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

Subject: Re: [boost] [compute] GPGPU Library - Request For Feedback
From: Hartmut Kaiser (hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-03-03 18:39:02

> > > 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#
> > boos t_compute.advanced_topics.asynchronous_operations
> 
> That's excellent (sorry I have not seen this in the docs before). However
> I think it's not a good idea to create your own futures. This does not
> scale well nor does it compose with std::future or boost::future. Is there
> a way to use whatever futures (or more specifically, threading
> implementation) the user decides to use?

Also, do you have asynchronous versions for all algorithms?

Regards Hartmut
---------------
http://boost-spirit.com
http://stellar.cct.lsu.edu