[Matplotlib-devel] [matplotlib-devel] Make matplotlib running on GPU/CUDA

Thu Sep 14 11:03:54 EDT 2017

As as matter of fact, I’m currently writing a (open access) book about Python, OpenGL and scientific visualization that explains pretty much everything. I hope to be able to release by the end of the year.

Concerning Vispy, the code might be a bit hard to handle at first but the project is still alive with new contributors. 
Concerning glumpy, I still maintain it and it is less complex than Vispy but it does not offer the high-level interface of vispy. I usually make the comparison numpy/scipy and glumpy/vispy. But the two projects are independent (even if I transferred a lot of code from glumpy to vispy).

For a starter on OpenGL, you can have a look at glumpy documentation: http://glumpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Nicolas

> On 14 Sep 2017, at 16:47, Benjamin Root <ben.v.root at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The person who has been most responsive to me in the past would be Nicolas Rougier, who developed glumpy. He might also be able to give you a better sense of where to start.
> 
> Ben Root
> 
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Francesco Faccenda <f.faccenda86 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll take a look, thank you.
> 
> So you are suggesting me to start form the VisPy code? Is there someone who I can refer in case I will need some clarification?
> 
> Francesco Faccenda
> 
> 2017-09-14 15:50 GMT+02:00 Benjamin Root <ben.v.root at gmail.com>:
> That was one of the old attempts (but not the oldest). It doesn't seem like it ever intersected with the vispy project, though, so it is likely all that exists.
> 
> I would also look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3YoaeoiIFI
> Luke does a nice job providing an overview of the vispy package. One of the most exciting things that the matplotlib and vispy devs were discussing at scipy 2015 was the possibility of making a matplotlib backend out of some parts from vispy. It was attractive because the vispy folks were actively working on improving their opengl code and packaging to make it work on a wide variety of hardware and setups. They had supposedly even implemented a headless opengl mode, too, which was very important for us.
> 
> Cheers!
> Ben Root
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 9:34 AM, Francesco Faccenda <f.faccenda86 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you, Ben.
> 
> unfortunately I don't have experience developing opengl neither, but I'd like to make an attempt riesuming this subject.
> 
> I am starting from this: https://github.com/ChrisBeaumont/mplgl
> 
> Can anyone confirm this is the last update we have for this project?
> 
> Francesco Faccenda
> 
> 2017-09-13 16:21 GMT+02:00 Benjamin Root <ben.v.root at gmail.com>:
> A bit of background regarding efforts in this area...
> 
> A long time ago, some experiments were done to see if an opengl backend could be made for matplotlib. The results weren't that great, particularly for text rendering, so the effort was dropped. The core developers all agree that an opengl backend would be neat to have, but we all have limited, if any, experience developing opengl. Furthermore, such a backend would likely require a lot of rapid development and trial-n-error. So, we encouraged others to go develop a package or two separately, with the eye for bringing it back into matplotlib when it was ready. Glumpy and a few other projects were born from that prodding.
> 
> VisPy was an attempt to consolidate the development efforts for those projects. The matplotlib devs had very fruitful discussions with some VisPy devs back at SciPy 2015, but the project became non-responsive shortly afterwards.
> 
> Ben Root
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 3:31 AM, Francesco Faccenda <f.faccenda86 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you Chris for your reply.
> 
> I have to admit I already stumbled on VisPy while doing my research on the web. Still, I've got a lot of code already working with matplotlib. Indeed, not only I plot data with it, but i manage a lot of mpl events to provide the users usefool tools, like lines picking, tooltips, lines copy/paste, square selectors for multiple selections, context menu and so on. Moreover, I got matplotlib embedded on wxpython as well. While at the beginning few lines were managed and noone complained, now that big amout of data has to be displayed, the non-GPU core of the library is starting to show its limits.
> 
> Since matplotlib is a reference library for this kind of  applications, I thought it deserved an update in this direction. If anyone is willing to do so, I'm available to discuss possible solutions and also provide any help I can give.
> 
> Best regards,
> Francesco Faccenda
> 
> 2017-09-13 0:46 GMT+02:00 Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov>:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Francesco Faccenda <f.faccenda86 at gmail.com> wrote:
> But there’s a good news, I have a nice GPU available (an NVIDIA Tesla K40c), so I’d like to know if there is a way to make matplotlib run on it, or maybe wrap it on some GPU/CUDA wrapper and make it run smoothly.
> 
> 
> I tihnk you want VisPy:
> 
> https://vispy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
> 
> It's a plotting package with a kinda like  matplotlib API, built on OpenGL.
> 
> Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's been updated in a while -- from teh docs. But the gitHub project is active:
> 
> https://github.com/vispy/vispy
> 
> So maybe it's only the docs that haven't been updated!
> 
> But probably  a much better option than trying to shoehorn GPU rendering into MPL.
> 
> The problem is that while MPL was designed to be "backend" independent -- so it is "easy" to plug in an alternative renderer, the rendering model is not really well suited to GPU rendering -- it would take a lot of refactoring to really be able to take advantage of the graphics card.
> 
> -CHB
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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