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Adding Thunderbolt to the MacPro is such a big problem…
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[Erik Lindahl] “My previous reply is being held for a possible “profanity word” (it’s not but I get why it got stopped). Never the less… “
Makes me laugh.
I can’t seem to stop myself from using the term (spec) combined with the suffix (ialist) – which triggers the same filter since buried in that word is the trade name for a common Erec – tile Dis – function medication.
Probably happens to me twice a month.
This darn internet thing sure can be persnickety.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Erik Lindahl] “OpenCL (this did get a boost in 10.7.4 so maybe there is hope)”
As far as I know, OpenCL 1.1 support is there today in Lion. Given that the OpenCL 1.2 spec was only announced last November, I’d expect to see it in Mountain Lion since that is right around the corner.
[Erik Lindahl] “not sure the “state” of how CoreMedia is in OSX 10.8 but in 10.7 QuickTime and CoreMedia is half-developed it seems. “
Well QuickTime is long deprecated at this point. AVFoundation is all there is moving forward. CoreMedia sits beneath AVFoundation. Where do you see it coming up short?
[Erik Lindahl] “All these fundamental technologies accelerate more and more pro apps. And even if the GPU is the only thing lacking that’s huge. And, it’s not just lacking, it’s around 1/8th of the performance it *should* be. And the fact Apple doesn’t offer the choice of AMD or nVidia graphics render CUDA-apps useless as well. “
I agree Apple’s GPU offerings are weak, though I think CUDA’s importance is going to fade pretty quickly now that OpenCL has matured as quickly as it has. CUDA was the only GPGPU game in town for a while, but OpenCL is the clear path forward for GPGPU. Why stick with CUDA when OpenCL code is so much more portable?
[Erik Lindahl] “I don’t see how and iMac or a Mac Mini is in any way better than for example the ASUS-board for general to high-end media creation and consumption.”
I never intimated the iMac was better, and I never even mentioned the Mac mini (which unlike the iMac actually is made of laptop bits). I said the iMac, excluding its underpowered GPU, offers roughly equivalent I/O options (and it does). That ASUS and its Z77-based peers can be entry-level workstations, but you really have to max them out to call them that. My real point is that the iMac and any of these gamer-spec rigs is not even remotely in the same class as the Xeon stuff. There is quite a wide gulf between the Z77 and an i7 and a dual E5 Xeon system in every respect.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “I think CUDA’s importance is going to fade pretty quickly now that OpenCL has matured as quickly as it has. CUDA was the only GPGPU game in town for a while, but OpenCL is the clear path forward for GPGPU. Why stick with CUDA when OpenCL code is so much more portable?”
I’m not sure that OpenCL is the clear path forward for GPGPU over CUDA any more than OpenGL was the clear path forward for graphics over DirectX.
OpenCL is not GPGPU per se; it’s heterogeneous parallel computing, allowing OpenCL kernels to execute on any OpenCL device (CPU, GPU, some other DSP). That has the big advantage of portability, but that potentially comes at the cost of performance (at least for now).
If NVIDIA can continue to drive CUDA performance (both in terms of hardware and compiler optimizations), and if they provide a superior development experience (with libraries like OptiX that run on CUDA), we may continue seeing new CUDA applications.
Developers will need a reason to switch existing applications away from CUDA and over to OpenCL. This incentive may go away in our niche if Apple dumps AMD graphics and goes steady with NVIDIA for a while.
I think it may be some time yet before we see a clear winner here.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I’m not sure that OpenCL is the clear path forward for GPGPU over CUDA any more than OpenGL was the clear path forward for graphics over DirectX.”
A key difference in this case is Microsoft wasn’t the principal sponsor of OpenGL the way NVIDIA is the principal sponsor of OpenCL. Then again, NVIDIA can abuse their position to favor CUDA… But AMD and Intel should be able to keep them honest.
[Walter Soyka] “Developers will need a reason to switch existing applications away from CUDA and over to OpenCL. This incentive may go away in our niche if Apple dumps AMD graphics and goes steady with NVIDIA for a while.”
Adobe has already adopted OpenCL, and are using it in more apps than CUDA already in CS6. Photoshop CS6 uses OpenCL, but not CUDA. Premiere Pro CS6 uses both, though their CUDA implementation does enable four more filters for GPU MPE than their OpenCL implementation at this point.
[Walter Soyka] “I think it may be some time yet before we see a clear winner here.”
I don’t think CUDA will disappear, but I do think that its grip on GPU-accelerated software is will be loosened considerably over the next couple years. CUDA isn’t going away, but it also isn’t going to be the deal-breaker it had been the past couple years.
Best,
Andy -
On iPhone so quouting is a bit scetchy but here goes:
I could be OpenCL in generall has been “bad”. I heard from two-three CUDA-accelerated solutions at IBC 2010 wondering why they don’t support OpenCL and at the time (and still) OpenCL is way behind in performance especially on OSX. Apple COULD HAVE driven this but they haven’t really bothered (10.7.4 gives some hope).
Where CoreMedia or AVFoundation falls short is with a lot of given solutions that work with QuickTime (and have for years) but Apple hasn’t implemented in their new media platform. For exmple GlueTools I think will be completely broken in 10.8 since the hooks just aren’t there for that kind of a solution. It also seems the “smart rendering” that’s been in QuickTime since the 90’s is gone. Is there even a I/O function like QuickTime has?
It seems somewhat so so made quite work-in-progress.
We can only hope OpenCL takes ground. Seing CUDA has a huge backing by nVidia its likely their edge will remain. OpenCL is still sub-par in all “real” applications today. The aside the choice of GPU’s are weak as every single Mac has a laptop GPU in them which IMO is madness. It makes sense to offer those types of systems but a “normal” core i7 system for sure has its place.
I fully agree the ASUS board isnt a MacPro replacement. But it could be a solid complement. Its replace a lot of iMac where you want a speedy GPU and you want the choice of displays. And you don’t loose thunderbolt. This is very much of interest for image-professionals.
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[Andrew Richards] “A key difference in this case is Microsoft wasn’t the principal sponsor of OpenGL the way NVIDIA is the principal sponsor of OpenCL. Then again, NVIDIA can abuse their position to favor CUDA… But AMD and Intel should be able to keep them honest.”
I drew the comparison for a closed standard versus an open one, but your points on the politics are well-taken.
[Andrew Richards] “Adobe has already adopted OpenCL, and are using it in more apps than CUDA already in CS6. Photoshop CS6 uses OpenCL, but not CUDA. Premiere Pro CS6 uses both, though their CUDA implementation does enable four more filters for GPU MPE than their OpenCL implementation at this point.”
After Effects CS6’s new ray tracer is built on OptiX, and runs only on the CPU or a CUDA GPU.
[Andrew Richards] “I don’t think CUDA will disappear, but I do think that its grip on GPU-accelerated software is will be loosened considerably over the next couple years. CUDA isn’t going away, but it also isn’t going to be the deal-breaker it had been the past couple years.”
Agreed!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Agree with this.
But at the end of the day Apple should offer OPTIONS. They don’t need to offer the full range of nVidias say 10-15 current GPU’S. But they should have at least 1 current AMD and nVidia GPU, preferably 1 “general purpose” and 1 “performance” (the integrated Intel chips probably cover the general purpose these days).
This is I think thought to technical / complex for Apple. They want a clever, perversely fair “locked” system. This doesn’t have to be bad but since Apple more and more is losing diversify in its hardware – for the more “power user” – its becoming it more and more.
The odd thing is they tend to have heaps of CPU / Memory options so I don’t get why they can’t do the same for GPU.
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[Erik Lindahl] “On iPhone so quouting is a bit scetchy but here goes:”
It used to work in iOS 4, but it broke in 5. Curses!
[Erik Lindahl] “Where CoreMedia or AVFoundation falls short is with a lot of given solutions that work with QuickTime (and have for years) but Apple hasn’t implemented in their new media platform. For exmple GlueTools I think will be completely broken in 10.8 since the hooks just aren’t there for that kind of a solution.”
Anything that relies on the old QT APIs is going to stop working whenever they ultimately drop support for them. Same goes for Carbon. I’m not sure what Glue Tools is calling on, so I can’t really say if they could be duplicating their functionality with AVFoundation.
[Erik Lindahl] “It also seems the “smart rendering” that’s been in QuickTime since the 90’s is gone.”
I’m not sure if “smart rendering” is a QuickTime API dependency thing or an app implementation thing. From what I understand about AVFoundation, there is more flexibility in terms of assembling and ordering movie atoms, not less.
[Erik Lindahl] “Is there even a I/O function like QuickTime has?”
CoreMediaIO. It is how FCPX does broadcast monitoring and was new in Lion, hence the Lion requirement for FCPX broadcast monitoring and the associated device drivers from AJA, BMD, etc.
[Erik Lindahl] “It seems somewhat so so made quite work-in-progress.”
Isn’t everything? I’ll say this, Apple’s developer documentation on it is pathetic.
[Erik Lindahl] “Its replace a lot of iMac where you want a speedy GPU and you want the choice of displays. And you don’t loose thunderbolt. This is very much of interest for image-professionals.”
I’d buy one! I wish Apple put more effort into OS X, it really does show who’s boss in Cupertino these days. Their claims of being the “most advanced desktop OS on the world” haven’t been defensible since Snow Leopard was new. Right now it looks like a house mid-renovation.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “It used to work in iOS 4, but it broke in 5. Curses!”
It still works, you just have to hold the “Quote” button until you get the JavaScript popup.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It still works, you just have to hold the “Quote” button until you get the JavaScript popup.”
Nice.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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