Graph eXecution Framework (GXF)

Overview

GXF is a framework from NVIDIA that provides a component-based architecture designed for developing hardware accelerated compute graphs. The framework is at the foundation of other high-performance SDKs such as NVIDIA Holoscan, DeepStream, and Isaac ROS. For example, NITROS (NVIDIA Isaac Transport for ROS) leverages GXF compute graphs embedded within ROS 2 nodes with optimized transport between them to achieve highly efficient ROS application graphs.

The isaac_ros_gxf package is located in Isaac ROS NITROS repository that holds the GXF framework binaries and headers. This GXF repository contains the buildable source code for the GXF framework and its deployment for Isaac ROS NITROS. Developers could use the scripts here to build the GXF source and install the updated binaries and headers for all supported platforms in the isaac_ros_gxf package locally.

Setup

The build environment can be setup on an x86_64 system running Ubuntu 20.04+ using the Isaac ROS Dev) base containers.

Build and Install

1. Set up your development environment by following the instructions here.

2. Clone the following repositories and its dependencies under ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src.

   mkdir -p ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src && cd ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src

   git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/gxf

   git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac_ros_common

   git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac_ros_nitros

3. Add a config file to update the environment image key with 'gxf' and add the directory to the Dockerfile search paths:

   echo "CONFIG_IMAGE_KEY=ros2_humble.user.gxf" >> ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/isaac_ros_common/scripts/.isaac_ros_common-config && \
   echo "CONFIG_DOCKER_SEARCH_DIRS=(../../gxf/docker)" >> ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/isaac_ros_common/scripts/.isaac_ros_common-config

4. Launch the Docker container using the run_dev.sh script:

   cd ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/isaac_ros_common && \
     ./scripts/run_dev.sh

5. Inside the container, build and install GXF to isaac_ros_gxf package:

   cd /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/gxf && \
     ./build_install_gxf_release.sh -i /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/isaac_ros_nitros/isaac_ros_gxf

6. Once succeed, you will see the following results:

   Removing existing GXF framework files in /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/gxf/../../../src/isaac_ros_nitros isaac_ros_gxf/gxf/core
   Installing GXF framework files in /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/gxf/../../../src/isaac_ros_nitros/isaac_ros_gxf/gxf/core
   Patching SONAME into GXF shared libraires
   Done patching SONAME into GXF shared libraires
   Completed. Installed rebuilt GXF framework to /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/src/gxf/../../../src/isaac_ros_nitros/isaac_ros_gxf/gxf/core

License

This work is published under the NVIDIA ISAAC ROS software license.

Updates

Date	Changes
2023-10-18	Initial release