Industry group to evaluate Apple's OpenCL as standard

The PC and mobile-computing industries are getting together to propose a standard for computing on graphics processors, and they are going to start their evaluation with Apple's OpenCL technology.

The Khronos Group, an industry consortium that already administers well-known standards like OpenGL, announced the creation of a Compute Working Group on Monday to develop an industry standard for allowing software developers to tap into the performance offered by graphics processors, or GPUs.

Many familiar names dot the list of founding members, including chip companies such as AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, mobile industry representatives such as ARM, Motorola, Samsung, and TI, and Apple.

GPUs are perhaps best-known for rendering realistic mayhem in the never-ending sequence of PC shooter games, but they are taking on new roles. Newer operating systems like Vista are placing more graphical demands on the PC, and programmers in the scientific community are also interested in using the power of GPUs to process certain types of applications.

GPUs are very good at taking specific tasks, breaking them down into pieces, and solving them at an extremely high rate of speed using multiple processor cores. But they aren't good at handling the random assortment of software that we all have on our PCs or Macs, which in turn hasn't been programmed to take advantage of multiple processor cores, for the most part.

To that end, companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have all been working on ways to make it easier for software developers outside of the scientific computing industry to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the GPU.

In typical fashion, however, they all came up with different implementations. Nvidia has CUDA, AMD has Stream Computing, and Intel has its Larrabee project, which actually hasn't been released.

When Apple unveiled Mac OS X Snow Leopard last week during its Worldwide Developers Conference, the company noted that the operating system would feature a technology called OpenCL to make it easier for software developers to access graphics processors. The Khronos Group will evaluate OpenCL as a proposed standard, but there's no guarantee that all companies will eventually head down that path.

That's because there's a notable company missing from the founding members of this group: Microsoft. If Microsoft chooses to go down a different path with the next implementations of Windows and Windows Mobile, it will be hard for the chip companies to resist following suit.

[ballmerisanape]

I think the "chip companies" have learned some valuable lessons about Microsoft. I seriously doubt that they will wait for Microsoft to release it's next OS. Vista's utilization of hardware is very sloppy as it is, and has ridiculous hardware requirements for the little eye candy that it currently has. If were are going to compare Apple's current OS to Vista.. 10.5 is arguably much more "flash" and works perfectly on very old hardware.. even the old G4.

[supoman]

I would hope that the vendors would not let M$ throw a monkey wrench into the advancement of technology. They should take the opportunity to push alternative OSes and Virtualization.

[Seaspray0]

I would prefer that microsoft participated. I would also want whatever standard they decide on to be available to all and not proprietary.

[Dalkorian]

You do understand that both those sentences contradict one another, don't you? The best thing to have happen is for M$ to sit this one out and allow the other companies to work our interoperability amongst themselves. Once M$ gets interested enough to become involved, we'll see another OOXML fiasco attempt to poison the market.

[tech_crazy]

What the hell is "rate of speed"?. In pure physics terms it would mean "acceleration". This mis-created term seems to be so common - "The vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed".

[jeverettk]

I'm guessing that's the foremost dictionary definition of rate being used: a reckoned or estimated value i.e how fast? And no, in pure physics, acceleration refers to the rate in change not in speed, but in VELOCITY, which is a value with a vector as is acceleration.

[samkass]

Microsoft rarely participates in standards in order to facilitate interoperability-- as the market leader, interoperability serves counter to their revenue model and the interest of their shareholders. Considering that OpenGL has continued to be very successful despite Microsoft going their own way, I doubt Khronos will lose much sleep over Microsoft sitting out OpenCL.

[CatoTheCensor]

<..That's because there's a notable company missing from the founding members of this group: Microsoft. If Microsoft chooses to go down a different path with the next implementations of Windows and Windows Mobile, it will be hard for the chip companies to resist following suit...>

Well, this post just shows a complete lack of the author's understanding of 3D mobile graphics and Microsoft. Microsoft's own mobile 3D grahics offering is Direct3D Mobile. Microsoft has deliberately ignored OpenGL/ES, and will ignore OpenCL. Not because of any sinister desire to do so on Microsoft's part, but because Windows Mobile has exactly one Lead Developer and one SDE devoted to a mobile 3D API, and the lead just does code reviews.

Companies are not using D3DM because they can get a much higher return on investment with OpenGL/ES and the multiple platforms it supports. D3DM is Windows Mobile only. The big game companies use it for a few titles, but few others do or will.

Microsoft won't do squat with OpenCL, and Khronos won't care a bit.

[kelmon]

The eventual standard doesn't have to be OpenCL, but I'd much prefer a solution from Apple than I would one from the individual graphic chip manufacturers, if only for the fact that their solution will likely give an advantage to their own products. In this respect I'd be interested to see what Microsoft would propose, or anyone else that is independent of the hardware itself.