[LAD] opencl [was Re: [LAU] ANN: CMKeyboard]

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Tue, December 11, 2012 7:28 am, David Robillard wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 05:40 +1100, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>> On Tue, December 11, 2012 3:33 am, David Robillard wrote:
> [...]
>> > Unfortunately they're not programmable on Linux yet, only on Windows.
>>
>> I have been assured that the brand new NUC platform from Intel is fully
>> Linux compatible with opengl/cl support too. What specific issues are
>> you
>> seeing?
>
> Last I checked, which was quite recently, they were literally not
> programmable on Linux whatsoever.  The "issue" is it's completely
> unsupported on Linux and does not work at all.
>
> (OpenCL on the normal CPU cores works, mind you, but is embarrassingly
> slow compared normal threaded code, so that's useless)
>

I was told the following regarding the NUC platform and acceleration (The
NUC's don't have a GPU):


    The Kernel driver supports IVB accelerated 3D.  You will need, in
addition to the Kernel driver, the
    Mesa component (which is the open source OpenGL implementation).The
latest release of Mesa
    also has full IVB support and had for sometime now.


I have been waiting to get hold of one, as they are only a few hundred
dollars, to find out exactly how far they can be pushed. They are now on
the market for the xmas season. They look like they will be very useful
for low energy footprint, high performance multimedia clusters. Also for
networked display installations.  Solar powered netjack clusters...


>> > A  complete joke if they're targeting scientific GPGPU, and useless
>> for LAD
>> > too.  Intel seriously needs to get on this and fix their drivers...
>> >
>>
>> Compared to AMD, Intel are actually making a lot of headway with their
>> Linux drivers. At least they actually release the specs these days and
>> have a full department for Linux development. AMD are having real
>> trouble
>> getting their heads around the concept of open source *and* multimedia.
>> My
>> dealings with Intel so far suggest they are light years ahead in terms
>> of
>> understanding the potential. Compared to AMD it's almost night and day.
>
> Unfortunately Intel is light years ahead of AMD in most things these
> days.  Though, if AMD has CPUs with on-die programmable GPUs in Linux, I
> for one would be quite a bit more interested...
>

The AMD Fusion chips are GPU on die and they have recently released a
large chunk of opencl tools. I haven't had time over the past few months
to look into exactly how much access is now available.




--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd