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

Subject: Re: [boost] [compute] GPGPU Library - Request For Feedback
From: Michael Marcin (mike.marcin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-03-02 23:39:43

Kyle Lutz wrote:
> 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
>

Very nice interface, very nice docs.

I'll put some more time into looking at it.