What happened to NVidia and OpenCL, with respect to the new Macs?
I'm not certain this is the best forum for the question so?
In any event has the relationship with NVidia really soured that badly that the new iMacs have no NVidia options? Or is it a case that Apple is waiting on NVidia to finish it's next round of product releases.
Along side this absolutely zip about OpenCL compatibility has been mentioned in the advertisements or Apples web site for the new hardware. Is this an oversite, lack of commitment or a lack of drivers and support software?
I know AMD isn't targetting GPU computing the way NVidia is but I'm assuming all the hardware going into the new iMacs is OpenCL compatible. I just kind of expected Apple to promote compatibility and support of OpenCL if it was there.
The lack of Nvidia hardware combined with OpenCL silence is peculiar.
Dave
In any event has the relationship with NVidia really soured that badly that the new iMacs have no NVidia options? Or is it a case that Apple is waiting on NVidia to finish it's next round of product releases.
Along side this absolutely zip about OpenCL compatibility has been mentioned in the advertisements or Apples web site for the new hardware. Is this an oversite, lack of commitment or a lack of drivers and support software?
I know AMD isn't targetting GPU computing the way NVidia is but I'm assuming all the hardware going into the new iMacs is OpenCL compatible. I just kind of expected Apple to promote compatibility and support of OpenCL if it was there.
The lack of Nvidia hardware combined with OpenCL silence is peculiar.
Dave
Comments
I'm not certain this is the best forum for the question so?
In any event has the relationship with NVidia really soured that badly that the new iMacs have no NVidia options? Or is it a case that Apple is waiting on NVidia to finish it's next round of product releases.
Along side this absolutely zip about OpenCL compatibility has been mentioned in the advertisements or Apples web site for the new hardware. Is this an oversite, lack of commitment or a lack of drivers and support software?
I know AMD isn't targetting GPU computing the way NVidia is but I'm assuming all the hardware going into the new iMacs is OpenCL compatible. I just kind of expected Apple to promote compatibility and support of OpenCL if it was there.
The lack of Nvidia hardware combined with OpenCL silence is peculiar.
Dave
There was a rumor a while back on AI, that Apple and NVIDIA had a big bust up. Mostly over the high failure rate of the 8600 gpus. I guess that one was true because Apple seem to be telling NVIDIA to kiss off. Apparently Apple didn't like that NVIDIA wasn't forthright over the problems associated with that gpu model.
It doesn't help that ATI/AMD have the better gpus right now either. Although that doesn't really matter because Apple aren't bleeding edge when it comes to gpus in Macs any way.
I said this in another thread, but when Arrandale arrives, I doubt Apple will use ant NVIDIA products.
I'm not certain this is the best forum for the question so…
In any event has the relationship with NVidia really soured that badly that the new iMacs have no NVidia options? Or is it a case that Apple is waiting on NVidia to finish it's next round of product releases.
Along side this absolutely zip about OpenCL compatibility has been mentioned in the advertisements or Apples web site for the new hardware. Is this an oversite, lack of commitment or a lack of drivers and support software?
I know AMD isn't targetting GPU computing the way NVidia is but I'm assuming all the hardware going into the new iMacs is OpenCL compatible. I just kind of expected Apple to promote compatibility and support of OpenCL if it was there.
The lack of Nvidia hardware combined with OpenCL silence is peculiar.
Dave
What the hell are you talking about regarding AMD isn't targeting GPU computing?
Like hell they aren't.
They just happen to have made the CPU/GPGPU both first class in their latest SDK Prerelease 4 and Apple is including the improvements in 10.6.2.
Ignoring the actual interviewer is advised when listened to the video on OpenCL within AMD:
http://developer.amd.com/documentati...s/default.aspx
What the hell are you talking about regarding AMD isn't targeting GPU computing?
It is exactly what I'm saying, AMD isn't targetting GPGPU computing the way NVidia is. This is well accepted in the industry.
Like hell they aren't.
He'll or not they are committing the resources and hardware features NVidia is. For example does AMD have GPUs supporting ECC? Or how about redesigning their GPUs to become better coprocessors for GPGPU computing the way NVidia is with Fermi?
What you seem to miss is that there is a big difference between supporting a technology and specializing your hardware for it. AMD is taking a minimalist approach and is not compromising regular GPU performance for GPGPU performance.
They just happen to have made the CPU/GPGPU both first class in their latest SDK Prerelease 4 and Apple is including the improvements in 10.6.2.
That is software support to exploit current GPUs. What you don't see AMD doing is building GPUs optimized for GPGPU performance. At least not in the way NVidia does or is trying to do.
Ignoring the actual interviewer is advised when listened to the video on OpenCL within AMD:
http://developer.amd.com/documentati...s/default.aspx
Dave
What you don't see AMD doing is building GPUs optimized for GPGPU performance. At least not in the way NVidia does or is trying to do.
AMD have made significant developments like having the first double-floating-point precision GPU. Plus, their lower end GPUs seem to have better compute performance. The 9400M is rated at 54 GFLOPs whereas the Radeon 4670 in the new iMac is rated at 480GFLOPs:
http://www.retailaccess.com/retailpr...ets/HD4670.pdf
The server-side GPU computation developments in OTOY are powered by AMD's GPUs. NVidia do have software like PhysX and CUDA gained more traction than AMD's Stream SDK but they are committed to the cause.
AMD have some really nice graphics chips - a lot of NVidia's are rebrands of old ones. The 9600M GT is a good low power chip (25W) but the Radeon Mobility 4670 or 4830 (in the HP Envy) would work out ok at 35W or so.
I'm not sure if AMD have integrated graphics to rival the 9400M yet but for everything else, Apple could go all AMD and still have good compute performance. The obvious loss is that none of the CUDA code will work, it has to be ported to OpenCL, but this is going to happen anyway. I just wish we'd see some real-world use in end-user apps already. I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't taken the lead on this.
There are probably some improvements in Motion and you can use OpenCL kernels in the developer toolkits but those aren't areas a lot of people will notice. I noticed some recent updates preventing hanging up the system when using the GPU so maybe they are working to get it stable enough to use mainstream. I don't want GPU computing to kill multi-tasking.
AMD have made significant developments like having the first double-floating-point precision GPU. Plus, their lower end GPUs seem to have better compute performance. The 9400M is rated at 54 GFLOPs whereas the Radeon 4670 in the new iMac is rated at 480GFLOPs:
The 9400M's outstanding feature is very low power usage even in laptops. I don't really see it as a chip that people needing OpenCL will target. The 4670 is a nice card but I doubt those are Double precision GFlops.
The server-side GPU computation developments in OTOY are powered by AMD's GPUs. NVidia do have software like PhysX and CUDA gained more traction than AMD's Stream SDK but they are committed to the cause.
I still get the feeling is not so much as committed as it is a me to thing.
AMD have some really nice graphics chips - a lot of NVidia's are rebrands of old ones. The 9600M GT is a good low power chip (25W) but the Radeon Mobility 4670 or 4830 (in the HP Envy) would work out ok at 35W or so.
This I'm aware of plus they have removed their collective heads from their behinds and have become a little more reasonable with respect to Linux. ATI/AMD are actually market leaders for GPUs right now, that is a very good thing. The problem is this has nothing to do with what I'm saying.
I'm not sure if AMD have integrated graphics to rival the 9400M yet but for everything else, Apple could go all AMD and still have good compute performance. The obvious loss is that none of the CUDA code will work, it has to be ported to OpenCL, but this is going to happen anyway. I just wish we'd see some real-world use in end-user apps already. I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't taken the lead on this.
Well I think there are two problems here. The nature of GPU's means they are currently only useful for certain classes of code. The second is that the apps that Apple has control of, that could use OpenCL are all in need of a massive overhaul to make them Snow leopard leveraged much less a program that uses OpenCL.
There are probably some improvements in Motion and you can use OpenCL kernels in the developer toolkits but those aren't areas a lot of people will notice. I noticed some recent updates preventing hanging up the system when using the GPU so maybe they are working to get it stable enough to use mainstream. I don't want GPU computing to kill multi-tasking.
It is very easy to kill GPU performance, even freeze the screen, with OpenCL like programming. In part it is my understanding that this is due to the inability of GPU's to multitask. It is my understanding that NVidia is trying to address this with its Fermi implementation.
In any event back to my original posting, the problem is I went on Apples web sight and looked at the documents for the new machines and did not see OpenCL mentioned any where. Almost as if it didn't exist. You would think that Apple would want to be real clear on how their new iMacs support this tech. It looks like Apple isn't committed. I mean really we are talking a brand new iMac revision with a brand new choice of GPU's and they didn't trumpet OpenCL at all.
Now this could be due to anything, maybe they didn't think the drivers would be ready. Or maybe the Code currently in Leopard is to NVidia specific. Either way you would think more wold be said.
Dave