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AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

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Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#11

Post by Hov »

siphr wrote: post #9
cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

I agree. Microsoft's childish attitude towards reinventing the wheel and hijacking ownership is adversely affecting progress in technology.

By all accounts Microsoft is irrelevant in todays technology landscape. Hard to see how they adversely affect progress in any meaningful tech sphere

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#13

Post by cageface »

bad_user wrote: post #10
cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard What are you saying? They have been "contributing" to standards since they were founded. Of course, not when they can force their own standard down on people's throats and get away with it, like they did with Direct 3D, which eventually won (on Windows anyway), but if you are talking about HTML5, remember that they tried…

Examples are indeed thin on the ground but they do seem finally to me making a serious effort to produce a standards-compliant browser. Maybe I just want to find something nice say about an old, toothless bully.

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#14

Post by profquail »

moondowner wrote: post #6
cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

True, why not utilize OpenCL but invent another alternative?

OpenCL is equivalent to OpenGL -- runs on Windows, Linux, etc. (even coming to smartphones soon).

C++ AMP is based on the DirectCompute APIs in DirectX 11.

My $.02 -- maybe the target audience for C++ AMP is different than the target audience for OpenCL. Before it was released, I really liked the idea of OpenCL but in practice it doesn't really deliver very well (performance-wise) compared to alternatives like nVidia CUDA, AMD APP (formerly Stream), and DirectCompute.

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#15

Post by scott_s »

I don't know if it's accurate to say this is a competitor to OpenCL. We don't have full details, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was implemented using OpenCL. OpenCL is relatively low-level. It's quite un-friendly for developers to use directly. It's much more reasonable for compilers to generate it, or for libraries to build abstractions on top of it.

My dissertation work did a similar with with OpenMP-like syntax and semantics built on top of the Cell's native API: http://people.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/cellgen/ (And, actually, my compiler generated code for a library that was a thin wrapper on top of the Cell's native API itself - it's so low-level that it was easier to have another layer of abstraction between my generated code and it.)

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#16

Post by loup-vaillant »

cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

> the software industry as a whole would be better off if […]

Ultimately, Microsoft could be better of if they manage to impose their new proprietary wannabe de-facto standard. It doesn't care if it wrecks the whole industry in the process, they care about money.

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#17

Post by stonemetal »

moondowner wrote: post #6
cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

True, why not utilize OpenCL but invent another alternative?

This isn't something that fell out of a tree yesterday. They have been working on this for a while, more than likely since before OpenCL looked like it was going to take off. In fact they already ship a GPU compute API as part of DirectX(compute shaders). My guess is they are just pulling that out of DirectX to make a stand alone project.

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#18

Post by cageface »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #16
cageface wrote: post #3

Just when I thought Microsoft had finally seen the virtue of contributing to an existing standard instead of being different just for the sake of being different. Surely the software industry as a whole would be better off if Microsoft instead threw its weight into fixing whatever is wrong with OpenCL.

> the software industry as a whole would be better off if […] Ultimately, Microsoft could be better of if they manage to impose their new proprietary wannabe de-facto standard. It doesn't care if it wrecks the whole industry in the process, they care about money.

Sure, that's been their M.O. since the beginning. But I thought I saw inklings of understanding there that maybe they could do just as well being the best implementor of a shared standard, growing the industry for everybody in the process. Too bad they still seem to see everything as a zero-sum game.

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#19

Post by andrewcooke »

profquail wrote: post #14
moondowner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, why not utilize OpenCL but invent another alternative?

OpenCL is equivalent to OpenGL -- runs on Windows, Linux, etc. (even coming to smartphones soon). C++ AMP is based on the DirectCompute APIs in DirectX 11. My $.02 -- maybe the target audience for C++ AMP is different than the target audience for OpenCL. Before it was released, I really liked the idea of OpenCL but in practice it doesn't really deliver very well (performance-wise) compared to alternatives like nVidia…

what? i've seen no performance difference between CUDA and OpenCL (targeting NVidia hardware). they are so low level and so similar that it's hard to see how there can be differences. what are you referring to?

Re: AFDS11: Microsoft Announces C++ AMP, Competitor to OpenCL

#20

Post by phsr »

moondowner wrote: post #7
regularfry wrote: post #5

"another option with the full weight of Microsoft behind it" Well, thank goodness for that. There was me thinking it might be a temporary project to grab some developer mindshare to be dumped in a couple of years.

Time will show if this statement will be true. They've put weight on Silverlight as well and now they're ditching it for HTML5.

Not entirely true. They are ditching it as a java write-once, run-everywhere for the web platform. Windows Phone 7 relies heavily on it/WPF. And in a corporate environment where everyone will be running IEx, it makes sense to develop applications in it.
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