[Macworld]

Post your comments for OpenCL gets touted in Texas here

[samrod]

"And I can’t emphasize enough that I’ll be able to write one program that I’ll be able to recompile and it will run on my cell phone, it will run on my Powerbook.”
Except Snow Leopard won't run on his PowerBook because it'll be Intel only. Maybe he meant MacBook Pro?
Great article!

[Steve_S]

samrod said:

"And I can’t emphasize enough that I’ll be able to write one program that I’ll be able to recompile and it will run on my cell phone, it will run on my Powerbook.”

Except Snow Leopard won't run on his PowerBook because it'll be Intel only. Maybe he meant MacBook Pro?

I don't think that was meant literally. Surely the user interface alone would be different for a cell phone program than it would be a laptop/desktop, etc. The point is, developers will write for general OpenCL rather than have to worry about optimizing for individual hardware platforms. The OpenCL implementation for each platform will do the heavy lifting and figure out how best to make use of the available hardware.

What's interesting is that OpenCL was originally assumed to be just an open alternative to nVidia's CUDA, etc. It sounds like it's considerably more than that as it will make use of both CPU and GPU power alike. That is, if you're using integrated Intel graphics, general GPU acceleration may not be possible, but OpenCL should still make use of multiple CPU cores if you have them. That's pretty cool.

[jg167]

{quote}What's interesting is that OpenCL was originally assumed to be just an open alternative to nVidia's CUDA, etc. It sounds like it's considerably more than that as it will make use of both CPU and GPU power alike. That is, if you're using integrated Intel graphics, general GPU acceleration may not be possible, but OpenCL should still make use of multiple CPU cores if you have them. That's pretty cool.{quote}The current version of CUDA does not do this, but the one being worked on does. This was touted as an important addition at Nvida's NVISION conference a month or so ago. It will be interesting to see if Nvidia does wrt to CUDA and OpenCL,

[mjtomlin]

OpenCL is actually supposed to expose all processors including, CPUs, GPUs, and DSPs and all cores within. It basically allows you to code without really worrying about the actual hardware and compatibility issues. It's supposed to determine which processor is best for a particular task and make sure tasks are being spread across all available cores and processors. Should be great to see it in action, just hope it makes it into Snow Leopard. Really can't wait until it's implemented in iPhone OS X!

[WilfredLaurier]

I thought CUDA code is reusable for both GPU and CPUs, so you can actually program everything in CUDA, instead of a separate CUDA codebase for GPU and "normal" code for the CPU. Perhaps, OpenCL does some dynamic management to assign work to CPUs and GPUs which I suppose CUDA doesn't do. Although I thought assigning tasks in parallel was supposed to be Grand Central's thing rather than OpenCL.

I'm pleasantly surprised that OpenCL was passed so quickly. Apple must have had the whole thing developed alread and poked and prodded everyone until they agreed the current implementation is good enough. Now for the drivers.

[mannessx]

Has anyone noticed that the new MacBookPros have 2 GPUs? They say this is so that id you are not doing intensive graphics you can use a less power-hungry processor. BUT, to me it sure looks like they are setting up for Snow Leopard. Imagine if you wanna do some serious math crunching, have the secondary GPU handle the graphics and then you have an awesome number cruncher all to yourself!
Or- for graphics/games - use the secondary GPU for your physics.

[Peter Cohen]

That'd be fine -- presuming you're tethered to an AC outlet. Hybrid SLI isn't meant for battery operation.

Hybrid SLI isn't something that's currently supported by Leopard, either. Whether Snow Leopard will support this capability remains to be seen, but Nvidia has made it clear that it's a software option that's open to Apple, should they choose to expose it.