Re: [Boost-users] Boost.Compute v0.1 Released

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Boost.Compute v0.1 Released
From: Francesco Biscani (bluescarni_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-03-20 09:18:56

Hello Kyle,

On 17 March 2014 00:03, Kyle Lutz <kyle.r.lutz_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I'm proud to announce the initial release (version 0.1) of
> Boost.Compute! It is available on GitHub [1] and instructions for
> using the library can be found in the documentation [2].
>
> Boost.Compute is a GPGPU and parallel-programming library based on
> OpenCL. It provides an STL-like API and implements many common
> containers (e.g. vector<T>, array<T, N>) as well as many common
> algorithms (e.g. sort(), accumulate(), transform()). A full list can
> be found in the header reference [3].
>
> I hope to propose Boost.Compute for review in the next few months but
> for I'm looking for more wide-spread testing and feedback from the
> Boost community (please note the FAQ [4] and design rationale [5]
> where I hope to have answered some common questions).
>
> Thanks,
> Kyle
>
> [1] https://github.com/kylelutz/compute
> [2] http://kylelutz.github.io/compute/
> [3] http://kylelutz.github.io/compute/compute/reference.html
> [4] http://kylelutz.github.io/compute/boost_compute/faq.html
> [5] http://kylelutz.github.io/compute/boost_compute/design.html
> _______________________________________________
> Boost-users mailing list
> Boost-users_at_[hidden]
> http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users
>

I am looking forward to try this out. I have a couple of questions:

- how do the algorithms compare performance-wise with similar CUDA
libraries? I remember trying Boost.Compute in the early days and IIRC there
was quite a performance gap. Would it be possible to add a performance
section to the documentation?

- Are you planning any support for multi-device computations? In my
experience, available memory can be quite a bottleneck on GPUs, and having
support for muti-device computations (i.e., multiple GPUs but also GPUs/CPU
hybrids) would be quite handy.

I am happy to see this kind of work happening in OpenCL and Boost land, and
I really like the STL-like design of the library.

Cheers,

  Francesco.