Where do you think software comes from, Santas sac maybe?
Quote:
What's happening in the consumer world?
Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers. However if you where to stop whining for a bit you could spend some time reviewing software that actually uses OpenCL. Of course much of this software is for professionals, so a Mc Donalds employee isn't likely to use these suites.
Quote:
Not an awful lot, judging by Marvin's post. Just Apple's video and photo apps and a couple of others. Photoshop doesn't use it. Neither does Premiere, Handbrake or any other power-hungry consumer app. So far, it's been a big "Openwhat?" for consumers, including power users.
Well did you really expect technology this powerful and advanced to be implemented in consumer grade software this early? Seriously, the people that are leveraging OpenCL are the ones that can gain a strong competitive advantage from it's use.
OpenCL was only put into action 3 years ago, which isn't a long time when you have to get a standard approved, a stable specification and production-ready drivers along with hardware support.
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Where do you think software comes from, Santas sac maybe?
Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers. However if you where to stop whining for a bit you could spend some time reviewing software that actually uses OpenCL. Of course much of this software is for professionals, so a Mc Donalds employee isn't likely to use these suites.
Well did you really expect technology this powerful and advanced to be implemented in consumer grade software this early? Seriously, the people that are leveraging OpenCL are the ones that can gain a strong competitive advantage from it's use.
Geez. What a nasty attitude. If I had a dollar for every piece of software that never made it off developers' hard drives, I could retire right now. Real Soon Now and vaporware are ridiculously common. Just listen to yourself. I wrote in my first post that OpenCL is still obscure three years after it was announced and most people don't know any software using it. You went on the warpath as if I'd killed your firstborn, despite later admitting "Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers."
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
An OS is quite different from a programming language. Its rate of adoption also tends to be slower. The appeal of OpenCL is that it's royalty free. Other than that go read wiki or something. The comparison to Leopard is a poor one. Leopard is an OS version, not a programming language.
A large number of video games take 3 years to go from concept to market even using established game engines. EA and Activision only manage yearly releases because they have about 500 people working on them at any given time.
Incremental OS releases are different because they don't have to change a lot of code to make a noticeable change. An incremental OS release is like a DLC for a game.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kolchak
vaporware
Vaporware is something that is announced and never released. OpenCL is very much in the open and in use. It's just not widely used - same as Thunderbolt.
CPUs and GPUs are merging and OpenCL gives you architecture independence to be able to run code to fully utilise the hardware you have. In fields of work where the highest levels of computation are required, OpenCL gives massive speedups.
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
Not really. It took almost two years from the time that the first iPhone beta was released until there where a good quantity of no trivial apps available. For those apps to stabilize it took even longer.
Again you fail to see this from the perspective of the developer which in the case of OpenCL is all that matters. In many cases developers simply aren't going to go out of their way to tell you which libraries they use in their software. For the user it simply doesn't matter. OpenCL is just one of many libs and headers that get folded into an app. For example a developer could make extensive use of BOOST and not tell you.
Quote:
Geez. What a nasty attitude. If I had a dollar for every piece of software that never made it off developers' hard drives, I could retire right now.
That is completely true (assuming the software is any good). From the standpoint of a user does it really matter? Another point of view is all the custom software that never leaves the place of development because it is considered strategic to a business. Either way you may never know which libraries are in use.
Quote:
Real Soon Now and vaporware are ridiculously common.
Again you simply don't know what you are taking about. OpenCL is widely used, the problem is you have to pull your head out of the sand and look around a bit. You say it is hardly used in the Apple whorl yet the facts are very different. For example grab otool and start looking at the apps and libraries that make installed software on your machine. Run it against CoreImage and you get something like:
XXXXXXXXXXXX$ otool -L CoreImage
CoreImage:
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/QuartzCore.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreImage.framework/Versions/A/CoreImage (compatibility version 1.0.1, current version 1.0.1)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreVideo.framework/Versions/A/CoreVideo (compatibility version 1.2.0, current version 1.7.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenCL.framework/Versions/A/OpenCL (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/OpenGL (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/IOSurface.framework/Versions/A/IOSurface (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGLImage.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Accelerate (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 4.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation (compatibility version 300.0.0, current version 833.1.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ApplicationServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 41.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libcrypto.0.9.8.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.8, current version 0.9.8)
\t/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FaceCoreLight.framework/Versions/A/FaceCoreLight (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.4.2)
\t/usr/lib/libstdc++.6.dylib (compatibility version 7.0.0, current version 52.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 159.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 228.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/CoreServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 53.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation (compatibility version 150.0.0, current version 633.0.0)
Note the linkage to OpenCL above. Now ask yourself what apps use CoreImage. So you see the reality is that almost every app uses OpenCL to the extent that CoreImage does. This is OpenCL in CoreImage, where else it might be used is up to the person looking.
Quote:
Just listen to yourself. I wrote in my first post that OpenCL is still obscure three years after it was announced and most people don't know any software using it.
i've also told you repeatedly that you are wrong and you have no idea what you are talking about. OpenCL has been tremendously successful and is in many ways eclipsing CUDA as the primary way to leverage GPU's for compute tasks. OpenCL has been so successful that CUDA now looks like legacy software.
Quote:
You went on the warpath as if I'd killed your firstborn, despite later admitting "Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers."
How is that contradictory, I've gone after your bogus claims because they are totally misleading. The fact is many consumer apps will never see a huge benefit from OpenCL, simply because they don't deal with data in a way that can every be leveraged by the facility. On the flip side Apple does use OpenCL in their libraries, so by default many programs do make use of OpenCL even if the core of the program does not.
The bigger problems I see it is why are you hung up on OpenCL? Seriously Apple supplies many libraries that get very modest use but are used by some apps. Even more importantly do you expect Apple and the various software vendors to always spell out what features they are using. Especially in the case of OpenCL which has fall back mechanisms so that code will execute even if the OpenCL compatible card isn't there. The whole facility is designed to be transparent to the user.
A lesser problem might be the fact that the term GPGPU computing is misleading. What is currently executing on the GPU is not really general purpose code. It certainly isn't normal GPU code either. GPU's display the best advantage on data parallel code, outside of image processing there isn't a lot of consumer apps that are structured such that the GPU makes a difference executing core code. So you see OpenCL used in places where developers can use the strength of the GPU to their advantage.
So am I on a warpath, not really I just get extremely angry when people knock OpenCL without knowing. OpenCL is so important that I don't even recommend computers without OpenCL support unless another feature is of overriding concern. You may call that overboard which is your right to do so, but I believe this board needs to be balanced and reflect reality. That reality is that Apple does use OpenCL and the standard has very wide industry support. I'd even go so far as to call it surprisingly successful.
A phrase I've heard many times and have grown to grasp over the years. Software is a process of development, very few software products are ever completely finished.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
A large number of video games take 3 years to go from concept to market even using established game engines. EA and Activision only manage yearly releases because they have about 500 people working on them at any given time.
Outside of games look at what is or has happened in the internet browser wars. Things like Safari evolve over many years. They will continue to evolve and hopefully be debugged, for the as long as they are relevant. 3 years is really nothing.
Quote:
Incremental OS releases are different because they don't have to change a lot of code to make a noticeable change. An incremental OS release is like a DLC for a game.
More importantly they don't want to change a lot of code. Keeping an OS stable and compatible is a big deal. Apps can be refactored on a daily basis if the developer is up to it, you can not do that with an OS.
Quote:
Vaporware is something that is announced and never released. OpenCL is very much in the open and in use. It's just not widely used - same as Thunderbolt.
Well it is used in CoreImage and that is very widely used. I understand the point outside of that but I think people are extremely confused when it comes to OpenCL, it really isn't the technology to throw at a note taking app.
Now compare the noise we hear on these forums about OpenCL vs vecLib or Acclerate. Those are two of many, of the more obscure libs used by Mac OS/X.
Quote:
CPUs and GPUs are merging and OpenCL gives you architecture independence to be able to run code to fully utilise the hardware you have. In fields of work where the highest levels of computation are required, OpenCL gives massive speedups.
Many are missing this point too. Right now GPU & CPU integration is about at the point where the floating point (FP) processor was first moved on chip. Some time after that Apple began to find that the FP processor was now faster than the older methods using fixed point math. The whole CPU has improved over the years but everybody now a days takes the FP unit for granted. Now we are in a similar state with the GPU, its value is only going to increase as it becomes more integrated in to the CPU. Or maybe I should say the CPU gets integrated into the GPU. A few years down the road and the CPU will start to look like a little logic block stuck in the corner of the SoC. More importantly Apple appears to be at the forefront of driving technology in this direction.
Comments
I don't care about the "developer world."
Where do you think software comes from, Santas sac maybe?
What's happening in the consumer world?
Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers. However if you where to stop whining for a bit you could spend some time reviewing software that actually uses OpenCL. Of course much of this software is for professionals, so a Mc Donalds employee isn't likely to use these suites.
Not an awful lot, judging by Marvin's post. Just Apple's video and photo apps and a couple of others. Photoshop doesn't use it. Neither does Premiere, Handbrake or any other power-hungry consumer app. So far, it's been a big "Openwhat?" for consumers, including power users.
Well did you really expect technology this powerful and advanced to be implemented in consumer grade software this early? Seriously, the people that are leveraging OpenCL are the ones that can gain a strong competitive advantage from it's use.
OpenCL was only put into action 3 years ago, which isn't a long time when you have to get a standard approved, a stable specification and production-ready drivers along with hardware support.
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
Where do you think software comes from, Santas sac maybe?
Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers. However if you where to stop whining for a bit you could spend some time reviewing software that actually uses OpenCL. Of course much of this software is for professionals, so a Mc Donalds employee isn't likely to use these suites.
Well did you really expect technology this powerful and advanced to be implemented in consumer grade software this early? Seriously, the people that are leveraging OpenCL are the ones that can gain a strong competitive advantage from it's use.
Geez. What a nasty attitude. If I had a dollar for every piece of software that never made it off developers' hard drives, I could retire right now. Real Soon Now and vaporware are ridiculously common. Just listen to yourself. I wrote in my first post that OpenCL is still obscure three years after it was announced and most people don't know any software using it. You went on the warpath as if I'd killed your firstborn, despite later admitting "Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers."
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
An OS is quite different from a programming language. Its rate of adoption also tends to be slower. The appeal of OpenCL is that it's royalty free. Other than that go read wiki or something. The comparison to Leopard is a poor one. Leopard is an OS version, not a programming language.
Three years is an eternity in the software field.
A large number of video games take 3 years to go from concept to market even using established game engines. EA and Activision only manage yearly releases because they have about 500 people working on them at any given time.
Incremental OS releases are different because they don't have to change a lot of code to make a noticeable change. An incremental OS release is like a DLC for a game.
vaporware
Vaporware is something that is announced and never released. OpenCL is very much in the open and in use. It's just not widely used - same as Thunderbolt.
CPUs and GPUs are merging and OpenCL gives you architecture independence to be able to run code to fully utilise the hardware you have. In fields of work where the highest levels of computation are required, OpenCL gives massive speedups.
Three years is an eternity in the software field. Nobody would want to install Leopard on a new system, and that's less than three years old. The only exception is Windows, where people clung desperately to an aging XP during the Vista fiasco.
Not really. It took almost two years from the time that the first iPhone beta was released until there where a good quantity of no trivial apps available. For those apps to stabilize it took even longer.
Again you fail to see this from the perspective of the developer which in the case of OpenCL is all that matters. In many cases developers simply aren't going to go out of their way to tell you which libraries they use in their software. For the user it simply doesn't matter. OpenCL is just one of many libs and headers that get folded into an app. For example a developer could make extensive use of BOOST and not tell you.
Geez. What a nasty attitude. If I had a dollar for every piece of software that never made it off developers' hard drives, I could retire right now.
That is completely true (assuming the software is any good). From the standpoint of a user does it really matter? Another point of view is all the custom software that never leaves the place of development because it is considered strategic to a business. Either way you may never know which libraries are in use.
Real Soon Now and vaporware are ridiculously common.
Again you simply don't know what you are taking about. OpenCL is widely used, the problem is you have to pull your head out of the sand and look around a bit. You say it is hardly used in the Apple whorl yet the facts are very different. For example grab otool and start looking at the apps and libraries that make installed software on your machine. Run it against CoreImage and you get something like:
XXXXXXXXXXXX$ otool -L CoreImage
CoreImage:
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/QuartzCore.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreImage.framework/Versions/A/CoreImage (compatibility version 1.0.1, current version 1.0.1)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreVideo.framework/Versions/A/CoreVideo (compatibility version 1.2.0, current version 1.7.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenCL.framework/Versions/A/OpenCL (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/OpenGL (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/IOSurface.framework/Versions/A/IOSurface (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGLImage.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Accelerate (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 4.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation (compatibility version 300.0.0, current version 833.1.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ApplicationServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 41.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libcrypto.0.9.8.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.8, current version 0.9.8)
\t/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FaceCoreLight.framework/Versions/A/FaceCoreLight (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.4.2)
\t/usr/lib/libstdc++.6.dylib (compatibility version 7.0.0, current version 52.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 159.0.0)
\t/usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 228.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/CoreServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 53.0.0)
\t/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation (compatibility version 150.0.0, current version 633.0.0)
Note the linkage to OpenCL above. Now ask yourself what apps use CoreImage. So you see the reality is that almost every app uses OpenCL to the extent that CoreImage does. This is OpenCL in CoreImage, where else it might be used is up to the person looking.
Just listen to yourself. I wrote in my first post that OpenCL is still obscure three years after it was announced and most people don't know any software using it.
i've also told you repeatedly that you are wrong and you have no idea what you are talking about. OpenCL has been tremendously successful and is in many ways eclipsing CUDA as the primary way to leverage GPU's for compute tasks. OpenCL has been so successful that CUDA now looks like legacy software.
You went on the warpath as if I'd killed your firstborn, despite later admitting "Frankly there is little pay off for most consumers."
How is that contradictory, I've gone after your bogus claims because they are totally misleading. The fact is many consumer apps will never see a huge benefit from OpenCL, simply because they don't deal with data in a way that can every be leveraged by the facility. On the flip side Apple does use OpenCL in their libraries, so by default many programs do make use of OpenCL even if the core of the program does not.
The bigger problems I see it is why are you hung up on OpenCL? Seriously Apple supplies many libraries that get very modest use but are used by some apps. Even more importantly do you expect Apple and the various software vendors to always spell out what features they are using. Especially in the case of OpenCL which has fall back mechanisms so that code will execute even if the OpenCL compatible card isn't there. The whole facility is designed to be transparent to the user.
A lesser problem might be the fact that the term GPGPU computing is misleading. What is currently executing on the GPU is not really general purpose code. It certainly isn't normal GPU code either. GPU's display the best advantage on data parallel code, outside of image processing there isn't a lot of consumer apps that are structured such that the GPU makes a difference executing core code. So you see OpenCL used in places where developers can use the strength of the GPU to their advantage.
So am I on a warpath, not really I just get extremely angry when people knock OpenCL without knowing. OpenCL is so important that I don't even recommend computers without OpenCL support unless another feature is of overriding concern. You may call that overboard which is your right to do so, but I believe this board needs to be balanced and reflect reality. That reality is that Apple does use OpenCL and the standard has very wide industry support. I'd even go so far as to call it surprisingly successful.
A large number of video games take 3 years to go from concept to market even using established game engines. EA and Activision only manage yearly releases because they have about 500 people working on them at any given time.
Outside of games look at what is or has happened in the internet browser wars. Things like Safari evolve over many years. They will continue to evolve and hopefully be debugged, for the as long as they are relevant. 3 years is really nothing.
Incremental OS releases are different because they don't have to change a lot of code to make a noticeable change. An incremental OS release is like a DLC for a game.
More importantly they don't want to change a lot of code. Keeping an OS stable and compatible is a big deal. Apps can be refactored on a daily basis if the developer is up to it, you can not do that with an OS.
Vaporware is something that is announced and never released. OpenCL is very much in the open and in use. It's just not widely used - same as Thunderbolt.
Well it is used in CoreImage and that is very widely used. I understand the point outside of that but I think people are extremely confused when it comes to OpenCL, it really isn't the technology to throw at a note taking app.
Now compare the noise we hear on these forums about OpenCL vs vecLib or Acclerate. Those are two of many, of the more obscure libs used by Mac OS/X.
CPUs and GPUs are merging and OpenCL gives you architecture independence to be able to run code to fully utilise the hardware you have. In fields of work where the highest levels of computation are required, OpenCL gives massive speedups.
Many are missing this point too. Right now GPU & CPU integration is about at the point where the floating point (FP) processor was first moved on chip. Some time after that Apple began to find that the FP processor was now faster than the older methods using fixed point math. The whole CPU has improved over the years but everybody now a days takes the FP unit for granted. Now we are in a similar state with the GPU, its value is only going to increase as it becomes more integrated in to the CPU. Or maybe I should say the CPU gets integrated into the GPU. A few years down the road and the CPU will start to look like a little logic block stuck in the corner of the SoC. More importantly Apple appears to be at the forefront of driving technology in this direction.