sajith / hellocl Goto Github PK

Here be some OpenCL experiments.
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These experiments try to answer some questions, such as:

  A. Does this OpenCL thing work on my computer(s) at all?
  B. How about Haskell and OpenCL, does such a thing work?

Regarding A, findings so far, with Beignet [1]:

  - Yup, it does works on a 2014 Macbook Pro (Haswell [2]).
 
  - Nope, it doesn't work on a 2011 Thinkpad T420.  Neither on the GPU
    nor on the CPU (SandyBridge [3]).

Both computers are running Debian testing.  Now, uhh, about the other
OS that runs on Macbooks: I should try that too, one of these days.

Some instructions on setting up OpenCL on GNU/Linux machines are
available at [4] and [5].

Besides Beignet, I also tried the official Intel driver from [6] on
the Thinkpad.  It does not work, neither on the GPU nor on the CPU --
clGetDeviceIDs() returns CL_DEVICE_NOT_FOUND.  I vaguely remember that
stuff working on this machine back in the days, but I may be
misremembering things.

(Confusingly enough, according to the f.d.o wiki, it is Intel China
OTC that works on Beignet.  If it is indeed so, why is there another
"official" driver?  One of the great mysteries, it seems.)

Regarding B, OpenCL with Haskell [7] indeed works on the computer with
Haswell chip.

TODO:
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  - How about hopencl [8]? how is that different from OpenCL of [7]?
  
  - Some benchmarks should be fun.
  
  - Other languages/DSLs that support/extend OpenCL also should be
    fun: Rust, OCaml, C++, ArrayFire, boost::compute, etc.

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  [1] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Beignet/
  [2] http://ark.intel.com/products/83508
  [3] http://ark.intel.com/products/52229
  [4] https://wiki.tiker.net/OpenCLHowTo
  [5] https://mhr3.blogspot.com/2013/06/opencl-on-ubuntu-1304.html
  [6] https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/opencl-drivers
  [7] https://github.com/IFCA/opencl
  [8] https://github.com/bgaster/hopencl