[GRASS-dev] OpenCL Parallelization

[Benjamin Ducke]

OpenCL can use CPUs and GPUs for parallel processing.
For all those operations that can be done more efficiently
on a GPU, there a potentially enormous performance gains.
Since OpenCL is like a reduced C dialect and completely
abstracted from the hardware, all an OpenCL programmer
needs to do is implement the algorithm and then it's up
to the graphics chips manufacturers to release drivers
for their hardware. NVIDIA and ATI have already done that.

I for one would love to see v.vol.rst run in parallel
on a bunch of cheap GPUs, outperforming a mainframe...
 
Ben

Hamish wrote:
> Jeshua wrote:
>> I was curious if anyone has looked at implementing OpenCL
>> for some of the processor intensive highly parallel
>> modules.
>>
>> <http://www.khronos.org/opencl/>
>>
>> It seems to me that some of the more processor intensive
>> modules could gain a significant performance utilizing
>> OpenCL with fairly modest development effort.
>>
>> I am not familiar with the code for v.surf.rst, however I
>> might be interested in making an attempt if it can be
>> parallelized. Or can anyone suggest what processor intensive
>> modules might be good candidates for parallelization?
> 
> 
> see  http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/OpenMP
> 
> what advantages would OpenCL have over OpenMP and pthreads?
> 
> OpenMP and pthreads are somewhat different beasts suiting two somewhat
> different niches. Where would OpenCL overlap? Would it be a better
> or worse fit than the others for different scenarios?
> 
> Probably supporting three different MP schemes is too crowded.
> 
> 
> Hamish
> 
> 
> 
>       
> 
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> 
> 


-- 
Benjamin Ducke
Senior Applications Support and Development Officer

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