Is or Isn't OpenCL being utilized?

[INeedSomeAdvice]

I've been readin and reading about OpenCL and I gather a slight understanding of what it is and does, but my question, is it being utilized yet? Does ATI drivers come with OpenCL support, or does it rely on game and program developers for the software support? The hd 5*** series hardware supports it? Could anyone shine some light on this.


This must be a touchy subject, but I found a great video talking about it.

http://blogs.amd.com/developer/2009/09/15/amd-developer-inside-track-episode-2-opencl-introduction/

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

I guess i should have made this a discussion, and not a question.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

How is it a touchy subject?

AMD launched public drivers supporting the SDK at the end of last year (earlier for Linux) and and then incorporated the whole package this year, as did nV (shortly after GTX4xx launch).

Not much to discuss, and more than enough info out there for you to research, and more recent than the article you posted which was written before the HD5xxx series' launch.

 

[wh3resmycar]

let me see... since there's no publisher/developer announcement of any up and coming game that'll be using openCL, expect it to arrive 5 years from now.

our only hope is john carmack, but any news of openCL on Rage is nil.

anyway check this link out:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/6182010interview_3.html#sect0

interesting read

 

[gamerk316]

OpenCL is basically a way to make GPU shader cores programable. Nothing more and nothing less. This allows the CAPABILITY to offload massivly parrarlel operations to the GPU (Physics, for instance), but only if someone writes the routine using the OpenCL language.

And of course theres the significant downside that by using OpenCL, you eat GPU resources. And lets face it, unless you have something that REALLY bottlenecks the CPU that is also parralel in nature, it really doesn't make sense to steal power that can be used for Rendering instead.

 

[INeedSomeAdvice]

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