2,))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    [...]
  File "/home/antoine/numba/numba/typeinfer.py", line 242, in resolve
    raise TypingError(msg, loc=self.loc)
numba.typeinfer.TypingError: Failed at nopython frontend
Undeclared +(int64, (int32 x 1))
File "<stdin>", line 2

The error message helps you find out what went wrong: “Undeclared +(int64, (int32 x 1))” is to be interpreted as “Numba encountered an addition of variables typed as integer and 1-tuple of integer, respectively, and doesn’t know about any such operation”.

Note that if you allow object mode, compilation will succeed and the compiled function will raise at runtime as Python would do:

>>> g(1, (2,))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'tuple'

1.10.3. The compiled code is too slow¶

The most common reason for slowness of a compiled JIT function is that compiling in nopython mode has failed and the Numba compiler has fallen back to object mode. object mode currently provides little to no speedup compared to regular Python interpretation, and its main point is to allow an internal optimization known as loop-lifting: this optimization will allow to compile inner loops in nopython mode regardless of what code surrounds those inner loops.

To find out if type inference succeeded on your function, you can use the inspect_types() method on the compiled function.

For example, let’s take the following function:

@jit
def f(a, b):
    s = a + float(b)
    return s

When called with numbers, this function should be fast as Numba is able to convert number types to floating-point numbers. Let’s see:

>>> f(1, 2)
3.0
>>> f.inspect_types()
f (int64, int64)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# --- LINE 7 ---

@jit

# --- LINE 8 ---

def f(a, b):

    # --- LINE 9 ---
    # label 0
    #   a.1 = a  :: int64
    #   del a
    #   b.1 = b  :: int64
    #   del b
    #   $0.2 = global(float: <class 'float'>)  :: Function(<class 'float'>)
    #   $0.4 = call $0.2(b.1, )  :: (int64,) -> float64
    #   del b.1
    #   del $0.2
    #   $0.5 = a.1 + $0.4  :: float64
    #   del a.1
    #   del $0.4
    #   s = $0.5  :: float64
    #   del $0.5

    s = a + float(b)

    # --- LINE 10 ---
    #   $0.7 = cast(value=s)  :: float64
    #   del s
    #   return $0.7

    return s

Without trying to understand too much of the Numba intermediate representation, it is still visible that all variables and temporary values have had their types inferred properly: for example a has the type int64, $0.5 has the type float64, etc.

However, if b is passed as a string, compilation will fall back on object mode as the float() constructor with a string is currently not supported by Numba:

>>> f(1, "2")
3.0
>>> f.inspect_types()
[... snip annotations for other signatures, see above ...]
================================================================================
f (int64, str)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# --- LINE 7 ---

@jit

# --- LINE 8 ---

def f(a, b):

    # --- LINE 9 ---
    # label 0
    #   a.1 = a  :: pyobject
    #   del a
    #   b.1 = b  :: pyobject
    #   del b
    #   $0.2 = global(float: <class 'float'>)  :: pyobject
    #   $0.4 = call $0.2(b.1, )  :: pyobject
    #   del b.1
    #   del $0.2
    #   $0.5 = a.1 + $0.4  :: pyobject
    #   del a.1
    #   del $0.4
    #   s = $0.5  :: pyobject
    #   del $0.5

    s = a + float(b)

    # --- LINE 10 ---
    #   $0.7 = cast(value=s)  :: pyobject
    #   del s
    #   return $0.7

    return s

Here we see that all variables end up typed as pyobject. This means that the function was compiled in object mode and values are passed around as generic Python objects, without Numba trying to look into them to reason about their raw values. This is a situation you want to avoid when caring about the speed of your code.

There are several ways of understanding why a function fails to compile in nopython mode:

pass nopython=True, which will raise an error indicating what went wrong (see above My code doesn’t compile);

enable warnings by setting the NUMBA_WARNINGS environment variable; for example with the f() function above:

>>> f(1, 2)
3.0
>>> f(1, "2")
example.py:7: NumbaWarning: Function "f" failed type inference: Internal error at <numba.typeinfer.CallConstrain object at 0x7f6b8dd24550>:
float() only support for numbers
File "example.py", line 9
  @jit
example.py:7: NumbaWarning: Function "f" was compiled in object mode without forceobj=True.
  @jit
3.0

1.10.4. Disabling JIT compilation¶

In order to debug code, it is possible to disable JIT compilation, which makes the jit decorator (and the decorators njit and autojit) act as if they perform no operation, and the invocation of decorated functions calls the original Python function instead of a compiled version. This can be toggled by setting the NUMBA_DISABLE_JIT enviroment variable to 1.

When this mode is enabled, the vectorize and guvectorize decorators will still result in compilation of a ufunc, as there is no straightforward pure Python implementation of these functions.

1.10.5. Debugging JIT compiled code with GDB¶

Setting the debug keyword argument in the jit decorator (e.g. @jit(debug=True)) enables the emission of debug info in the jitted code. To debug, GDB version 7.0 or above is required. Currently, the following debug info is available:

Function name will be shown in the backtrace. But, no type information.
Source location (filename and line number) is available. For example, user can set break point by the absolute filename and line number; e.g. break /path/to/myfile.py:6.
Local variables in the current function can be shown with info locals.
Type of variable with whatis myvar.
Value of variable with print myvar or display myvar.
- Simple numeric types, i.e. int, float and double, are shown in their native representation. But, integers are assumed to be signed.
- Other types are shown as sequence of bytes.

Known issues:

Stepping depends heavily on optimization level.
- At full optimization (equivalent to O3), most of the variables are optimized out.
- With no optimization (e.g. NUMBA_OPT=0), source location jumps around when stepping through the code.
- At O1 optimization (e.g. NUMBA_OPT=1), stepping is stable but some variables are optimized out.
Memory consumption increases significantly with debug info enabled. The compiler emits extra information (DWARF) along with the instructions. The emitted object code can be 2x bigger with debug info.

Internal details:

Since Python semantics allow variables to bind to value of different types, Numba internally creates multiple versions of the variable for each type. So for code like:
```
x = 1         # type int
x = 2.3       # type float
x = (1, 2, 3) # type 3-tuple of int
```
Each assignments will store to a different variable name. In the debugger, the variables will be x, x$1 and x$2. (In the Numba IR, they are x, x.1 and x.2.)
When debug is enabled, inlining of the function is disabled.

1.10.5.1. Example debug usage¶

The python source:

from numba import njit

@njit(debug=True)
def foo(a):
    b = a + 1
    c = a * 2.34
    d = (a, b, c)
    print(a, b, c, d)

r= foo(123)
print(r)

In the terminal:

$ NUMBA_OPT=1 gdb -q python
Reading symbols from python...done.
(gdb) break /home/user/chk_debug.py:5
No source file named /home/user/chk_debug.py.
Make breakpoint pending on future shared library load? (y or [n]) y

Breakpoint 1 (/home/user/chk_debug.py:5) pending.
(gdb) run chk_debug.py
Starting program: /home/user/miniconda/bin/python chk_debug.py
...
Breakpoint 1, __main__::foo$241(long long) () at chk_debug.py:5
5         b = a + 1
(gdb) n
6         c = a * 2.34
(gdb) bt
#0  __main__::foo$241(long long) () at chk_debug.py:6
#1  0x00007ffff7fec47c in cpython::__main__::foo$241(long long) ()
#2  0x00007fffeb7976e2 in call_cfunc (locals=0x0, kws=0x0, args=0x7fffeb486198,
...
(gdb) info locals
a = 0
d = <error reading variable d (DWARF-2 expression error: `DW_OP_stack_value' operations must be used either alone or in conjunction with DW_OP_piece or DW_OP_bit_piece.)>
c = 0
b = 124
(gdb) whatis b
type = i64
(gdb) whatis d
type = {i64, i64, double}
(gdb) print b
$2 = 124

1.10.5.2. Globally override debug setting¶

It is possible to enable debug for the full application by setting environment variable NUMBA_DEBUGINFO=1. This sets the default value of the debug option in jit. Debug can be turned off on individual functions by setting debug=False.

Beware that enabling debug info significantly increases the memory consumption for each compiled function. For large application, this may cause out-of-memory error.

1.10.6. Debugging CUDA Python code¶

1.10.6.1. Using the simulator¶

CUDA Python code can be run in the Python interpreter using the CUDA Simulator, allowing it to be debugged with the Python debugger or with print statements. To enable the CUDA simulator, set the environment variable NUMBA_ENABLE_CUDASIM to 1. For more information on the CUDA Simulator, see the CUDA Simulator documentation.

1.10.6.2. Debug Info¶

By setting the debug argument to cuda.jit to True (@cuda.jit(debug=True)), Numba will emit source location in the compiled CUDA code. Unlike the CPU target, only filename and line information are available, but no variable type information is emitted. The information is sufficient to debug memory error with cuda-memcheck.

For example, given the following cuda python code:

import numpy as np
from numba import cuda

@cuda.jit(debug=True)
def foo(arr):
    arr[cuda.threadIdx.x] = 1

arr = np.arange(30)
foo[1, 32](arr)   # more threads than array elements

We can use cuda-memcheck to find the memory error:

$ cuda-memcheck python chk_cuda_debug.py
========= CUDA-MEMCHECK
========= Invalid __global__ write of size 8
=========     at 0x00000148 in /home/user/chk_cuda_debug.py:6:cudapy::__main__::foo$241(Array<__int64, int=1, C, mutable, aligned>)
=========     by thread (31,0,0) in block (0,0,0)
=========     Address 0x500a600f8 is out of bounds
...
=========
========= Invalid __global__ write of size 8
=========     at 0x00000148 in /home/user/chk_cuda_debug.py:6:cudapy::__main__::foo$241(Array<__int64, int=1, C, mutable, aligned>)
=========     by thread (30,0,0) in block (0,0,0)
=========     Address 0x500a600f0 is out of bounds
...

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

Next topic

This Page