Compatibility and compilation guidance for ARM architecture (aarch64) and openEuler OS

[zlzheshi]

I am currently planning to compile, deploy, and test OKVIS2-X on a cloud server powered by an ARM processor running the openEuler operating system.

Since many C++ VSLAM frameworks are primarily optimized for x86 architectures (e.g., relying on SSE/AVX instructions for vectorization) and standard Ubuntu environments, I would like to ask a few questions before I dive into the compilation process:

ARM Support: Does OKVIS2-X inherently support compilation and execution on ARM architectures (aarch64)? Are there any known hard dependencies on x86-specific instruction sets?

Compilation Flags: Are there any specific CMake flags, dependency versions (e.g., Eigen, Ceres), or code modifications you recommend to successfully build the project on ARM?

Community Experience: Has anyone in the team or community successfully tested it on openEuler (or similar Enterprise Linux distributions like CentOS/RHEL for ARM)?

For reference, here is my target hardware and software environment:

OS: openEuler 24.03 (Huawei Cloud EulerOS)

Architecture: aarch64 (ARMv8)

CPU: Kunpeng 920

NPU: Ascend 310P (Planning to explore if NPU acceleration is possible later)

Any guidance, tips, or pointers to relevant branches/commits would be greatly appreciated. I will also go ahead and try compiling it myself, and I can report back here with any specific compiler errors I encounter.

Thank you for your time and help!

[SebsBarbas]

Hi @zlzheshi !
Thanks for the interest in our work! Regarding your question, we actually deploy OKVIS2-X and FindAnything on our drones. Our drones use an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX for compute which is uses an ARM(aarch64) processor, so I would not expect any issues deploying the system on your compute.

The main issue I can see is that the Orin has its own OS, which would differ from your deployment, but I am afraid I can not replicate this setup since I do not use the OS (although I would find it surprising if this fails).

Please let us know if there are any issues, we want to ensure that it is as easy to install and use as possible and all feedback is welcome.

[zlzheshi]

Hi @SebsBarbas,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply and for confirming the ARM compatibility! Your feedback gave me a lot of confidence to proceed with the testing.

I am writing to share some good news: I have successfully compiled and run OKVIS2-X on my setup without any OS-related issues! For your reference and for the benefit of the community, here are the exact specifications of the environment where the project was successfully verified:

Cloud Provider: Huawei Cloud

Instance Type: kc1.xlarge.4 (4 vCPUs | 16 GiB)

Architecture: ARM (aarch64 / Kunpeng CPU)

OS: openEuler 22.03 LTS 64bit

It turns out that openEuler handles the deployment perfectly, just as you expected. Thank you and the team again for developing such an excellent and highly adaptable framework. The installation process was indeed very smooth.

I will continue with my in-depth testing and will definitely reach out if I encounter any further questions.

Have a great day!