Kernel-thrown Exceptions

Just like regular CPU-executed Julia functions, GPU kernels can throw exceptions! For example, the following kernel will throw a KernelException:

function throwkernel(A)
    A[0] = 1
end
HA = HSAArray(zeros(Int,1))
wait(@roc throwkernel(HA))

Kernels that hit an exception will write some exception information into a pre-allocated list for the CPU to inspect. Once complete, the wavefront throwing the exception will stop itself, but other wavefronts will continue executing (possibly throwing their own exceptions, or not).

Kernel-thrown exceptions are thrown on the CPU in the call to wait(event), where event is the returned value of @roc calls. When the kernel signals that it's completed, the wait function will check if an exception flag has been set, and if it has, will collect all of the relevant exception information that the kernels set up. Unlike CPU execution, GPU kernel exceptions aren't very user-customizable and pretty (for now!). They don't call Base.show, but instead pass the LLVM function name of their exception handler (details in GPUCompiler, src/irgen.jl). Therefore, the exact error that occured might be a bit hard to figure out.

If exception checking turns out to be too expensive for your needs, you can disable those checks by passing the kwarg check_exceptions=false to the wait call, which will skip any error checking (although it will still wait for the kernel to signal completion).