Object attributes

Normal attributes

hwloc objects have many attributes. The hwloc_obj structure contains a common set of attributes that are available for object types, for instance their type or logical_index.

Each object also contains an attr field that, if non NULL, points to a union hwloc_obj_attr_u of type-specific attribute structures. For instance, a Cache object obj contains cache-specific information in obj->attr->cache, such as its size and associativity. See hwloc_obj_attr_u for details.

Custom string infos

Aside from the name field of each object, hwloc annotates many objects with string attributes that are made of a key and a value. Each object contains a list of such pairs that may be consulted manually (looking at the object infos array field) or using the hwloc_obj_get_info_by_name(). The user may additionally add new key-value pairs to any object using hwloc_obj_add_info() or the hwloc-annotate program.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of attributes that may be automatically added by hwloc (with the usual corresponding object in parentheses). Note that these attributes heavily depend on the ability of the operating system to report them. Many of them will therefore be missing on some OS.

OSName, OSRelease, OSVersion, HostName, Architecture (Machine object)

The operating system name, release, version, the hostname and the architecture name, as reported by the Unix uname command.

Backend (Machine object, topology root object, or specific object added by that backend)

The name of the hwloc backend/component that filled the topology. If several components were combined, multiple Backend keys may exist, with different values, for instance x86 and Linux in the root object and CUDA in CUDA OS device objects.

LinuxCgroup (Machine object)

The name the Linux control group where the calling process is placed.

SyntheticDescription (topology root object)

The description string that was given to hwloc to build this synthetic topology.

CPUModel (Package or Machine)

The processor model name. Usually added to Package objects, but can be in Machine instead if hwloc failed to discover any package.

CPUType (Package)

A Solaris-specific general processor type name, such as "i86pc".

CPUVendor, CPUModelNumber, CPUFamilyNumber, CPUStepping (Package or Machine)

The processor vendor name, model number, family number, and stepping number. Currently available for x86 and Xeon Phi processors on most systems, and for ia64 processors on Linux (except CPUStepping). Usually added to Package objects, but can be in Machine instead if hwloc failed to discover any package.

CPURevision (Package)

A POWER/PowerPC-specific general processor revision number, currently only available on Linux.

PlatformName, PlatformModel, PlatformVendor, PlatformBoardID, PlatformRevision,

SystemVersionRegister, ProcessorVersionRegister (Machine)

Some POWER/PowerPC-specific attributes describing the platform and processor. Currently only available on Linux. Usually added to Package objects, but can be in Machine instead if hwloc failed to discover any package.

MemoryMode, ClusterMode (topology root object)

Intel Xeon Phi processor configuration modes. Available if hwloc-dump-hwdata was used (see Why do I need hwloc-dump-hwdata for memory on Intel Xeon Phi processor?) or if hwloc managed to guess them from the NUMA configuration.

The memory mode may be Cache, Flat, Hybrid50 (half the MCDRAM is used as a cache) or Hybrid25 (25% of MCDRAM as cache). The cluster mode may be Quadrant, Hemisphere, All2All, SNC2 or SNC4. See doc/examples/get-knl-modes.c in the source directory for an example of retrieving these attributes.

Inclusive (Caches)

The inclusiveness of a cache (1 if inclusive, 0 otherwise). Currently only available on x86 processors.

SolarisProcessorGroup (Group)

The Solaris kstat processor group name that was used to build this Group object.

PCIVendor, PCIDevice (PCI devices and bridges)

The vendor and device names of the PCI device.

PCISlot (PCI devices or Bridges)

The name/number of the physical slot where the device is plugged. If the physical device contains PCI bridges above the actual PCI device, the attribute may be attached to the highest bridge (i.e. the first object that actually appears below the physical slot).

Vendor, Model, Revision, SerialNumber (Block OS devices)

The vendor and model names, revision, and serial number of a Block OS device.

LinuxDeviceID (Block OS devices)

The major/minor device number such as 8:0 of Linux device.

CoProcType (Co-Processor OS devices)

The type of co-processor, for instance "MIC", "CUDA" or "OpenCL".

GPUVendor, GPUModel (GPU or Co-Processor OS devices)

The vendor and model names of the GPU device.

OpenCLDeviceType, OpenCLPlatformIndex,

OpenCLPlatformName, OpenCLPlatformDeviceIndex (OpenCL OS devices)

The type of OpenCL device, the OpenCL platform index and name, and the index of the device within the platform.

OpenCLComputeUnits, OpenCLGlobalMemorySize (OpenCL OS devices)

The number of compute units and global memory size (in kB) of an OpenCL device.

NVIDIAUUID, NVIDIASerial (NVML GPU OS devices)

The UUID and Serial of NVIDIA GPUs.

CUDAMultiProcessors, CUDACoresPerMP,

CUDAGlobalMemorySize, CUDAL2CacheSize, CUDASharedMemorySizePerMP (CUDA OS devices)

The number of shared multiprocessors, the number of cores per multiprocessor, the global memory size, the (global) L2 cache size, and size of the shared memory in each multiprocessor of a CUDA device. Sizes are in kB.

MICSerialNumber (MIC coprocessor OS device)

The serial number of an Intel Xeon Phi (MIC) coprocessor. hwloc may run either inside the coprocessor itself, or on the host processor. That attribute is set in both cases, so that the exact same coprocessor may be identified from both point of views, even if there are multiple nodes with multiple MICs. When running hwloc on the host, each hwloc OS device object that corresponds to a Xeon Phi gets such an attribute. When running hwloc inside a Xeon Phi coprocessor, the root object of the topology gets this attribute.

MICFamily, MICSKU, MICActiveCores, MICMemorySize (MIC coprocessor OS device)

The family, SKU (model), number of active cores, and memory size (in kB) of an Intel Xeon Phi (MIC) coprocessor.

DMIBoardVendor, DMIBoardName, etc. (Machine object)

DMI hardware information such as the motherboard and chassis models and vendors, the BIOS revision, etc., as reported by Linux under /sys/class/dmi/id/.

Address, Port (Network interface OS devices)

The MAC address and the port number of a software network interface, such as eth4 on Linux.

NodeGUID, SysImageGUID, Port1State, Port2LID, Port2LMC, Port3GID1 (OpenFabrics OS devices)

The node GUID and GUID mask, the state of a port #1 (value is 4 when active), the LID and LID mask count of port #2, and GID #1 of port #3.

Type

A better type name than the usual one. This may be used to specify where Groups come from. For instance Linux S/390 books appear as Groups of type Book (see also What are these Group objects in my topology?). Block OS devices may have a Type of "Disk", "Tape", "Removable Media Device" or "Other". The Type attribute value is displayed instead of the default object type name in lstopo.

Vendor, AssetTag, PartNumber, DeviceLocation, BankLocation (MemoryModule Misc objects)

Information about memory modules (DIMMs) extracted from SMBIOS.

hwlocVersion (topology root, Machine object)

The version number of the hwloc library that was used to generate the topology. If the topology was loaded from XML, this is not the hwloc version that loaded it, but rather the first hwloc instance that exported the topology to XML earlier.

ProcessName (topology root, Machine object)

The name of the process that contains the hwloc library that was used to generate the topology. If the topology was from XML, this is not the hwloc process that loaded it, but rather the first process that exported the topology to XML earlier.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of user-provided info attributes that have a special meaning:

lstopoStyle

Enforces the style of an object (background and text colors) in the graphical output of lstopo. See CUSTOM COLORS in the lstopo(1) manpage for details.