[Numpy-discussion] GPU Numpy

[Olivier Grisel]

OpenCL is definitely the way to go for a cross platform solution with
both nvidia and AMD having released beta runtimes to their respective
developer networks (free as in beer subscription required for the beta
dowload pages). Final public releases to be expected around 2009 Q3.

OpenCL is an open royalty free standardized API and runtime
specification for heterogeneous  with a mix of CPU and GPU cores. The
nvidia implementation is based on the CUDA runtime and programming
OpenCL is very similar to programming in C for CUDA.

The developer of PyCUDA is also working on PyOpenCL

  http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyopencl/

Both nvidia and AMD use llvm to compile the OpenCL cross-platform
kernel sources into device specific binaries loaded at runtime.

Official OpenCL specs:

 http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf

Wikipedia page:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

nvidia runtime:

  http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_opencl.html

AMD runtime: only working with x86 and x86_64 with SSE3 for now:

  http://developer.amd.com/GPU/ATISTREAMSDKBETAPROGRAM/Pages/default.aspx

Intel and IBM were also a members of the standard comity so we can
reasonably expect runtime for there chips in the future (e.g. larabee
and Cell BE).

-- 
Olivier
http://twitter.com/ogrisel - http://code.oliviergrisel.name