If you found this file somewhere unexpected (e.g., not in an app’s private directory), it could be a side-loaded AI model binary. While not inherently malicious, any .bin that runs on your GPU via OpenCL could:
You can check which app owns the file using ls -l or, on Android, see the parent directory.
scp mace-cl-compiled-program.bin user@raspberrypi:/home/user/model/
ssh user@raspberrypi
cd /home/user/model
./my_mace_app --program mace-cl-compiled-program.bin
This guide should give you full control over generating, deploying, and debugging mace-cl-compiled-program.bin for Movidius-based edge AI applications.
mace-cl-compiled-program.bin is a binary cache file generated by the Mobile AI Compute Engine (MACE), an open-source deep learning framework developed by Xiaomi for mobile and IoT devices. What is this file?
This file specifically stores pre-compiled OpenCL (CL) kernels. When an app uses AI features (like image enhancement, face detection, or scene recognition), MACE translates high-level AI models into instructions that your device's GPU can understand. To save time during future app launches, it saves these instructions in this .bin file. Review and Technical Impact
Performance Improvement: The primary benefit is speed. By caching the compiled program, the app avoids the "just-in-time" compilation overhead, leading to significantly faster initialization of AI tasks [1, 5].
Battery Efficiency: Since the GPU doesn't have to re-calculate how to run the AI model every time the app opens, it reduces CPU/GPU load, subtly saving battery during intensive tasks [3, 4].
Storage Usage: These files are generally small (often under a few megabytes) and are safe to delete. However, if you delete them, the system will simply regenerate them the next time the associated AI feature is used, potentially causing a brief lag [2, 5]. mace-cl-compiled-program.bin
Common Locations: You will most frequently find this file on Xiaomi, Redmi, or POCO devices within the data folders of system apps like the Camera or Gallery [4, 5]. Is it safe?
Yes, it is a legitimate system-generated file. It is not a virus or bloatware, but rather a functional component of modern mobile AI processing.
If the app crashes while writing the binary, the file may be truncated or corrupt. This causes a load failure.
The Fix: Delete the file manually. Navigate to Settings > Apps > [Your App] > Storage > Clear Cache. On the next launch, the file will be regenerated.
You can also manually compile OpenCL kernels with:
mace_cl_compiler --input kernel.cl --output mace-cl-compiled-program.bin --target myriad
with open("mace-cl-compiled-program.bin", "rb") as f: prog_bin = f.read() If you found this file somewhere unexpected (e
If you are looking for the raw content of the binary file, it consists of machine code and data segments. Below is a simulated representation of the header of mace-cl-compiled-program.bin in Hexadecimal format:
00000000: 4D41 4345 434C 0100 0000 0010 0000 MACECL.........
00000010: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000020: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000050: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
Note: If this file belongs to a specific software project or game (such as a model file from a specific engine), the binary format would be proprietary. In that case, the text above (Lisp source) serves as the logical reconstruction of the file's intended function.
mace_cl_compiled_program.bin precompiled binary cache used by the Mobile AI Compute Engine (MACE) , a deep learning inference framework developed by Nature of the File Content
Because this is a compiled binary file, it does not contain human-readable source code. Instead, its content consists of: OpenCL Binaries
: Machine-specific code (kernels) optimized for a device's GPU. Device Tuning Data
: Metadata and configuration parameters specific to the hardware (e.g., Qualcomm Adreno or MTK Mali GPUs) to speed up model initialization. Serialized Kernels : Pre-compiled versions of operations like softmax.cl convolution.cl to avoid recompiling OpenCL C code at runtime. Where to Find or Generate It
You cannot "read" the full content like a text document, but you can manage it through the MACE framework: Generation You can check which app owns the file
: The file is typically generated when you run a model using the MACE tools/converter.py tool with the GPU runtime enabled.
: On Android devices, it is often stored in temporary directories such as /data/local/tmp/mace_run/ or within the application's internal storage cache.
: It is used to reduce the "warm-up" time of an AI model by loading the binary directly rather than compiling OpenCL source code from scratch each time the app starts. Read the Docs
If you are looking for the original source code that eventually gets compiled into this binary, you can browse the MACE OpenCL kernel library on GitHub. Are you trying to debug a "file not found" error for this binary, or are you looking to optimize model startup
I can do that — I'll extract key details and produce a clear, structured report (purpose, contents, build info, binary analysis, findings, recommendations). I'll assume you want a technical report summarizing the compiled binary "mace-cl-compiled-program.bin" (build metadata, file properties, sections, symbols, dependencies, size/entropy, notable strings, potential issues, recommended next steps). If you want a different focus (security audit, reverse-engineering, performance, packaging, or a user-facing summary), tell me which.
I'll proceed with these reasonable defaults and produce a technical report:
Confirm I should analyze the binary file contents now. If you want me to infer from the filename only (no upload), say so; otherwise upload the binary file or paste outputs from tools (file, readelf/objdump/strings, pecheck, ldd, otool, etc.).
# MACE provides a validation tool
mace_check_compiled_program --file mace-cl-compiled-program.bin --device myriad