Windows Environment Variables
If you are building the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit on your own machine, it requires the installation of several external components. The build process finds these installed components on your machine through environment variables. This allows you to install these components according to your wishes and preferences.
This page lists the environment variables which are used by the CNTK build process. It also lists the preferred location for these components. The preferred location is mirroring the configuration of our internal automated build and test machines. The preferred location is also the location used in the documentation to describe the installation process. As was said before, this is only the preferred location and you can adjust it to your liking.
| Environment Variable | Preferred Location | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOST_INCLUDE_PATH | c:\local\boost_1_60_0-msvc-14.0 | BOOST (required) |
| BOOST_LIB_PATH | c:\local\boost_1_60_0-msvc-14.0\lib64-msvc-14.0 | BOOST (required) |
| CNTK_OPENBLAS_PATH | c:\local\CNTKopenBLAS | OpenBLAS library for CNTK UWP build (optional) |
| CUB_PATH | c:\local\cub-1.7.4 | NVIDIA CUB Library (required for GPU build) |
| CUDNN_PATH | C:\local\cudnn-9.0-v7.0\cuda | NVIDIA cuDNN (required for GPU build) |
| CUDA_PATH | C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v9.0 | NVIDIA CUDA (required for GPU build) |
| CUDA_PATH_V9_0 | C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v9.0 | NVIDIA CUDA (required for GPU build) |
| MKL_PATH | C:\local\mklml-mkldnn-0.14 | MKL_PATH (required) |
| OPENCV_PATH_V31 | c:\local\Opencv3.1.0\build | OpenCV (required for ImagerReader build and TensorBoard's Image feature) |
| PROTOBUF_PATH | c:\local\protobuf-3.1.0-vs17 | Protobuf Library (required) |
| SWIG_PATH | C:\local\swigwin-3.0.10 | SWIG (required for CNTK Python, Java, and C#/.NET support) |
| ZLIB_PATH | c:\local\zlib-vs17 | Compression Library (required for ImagerReader build) |
| VS2017INSTALLDIR | C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\version\offering |
CNTK on Windows (required for building CNTK 2.4+ with VS2017) |
In a command shell you could use these commands to set the environment variables on your machine:
setx BOOST_INCLUDE_PATH c:\local\boost_1_60_0-msvc-14.0
setx BOOST_LIB_PATH c:\local\boost_1_60_0-msvc-14.0\lib64-msvc-14.0
setx CUB_PATH c:\local\cub-1.7.4
setx CUDNN_PATH C:\local\cudnn-9.0-v7.0\cuda
setx MKL_PATH C:\local\mklml-mkldnn-0.14
setx OPENCV_PATH_V31 c:\local\Opencv3.1.0\build
setx PROTOBUF_PATH c:\local\protobuf-3.1.0-vs17
setx SWIG_PATH c:\local\swigwin-3.0.10
setx ZLIB_PATH c:\local\zlib-vs17
The CUDA_PATH and CUDA_PATH_V9_0 environment variables shouldn't be changed by you directly. The NVIDIA CUDA installer is defining these variables directly.
There are several additional environment variables which can be used to define the CNTK features you build on your system. If you don't have these environment variables set on your system, the default value is assumed.
| Environment Variable | Default value | |
|---|---|---|
| CNTK_ENABLE_ASGD | true | Data Parallel ASGD |
| CNTK_ENABLE_1BITSGD | false | 1bit SGD |
| CNTK_PY27_PATH | Path to the CNTK Python 2.7 environment | |
| CNTK_PY35_PATH | Path to the CNTK Python 3.5 environment | |
| CNTK_PY36_PATH | Path to the CNTK Python 3.6 environment |
Assuming the default values:
- DataParallel ASGD is being built
- 1bit SGD is not being built
- With undefined
CNTK_PY.._PATH, Python libraries are not being built
Additional Environment Variables
There are additional environment variables which can influence the compilation process:
| Environment Variables | |
|---|---|
| CNTK_CUDA_CODEGEN_DEBUG CNTK_CUDA_CODEGEN_RELEASE | With these environment variables you can define the NVidia Compiler target architectures. For example, setting a variable to compute_35,sm_35;compute_50,sm_50 will only build level 3.5 and 5.0 compatible cubin and PTX information. For detailed information about this refer to the NVidia Compiler documentation. |
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