PHORONIX: OpenCL, GLSL Back-End For LLVM May Soon Open Up

[Hartmann, O.]

On 08/30/11 22:14, K. Macy wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 9:47 PM, Pedro F. Giffuni<giffunip at tutopia.com>  wrote:
>> FWIW;
>>
>> Christopher Bergström and Pathscale delivered the EKOPath
>> Compiler Suite, but no one followed up:
>>
>> (From the WantedPorts Wiki)
>> https://github.com/pathscale/path64-suite
>>
>> There has been very low interest in the FreeBSD port,
>> and unfortunately this is a bad signal that we give to
>> companies that want to contribute :(.
>>
> The problem I have with that is that they only support the high-end
> computing variant of the card which I doubt any of us has. Without the
> documentation to extend the work to ordinary cards, e.g. my GTX460, it
> isn't that useful.
>
> Thanks
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Well, C. Bergström wrote that the major focus is on the TESLA
card, but there may be chance that it also is working on the GTX570
or GTX580 (or even the GTX 560Ti, which is also spread around our 
department
for GPGPU stuff). But I never had a chance to test this. I'm no developer
and my software is also "copied" and home-brewn, but I think it was a 
chance to
do a real life test. Since April we run a server with a TESLA M2050, the 
card
the Enzo claims to support. But my time is up by the end of this year and
I need to get finnished my thesis so we decided to install Linux for 
CUDA usage.
I left two spare partitions for FreeBSD ... but I never got a call ...

Well, if they offer support for expensive card in the first place and we 
would show and assure that there
is potential for the consumer cards, i guess then there will be a 
motivation to do the development
that direction. In this case we, the customer, have to be active!

Fact is, that most departments I know (mainly nuclear physics, 
theoretical meteorologists,
astrophysicists and planetologists) do not have high-end GPU computing 
cards, all of them do have
a lot of smaller consumer cards and they run CUDA with incredible 
results in performance!
Well, a TESLA M2050 is much faster, but is is four to five times more 
the money I have to spend
for the low end cards. I think this fact is also known by PatScale as 
well as it is obvious to me.
But if the department realizes that there is a softare/compiler, than 
their willing to spend more
money on maybe a professional card is less "frictional".

Well, as the advert of PathScales EKOpath compiler promised, there would 
also be a CUDA support.
Could you imagine what kind of Mekka this could be, simply compile CUDA 
stuff on a FreeBSD
box and also having the ability to code the same stuff with HMPP in a 
next, optimizing step?

Well, now I learn to code OpenCL and CUDA and maybe I'm back soon for 
HMPP. But it seems quite sure that
none of the GPGPU stuff will soon be usable on a FreeBSD box. So why 
avoiding further Linux .... :-(