NVIDIA Announces Full Support For OpenCL 1.0

[btarunr]

NVIDIA Corporation announced its full support for the newly released OpenCL 1.0 specification from the Khronos Group. OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a new compute API that allows developers to harness the massive parallel computing power of the GPU. The addition of OpenCL is another major milestone in the GPU revolution that gives NVIDIA developers another powerful programming option.

NVIDIA kicked off the GPU computing revolution with the introduction of NVIDIA CUDA, its massively parallel computing ISA and hardware architecture. CUDA was designed to natively support all parallel computing interfaces and will seamlessly run OpenCL. Enabled on over 100 million NVIDIA GPUs, CUDA has unleashed unprecedented performance boosts across a wide range of applications and provides a huge installed base for the deployment of compute applications using OpenCL. With support for other industry standard languages such as C, Java, Fortran and Python, only the CUDA architecture provides developers with a choice of programming environments to aid the rapid development of compute applications on the GPU.

First introduced with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GPU and standard across all NVIDIA’s modern GPUs, CUDA is the foundation of NVIDIA’s parallel computing strategy. CUDA has had a tremendous reception from the world’s research community with scientists seeing up to a 20-200x speed-up in their applications with CUDA over a CPU. The CUDA architecture is being built into a wide range of computing systems from supercomputers and workstations to consumer PCs, enabling more than 25,000 developers to actively develop on CUDA today.

“The arrival of OpenCL is fabulous news for the computing industry and NVIDIA is delighted to be playing a highly active role in the establishment of a new standard that promotes computing on the GPU,” said Manju Hegde, general manager of CUDA at NVIDIA. “We are delighted that Apple has helped spearhead OpenCL. Their recognition that the GPU will now play an essential role in consumer applications is a significant milestone in the history of computing.”

Vice president of embedded content at NVIDIA, Neil Trevett also holds the position of chair of the OpenCL working group at Khronos.

“The OpenCL specification is a result of a clearly recognized opportunity from leaders like NVIDIA to grow the total market for heterogeneous parallel computing through an open, cross-platform standard,” said Trevett. “NVIDIA will continue to be very active in the OpenCL working group to drive the evolution of the specification and will support OpenCL on all its platforms, providing developers an additional way to tap into the awesome computational power of our GPUs.”

Source: NVIDIA

[Bl4ck]

The Birth of a new standard, great, when OpenGL is dead for Games (not for workstations) Open CL comes in play for graphics computing, and its faster on the market then MS DirectX 11 with its computing shaders. By the time the Windows 7 and DX11 make it to the market the Open CL will be dominant , supported by Apple and Nvidia.

[phanbuey]

Originally Posted by Bl4ck

The Birth of a new standard, great, when OpenGL is dead for Games (not for workstations) Open CL comes in play for graphics computing, and its faster on the market then MS DirectX 11 with its computing shaders. By the time the Windows 7 and DX11 make it to the market the Open CL will be dominant , supported by Apple and Nvidia.

yet another standard MS will try to kill . I can wait till i can use open CL stuff for general computing... no more need to buy that expensive i7 if your videocard can encode 50X faster.

[KainXS]

so when will these new open cl drivers be released

[RadeonX2]

This is why I stick with Nvidia, they always got something new

[cooler]

here full list companies that Support For OpenCL 1.0


http://www.khronos.org/opencl/

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for general-purpose parallel programming of heterogeneous systems. OpenCL provides a uniform programming environment for software developers to write efficient, portable code for high-performance compute servers, desktop computer systems and handheld devices using a diverse mix of multi-core CPUs, GPUs, Cell-type architectures and other parallel processors such as DSPs.

OpenCL supports a wide range of applications, from embedded and consumer software to HPC solutions, through a low-level, high-performance, portable abstraction. By creating an efficient, close-to-the-metal programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.

OpenCL is being created by the Khronos Group with the participation of many industry-leading companies and institutions including 3DLABS, Activision Blizzard, AMD, Apple, ARM, Barco, Broadcom, Codeplay, Electronic Arts, Ericsson, Freescale, HI, IBM, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Kestrel Institute, Motorola, Movidia, Nokia, NVIDIA, QNX, RapidMind, Samsung, Seaweed, Takumi, Texas Instruments and Umeå University.

[HTC]

Originally Posted by cooler

OpenCL is being created by the Khronos Group with the participation of many industry-leading companies and institutions including 3DLABS, Activision Blizzard, AMD, Apple, ARM, Barco, Broadcom, Codeplay, Electronic Arts, Ericsson, Freescale, HI, IBM, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Kestrel Institute, Motorola, Movidia, Nokia, NVIDIA, QNX, RapidMind, Samsung, Seaweed, Takumi, Texas Instruments and Umeå University.

Originally Posted by RadeonX2

This is why I stick with Nvidia, they always got something new

AMD is also participating: so much for nVidia being the only one

[lemonadesoda]

Which is a better/easier development environment? (OpenCL or CUDA)

Which has a faster build runtime? (OpenCL or CUDA)

I'd love to see some benchmarks, ie. some algorithm, maybe even SuperPI in x86 vs. OpenCL vs. CUDA.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Originally Posted by HTC

AMD is also participating: so much for nVidia being the only one

Its a standard not developed by nvidia, but the blind corporate endorsers dont even take time to read

[DarkMatter]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

Which is a better/easier development environment? (OpenCL or CUDA)

Which has a faster build runtime? (OpenCL or CUDA)

I'd love to see some benchmarks, ie. some algorithm, maybe even SuperPI in x86 vs. OpenCL vs. CUDA.

Yeah I would love to see them too. I read somewhere that ATM CUDA is the better one out there. Also overal faster, thanks to a little more specialized hardware. That doesn't mean it's faster everywhere, but it is much more complete than the others, from the number of tools and how useful they are to documentation and support. It's there where Nvidia has always most shined, after all.

Now OpenCL should improve upon that, but speaking about raw performance I expect CUDA/Stream to be inherently slightly faster as they would be a little bit better suited to the hardware they'd be running. BUT by the simple fact that an open standard (usually) means more people will be interested in programing with it, probably OpenCL will be faster after a while. How polished the software usually weighs more than how fast an API is. Take game engines as the best example, D3D is the same for all...

EDIT: Just a comment, a little bit off-topic but noteworthy IMHO:

Originally Posted by HTC

AMD is also participating: so much for nVidia being the only one

Originally Posted by [I.R.A]_FBi

Its a standard not developed by nvidia, but the blind corporate endorsers dont even take time to read

The GPU wars and fan flaming is just reaching absurd levels on TPU forums. Nowhere he said Nvidia was the only one, nor he suggested Nvidia was developing it. He just said he loves Nvidia because it's always on something new, and face it, IT IS. They are not the only ones, but they are there, they are in PhysX too and many other places. AGAIN no one is suggesting they are the only ones, but they are everywhere nowadays and the simple fact that the guy loves them because of that is no reason to flame him. It's not as if he said Ati sucks or anything, he didn't, I don't even read anything between lines. There's nothing there.

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

Which is a better/easier development environment? (OpenCL or CUDA)

Which has a faster build runtime? (OpenCL or CUDA)

I'd love to see some benchmarks, ie. some algorithm, maybe even SuperPI in x86 vs. OpenCL vs. CUDA.

From my understanding Open CL should be better and easier to develop. Now that nvidia has come on board it's now a much more viable option for developers. This is something ATI has no problem in supporting as well so hopefully we can see something develop from it soon.

The second part of your question is hard to say right now. That's something we will have to wait and see. Once we start seeing more developers use it will know the answer to that. As it stands, anything new like this will require some "break in" time IMO.

There was suppose to be a superPI program based on cuda but it never materialized. If it did, I am not aware of it's use at this time.

[EastCoasthandle]

"The potential benefits of having applications run on both the CPU and GPU within a system are enormous," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. "Unfortunately, up until now programmers could only choose proprietary programming languages that limited their ability to write vendor-neutral, cross-platform applications. With today's ratification of OpenCL 1.0, I'm happy to say those days are over. Developers now have a better, truly open choice."

source

So far it looks like Nvidia will use Cuda to run OpenCL while ATI will use a compliant compiler and runtime into its SDK.

I wonder if this means more game support for Apple based computers once use?

[DarkMatter]

Originally Posted by EastCoasthandle

source

So far it looks like Nvidia will use Cuda to run OpenCL while ATI will use a compliant compiler and runtime into its SDK.

Every single GPGPU solution comes from Standford's Univertity Brook solution (I think the key people working on them in Nvidia, Ati and Intel belonged to the group that made Brook anyway) and they are much more similar than what most people would think. Some people have even suggested you could take CUDA code and run it on Ati GPUs almost unchanged and viceversa. You know there was a guy who claimed it was doing it, but I never knew what to think. In any case the differences are probably almost nonexistent. What Nvidia has said is that their current CUDA is already compliant with OpenCL anyway.

IMHO Brook+ = CUDA = Stream with very slight differences between them to have something to support the idea that the solution is theirs.

[soldier242]

Now that sounds pretty nice, but i think we'll have to wait some time to see the first OpenCL apps and even longer for gamesupport ... but lets see what happens there, i'm kinda curious now

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by soldier242

Now that sounds pretty nice, but i think we'll have to wait some time to see the first OpenCL apps and even longer for gamesupport ... but lets see what happens there, i'm kinda curious now

Yeah, in the end it's a wait and see approach. Hopefully we can see something develop from it by the end of 2009. But I still wonder if this means more development support for Apple based computers.

[DarkMatter]

Originally Posted by EastCoasthandle

Yeah, in the end it's a wait and see approach. Hopefully we can see something develop from it by the end of 2009. But I still wonder if this means more development support for Apple based computers.

I have always thought Apple had some very good applications. Maybe they don't have a lot of them, but they do have good ones for almost anything you need. They are expensive for the most part, granted, but everything Apple is overpriced so I don't know if it would change anything.

Now if you are talking about games... that won't happen.

[Bl4ck]

Originally Posted by EastCoasthandle

Yeah, in the end it's a wait and see approach. Hopefully we can see something develop from it by the end of 2009. But I still wonder if this means more development support for Apple based computers.

Apple recently started to promote Open CL on their web site, the use mobile GeForce and ATI Radeon chipsets , and they both support Open CL, Apple pormotes new standards faster (Display Port, only 64-bit Leopard instead of 32 and 64 bit) then other companies ,time will tell what will bocome from this .

[DarkMatter]

Originally Posted by Bl4ck

Apple recently started to promote Open CL on their web site, the use mobile GeForce and ATI Radeon chipsets , and they both support Open CL, Apple pormotes new standards faster (Display Port, only 64-bit Leopard instead of 32 and 64 bit) then other companies ,time will tell what will bocome from this .

It's easy to force... ejem... suport the adoption of new standards for them. It's all "propietary" and not as open as the PC. Hardware I mean.

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by Bl4ck

Apple recently started to promote Open CL on their web site, the use mobile GeForce and ATI Radeon chipsets , and they both support Open CL, Apple pormotes new standards faster (Display Port, only 64-bit Leopard instead of 32 and 64 bit) then other companies ,time will tell what will bocome from this .

If developers include Apple based computers in their games it would IMO boost PC gaming market. But we will have to wait and see.

[newconroer]

Originally Posted by EastCoasthandle

I wonder if this means more game support for Apple based computers once use?

You just opened a conspiracy can something fierce boy.

[Hayder_Master]

Originally Posted by RadeonX2

This is why I stick with Nvidia, they always got something new

ati support it too