Re: [boost] [compute] GPGPU Library - Request For Feedback

Subject: Re: [boost] [compute] GPGPU Library - Request For Feedback
From: Kyle Lutz (kyle.r.lutz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-03-02 21:34:27

Looks interesting. One question: what support does the library provide to
>
> orchestrate parallelism, i.e. doing useful work while the GPGPU is executing
> a kernel? Do you have something like:
>
> int main()
> {
>     // create data array on host
>     int host_data[] = { 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 };
>
>     // create vector on device
>     boost::compute::vector<int> device_vector(5);
>
>     // copy from host to device
>     future<void> f = boost::compute::copy_async(host_data,
>                          host_data + 5,
>                          device_vector.begin());
>
>     // do other stuff
>
>     f.get();   // wait for transfer to be done
>
>     return 0;
> }
>
> ?
>
> All libraries I have seen so far assume that the CPU has to idle while
> waiting for the GPU, is yours different?

Yes. The library allows for asynchronous computation and the API is
almost exactly the same as your proposed example.

See this example:
http://kylelutz.github.com/compute/boost_compute/advanced_topics.html#boost_compute.advanced_topics.asynchronous_operations

Cheers,
Kyle