OpenCL: What’s it all about?
Recently, a top technologist at Apple let it slip that Snow Leopard could ship as early as the first quarter of next year, well ahead of the company’s earlier projections.
That OS X 10.6—a significantly slimmer and faster version of the current OS—could be arriving ahead schedule has been attributed in large part to the fact that the Open Computer Language (OpenCL, a name trademarked by Apple) standard will be published and ratified months ahead of schedule.
But what is OpenCL?
According to Apple’s Snow Leopard placeholder page, “OpenCL (Open Computing Language) makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU).”
See also OpenCL wiki
OK, it’s a programming language to harness the power of discreet graphics processing units—i.e. the powerful nVidia and ATI video cards inside Apple’s Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and iMac computers.
But, OpenCL didn’t just fall from the sky—it’s a technology that’s been brewing for quite some time.
According to CPGPU.rog, “OpenCL is the latest manifestation of a processing technique that’s been around for a while known as General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units. GPGPU helps to offload a personal computer’s computationally intensive processes to its graphics chip”.”
OK, that’s all promisingly vague, but the real import of OpenCL isn’t yet known because Apple isn’t talking. However, one example listed on the GPGPU homepage is about boosting supercomputing power.
Still, is this just another brilliant Apple technology that will die a withering death because it lacks industry support?
According to Khronos OpenCL landing page, “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.”
Hmmm, that reads like a who’s who of the computer business and, when it comes to standards, the more industry stalwarts and trendsetters behind a new technology the better.
Another unifying aspect of OpenCL is the fact that it’s platform agnostic, which is important given that there are competing GPU technologies being promoted by AMD (ATI), Intel and nVidia. Though the underlying hardware from each vendor will be different and potentially incompatible, the way software engineers create applications to leverage all that power will be the same regardless of platform.
As of right now, the specifics of OpenCL aren’t known and won’t be known until the final review period ends in December. Moreover, Apple isn’t likely to discuss the import of OpenCL for the Mac until Macworld San Francisco in early January.
I for one am waiting with bated breath…
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