Random Number Generator in CUDA

Question

I've struggled with this all day, I am trying to get a random number generator for threads in my CUDA code. I have looked through all forums and yes this topic comes up a fair bit but I've spent hours trying to unravel all sorts of codes to no avail. If anyone knows of a simple method, probably a device kernel that can be called to returns a random float between 0 and 1, or an integer that I can transform I would be most grateful.

Again, I hope to use the random number in the kernel, just like rand() for instance.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I'm not sure I understand why you need anything special. Any traditional PRNG should port more or less directly. A linear congruential should work fine. Do you have some special properties you're trying to establish?

Answer 2

For anyone interested, you can now do it via cuRAND.

Answer 3

I think any discussion of this question needs to answer Zenna's orginal request and that is for a thread level implementation. Specifically a device function that can be called from within a kernel or thread. Sorry if I overdid the "in bold" phrases but I really think the answers so far are not quite addressing what is being sought here.

The cuRAND library is your best bet. I appreciate that people are wanting to reinvent the wheel (it makes one appreciate and more properly use 3rd party libraries) but high performance high quality number generators are plentiful and well tested. The best info I can recommend is on the documentation for the GSL library on the different generators here:http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/Random-number-generator-algorithms.html

For any serious code it is best to use one of the main algorithms that mathematicians/computer-scientists have into the ground over and over looking for systemic weaknesses. The "mersenne twister" is something with a period (repeat loop) on the order of 10^6000 (MT19997 algorithm means "Mersenne Twister 2^19997") that has been especially adapted for Nvidia to use at a thread level within threads of the same warp using thread id calls as seeds. See paper here:http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/2_2/sdk/website/projects/MersenneTwister/doc/MersenneTwister.pdf. I am actually working to implement somehting using this library and IF I get it to work properly I will post my code. Nvidia has some examples at their documentation site for the current CUDA toolkit.

NOTE: Just for the record I do not work for Nvidia, but I will admit their documentation and abstraction design for CUDA is something I have so far been impressed with.

---

Answer 4

Depending on your application you should be wary of using LCGs without considering whether the streams (one stream per thread) will overlap. You could implement a leapfrog with LCG, but then you would need to have a sufficiently long period LCG to ensure that the sequence doesn't repeat.

An example leapfrog could be:

template <typename ValueType>
__device__ void leapfrog(unsigned long &a, unsigned long &c, int leap)
{
    unsigned long an = a;
    for (int i = 1 ; i < leap ; i++)
        an *= a;
    c = c * ((an - 1) / (a - 1));
    a = an;
}

template <typename ValueType>
__device__ ValueType quickrand(unsigned long &seed, const unsigned long a, const unsigned long c)
{
    seed = seed * a;
    return seed;
}

template <typename ValueType>
__global__ void mykernel(
    unsigned long *d_seeds)
{
    // RNG parameters
    unsigned long a = 1664525L;
    unsigned long c = 1013904223L;
    unsigned long ainit = a;
    unsigned long cinit = c;
    unsigned long seed;

    // Generate local seed
    seed = d_seeds[bid];
    leapfrog<ValueType>(ainit, cinit, tid);
    quickrand<ValueType>(seed, ainit, cinit);
    leapfrog<ValueType>(a, c, blockDim.x);

    ...
}

But then the period of that generator is probably insufficient in most cases.

To be honest, I'd look at using a third party library such as NAG. There are some batch generators in the SDK too, but that's probably not what you're looking for in this case.

EDIT

Since this just got up-voted, I figure it's worth updating to mention that cuRAND, as mentioned by more recent answers to this question, is available and provides a number of generators and distributions. That's definitely the easiest place to start.

Answer 5

The best way for this is writing your own device function , here is the one

void RNG()
{   
    unsigned int m_w = 150;
    unsigned int m_z = 40;

    for(int i=0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        m_z = 36969 * (m_z & 65535) + (m_z >> 16);
        m_w = 18000 * (m_w & 65535) + (m_w >> 16);

        cout <<(m_z << 16) + m_w << endl;  /* 32-bit result */
    }
}

It'll give you 100 random numbers with 32 bit result.

If you want some random numbers between 1 and 1000, you can also take the result%1000, either at the point of consumption, or at the point of generation:

((m_z << 16) + m_w)%1000

Changing m_w and m_z starting values (in the example, 150 and 40) allows you to get a different results each time. You can use threadIdx.x as one of them, which should give you different pseudorandom series each time.

I wanted to add that it works 2 time faster than rand() function, and works great ;)

Answer 6

There's an MDGPU package (GPL) which includes an implementation of the GNU rand48() function for CUDA here.

I found it (quite easily, using Google, which I assume you tried :-) on the NVidia forums here.

Answer 7

I haven't found a good parallel number generator for CUDA, however I did find a parallel random number generator based on academic research here: http://sprng.cs.fsu.edu/

Answer 8

You could try out Mersenne Twister for GPUs

It is based on SIMD-oriented Fast Mersenne Twister (SFMT) which is a quite fast and reliable random number generator. It passes Marsaglias DIEHARD tests for Random Number Generators.