OpenCL support

PowerVR Insider
1

Hello,

 

Is there a possibility of SDK release for OpenCL support on PowerVR in future?

 

Thanks
2

Hello,

 

Yes, we will support OpenCL in the future and we will have an SDK for it. I cannot give you dates as this will depend on the time frame it will be supported in our devices.

 

Best regards.

 

Carlos.

 
3

Will this require a HW/FW upgrade or just an API/driver upgrade.
Thanks

4

That depends on which hardware and whether platform/OS providers want to expose this functionality. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait and see…

5

thank you for your reply.

Gordon wrote:
That depends on which hardware and whether platform/OS providers want to expose this functionality. I'm afraid you'll just have to wait and see...
this implies that existing and fielded POWERVR IP cores can support the existing OpenCL drivers. That is good news if I interpreted correctly.

I have a OMAP3530 based prototype/development board and have complete control of the OS.


Can the POWERVR IP core on this chip (OMAP3530) work with the current drivers/libs?

Is there any possibility of getting access to the current alpha drivers/libs?

I work for a non-profit federally funded research agency and would be interested in being an alpha tester/developer if possible.
6
d1mbu1b wrote:

thank you for your reply.



You're welcome.



TBH I'm not really telling you anything that isn't available publicly anyway - if you look at the POWERVR SGX fact sheet that's available from this website you can see that under the API support section on the second page that the "OpenCL Embedded Profile" is mentioned for all SGX variants.



d1mbu1b wrote:

Can the POWERVR IP core on this chip (OMAP3530) work with the current drivers/libs?

Is there any possibility of getting access to the current alpha drivers/libs?I work for a non-profit federally funded research agency and would be interested in being an alpha tester/developer if possible.



We don't provide drivers directly so you would need to get any drivers from TI, in the case of your board, and it will be up to TI if they decide to provide drivers if/when they have any.







7

thanks again, I thought that might me the answer. Appreciate the insight and help.

8

please, also consider usage of OpenCL in your PVRTexLib/Tool software!

9

Still no support to develop in OpenCl with your SDK???

10

any status?

11

Is it posible apple bought the rights to the technology for sole use in iphone?


 
12
Gordon wrote:
if you look at the POWERVR SGX fact sheet that's available from this website you can see that under the API support section on the second page that the "OpenCL Embedded Profile" is mentioned for all SGX variants.
I have seen that document, but when I try to ask to OpenCL about PowerVR they said that "there's no OpenCL implementation for PowerVRs. So you probably have to wait for Imagination Technologies to develop one"
Here is the posts.

So who is right?

thanks

13

There is currently no implementation of OpenCL available for 3rd party developers, such as yourself, on POWERVR hardware and certainly not one for the platform you mention in that thread. Such implementations may be available in the future for POWERVR platforms, but I can’t give you news on which ones or when/if/how such will be made available.

14
Gordon wrote:
There is currently no implementation of OpenCL available for 3rd party developers, such as yourself, on POWERVR hardware and certainly not one for the platform you mention in that thread. Such implementations may be available in the future for POWERVR platforms, but I can't give you news on which ones or when/if/how such will be made available.
You say that is impossible for me (and those like me) to exploit the power of GP-GPU on PowerVR (not mind to omap3530 implementation)?
If I buy a product that integrate Your technology, like PowerVR SGX, and in almost every document I read about it is wrote about the possibility of exploit GP-GPU, and "available API: OpenCL 1.0 embedded profile", I must think that I can do all these things. Otherwise I must think is misleading advertising, isn't it?

So if there is no OpenCL implementation available for 3rd party developers, do exist an OpenCL implementation available for somebody? And for who?

thanks
15

I’ll use an example: the SGX530 core design that’s in an OMAP 3530 board is an example of one of our products. This was licenced to TI and is a design with the capability of supporting the OpenCL Embedded profile. However, it requires the correct software i.e. drivers to expose this functionality, just like drivers are required for OpenGL ES, DirectX etc. Once we have licenced a core like this we work with the customer (in this case TI) to support them in exposing the functionality that they wish to have available in their product. So if a customer wants to expose OpenCL then this work happens, but it requires time and the desire of the customer. This means that developers don’t always have full access to every feature that our cores are capable of because the driver support is still being added or the customer doesn’t wish to expose that feature.





In summary: we advertise an ability of our core design and our customers get a core design that can do this if they choose to enable it. The developer gets a core with access to the features that our customer has exposed. So developers don’t always have access to every feature of our core.





Licence deals involve a certain amount of confidentiality so I can’t talk about future products or support from our customers so I can’t tell you when or if OpenCL will be enabled on specific platforms on this forum at this time.





Note: none of this is unique to Imagination, other IP companies and hardware producers work in similar ways.

16
Gordon wrote:
In summary: we advertise an ability of our core design and our customers get a core design that can do this if they choose to enable it. The developer gets a core with access to the features that our customer has exposed. So developers don't always have access to every feature of our core.



Licence deals involve a certain amount of confidentiality so I can't talk about future products or support from our customers so I can't tell you when or if OpenCL will be enabled on specific platforms on this forum at this time.



Note: none of this is unique to Imagination, other IP companies and hardware producers work in similar ways.
ops... Embarrassed
sorry for my previous post... too rough.

Ok, so if TI has released software to make available OpenCL I can make GPGPU on omap, otherwise what can I do?
Do you know if there exist some other libraries to aim GP elaboration speed up?
Or do we need to write our own library? In this case where can I find some tech doc about SGX 530?

we are starting a project where the hot point is signal processing. Are involved many pro audio channels (6~8ch, 24bit, 192KHz), and very long FIR filters (16K~24K-Taps), so we need very high performance in elaboration.

do You think we could face this problem with a bit hope of success?

thanks
17

I believe you also contacted us via email and we’ve answered, but I’ll answer here for the benefit of ther readers.





At the moment, the only way to harness the processing ability of the SGX chip in a deveice is to go through the graphics APIs supported. It is possible to achieve GPGPU-type processing this way, but you have to adapt your algorithms to work with the vertex/fragment shader model of graphics work and this ususally doesn’t lead to the most efficient solutions. I’m not certain that your project would benefit from such an initiative.

18

Is it safe to say that the terms of specific licensing agreements do not allow you to answer several of the unanswered key questions in this thread?

19

No comment :wink:

20

Hi,

is there any information about the OpenCL capabilities of PowerVR devices available (i.e. the parameters one would get with clGetDeviceInfo, e.g. CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE or CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_SIZE ). I guess these parameters also depend on the driver, but I assume that it in many cases it is possible to specify the maximum capabilities of the hardware.

Thanks