cuda and open cl are not exclusive of heterogenous computing
thing is cuda is propeitary and open cl and can work for everyone so we should go with that
open cl can be used on apus, gpus, and compute cards
Whatever. I just want to point out that it doesn't matter if something gives X extra performance, if they put a disproportionate burden in the development process of the software house, and this is currently the crux of the issue for GPGPU: Too much work for the benefits you get.
Software support and development tools aim to cut this "too much work" to something more palatable to the software companies, but they must be developed by the hardware companies themselves. And this is where things get dirty for AMD. They don't have the experience and the financial muscle to develop the tools.
The same argument can be made about Intel's graphics drivers & Quick Sync support but it's never mentioned in the same breath because assumedly no one games on Intel's iGPU, even though Steam says otherwise, or that Quick Sync is the magic elixir that's better than OpenCL for hardware accelerated video tasks.
Intel is improving, and they have the material conditions to improve faster than AMD or Nvidia in this arena. Financial muscle does matter here. Just look at how Intel iGPU was talked in 2010 and look at how people talk about it now. Even the AMD resellers are having a hard time tapdancing around the issue.
I don't follow the professional graphics arena much but from what I know CUDA & Nvidia's ecosystem based on it is excellent, however AMD was less than forthcoming with its professional GPU offerings in the recent past but they may have turned over a new leaf with their latest Hawaii based products, only time will tell whether they can get critical mass behind them once again & with the same innovations they're pushing in the general computing space.
Why do you think they turned a page here? Because they said so? Because Semiaccurate said so? What really changed with Hawaii?
When you buy a professional card, it's not the hardware you are buying, but the hardware, the drivers, access to the ecosystem and, much more important, the software support. Hawaii just changes one link in the chain, but we have the others that are very weak: It's the same crappy driver, it's the same software support team that leaves bugs open without answer, it's the same crappy driver team that leaves bugs open for MONTHS, it's the smaller app ecosystem.
And don't even start talking about OpenCL, because Nvidia cards ALSO support OpenCL, and they did that before AMD. Don't forget the drivers, because Nvidia implementation of OpenCL is less buggy than AMD.
This is a relatively small market, with a lot less players to interact with and with a lot less demand of OPEX than, let's say, HSA and HUMA in the consumer and enterprise market. If they can't get something that small right, what are the chances of AMD changing the entire programming paradigm of the entire x86 market?
Facebook
Twitter