OpenCL on CPU

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

Hi,
Does nVidia’s OpenCL already support CPU? if not, when will it?

thanks
Eyal

2

Why should a GPU-only vendor invest in a CPU OpenCL driver, esp. since there already are drivers from the main CPU vendors (Intel and AMD)? For CUDA, it’s a different story. If CUDA was unable to run on CPUs, it would not be able to compete against OpenCL in this respect, which is why NVIDIA had to make CUDA run on CPUs. On second thought, if NVIDIA already has some PTX to x86 assembler, that would probably just work with OpenCL, too.

3

There are a lot of reasons why it should work on CPU and obviously if CUDA would work on the CPU, OpenCL from nVidia would also.

Therefore the question, remains… :)

When would nVidia release a OpenCL support for CPU?

thanks

eyal

4

If you want a CPU driver for OpenCL, it makes more sense to look to Intel and AMD. AMD has had a driver for some time that works on AMD & Intel CPUs (as well as AMD/ATI GPUs). Intel has also recently released a very preliminary OpenCL driver that only works in Windows.