OpenCL 1.0 Specification Completed and Released

[MacRumors]

The Khronos group announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL 1.0 specification described as the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.




OpenCL provides programmers tools to speed up a wide variety of applications by taking advantage of untapped GPU processors and multi-core processors found in modern computers. Apple originally proposed OpenCL as part of their upcoming Snow Leopard operating system, and their release deadline helped accelerate the adoption of the specification. OpenCL has been developed and ratified by a number of industry companies including Apple, NVIDIA, ARM, Intel, and many others.

“We are excited about the industry-wide support for OpenCL,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Apple developed OpenCL so that any application in Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X, can harness an amazing amount of computing power previously available only to graphics applications.”

For the end user, this should allow developers to more easily take advantage of existing hardware (GPUs, CPUs) to deliver faster software performance.

Apple's Snow Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.6) is due for release in 2009 with recent hints pointing to the 1st quarter.



Article Link: OpenCL 1.0 Specification Completed and Released

[Trip.Tucker]

It's going to be a very interesting year in 2009.

[Harpo]

This is the first time it dawned on me that OpenCL's name evokes Psystar.

[talkingfuture]

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

[Omni Geno]

Originally Posted by Harpo

This is the first time it dawned on me that OpenCL's name evokes Psystar.

As well as "OpeniMac"

[fendol]

How does it evoke Psystar?

If I understood correctly this Kronos group has developed the OpenCL under Apple? Seems to be something important but I'm not quite figuring out how important this is, if it is

[MacDaddy901]

Originally Posted by talkingfuture

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

See you there.

[arn]

Originally Posted by fendol

If I understood correctly this Kronos group has developed the OpenCL under Apple? Seems to be something important but I'm not quite figuring out how important this is, if it is

Kronos is just a standards group. So, this means it's an industry wide standard and not just something Apple is doing. But Apple proposed it, and plan on using it in Snow Leopard. It sounds very promising.

arn

[wizard]

As the title says the pieces are slowly coming together. It may take a while for user apps to catch up but SL is going to make for some very interesting realtime apps. Apple likes to soft pedal SL because from the standpoint of the common user it doesn't offer much on the surface. From the standpoint of a developer though this is a major update - no more than an update a major transition as all the features combined will enable apps that before where not possible.

What did catch my eye was the part about embedded systems. Makes me wonder if this might be an indicator with respect to future Apple products.


Dave

[DaveTheGrey]

I can't wait to see finally leopards secret features in action

[MrCrowbar]

Originally Posted by talkingfuture

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

I pre-ordered Leopard at the time, no shipping sost and I actually had it a few hours earlier than the stores. If you wanna be "first", just pre-order.

[MacGohil]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

[attila]

Originally Posted by MacGohil

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

steve jobs is extremely equal to, or slightely larger than "coz"?

or... Steve Jobs is racing forward very fast.... uhm... what do you mean?

[ju5tin81]

Seems like such a wasted opportunity that Apple spent so many years shipping rubbish GPUs...

[Zortrium]

Originally Posted by ju5tin81

Seems like such a wasted opportunity that Apple spent so many years shipping rubbish GPUs...

I take my Alu MB as Apple's atonement.

[MacGohil]

Originally Posted by attila

steve jobs is extremely equal to, or slightely larger than "coz"?

or... Steve Jobs is racing forward very fast.... uhm... what do you mean?

"====>" = "Implies"

[Cromulent]

Originally Posted by wizard

It may take a while for user apps to catch up but SL is going to make for some very interesting realtime apps.

Unfortunately Mac OS X is not and will never be a real time operating system. Maybe Mac OS XI will be?

[bigwig]

Originally Posted by MacGohil

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever.

I'd much rather have ZFS as the standard filesystem.

[MrCrowbar]

Originally Posted by Cromulent

Unfortunately Mac OS X is not and will never be a real time operating system. Maybe Mac OS XI will be?

I think he meant things like on-the-fly calculations, effects and the like. Pretty much all consumer operating systems aren't realtime.

[Dreamer2go]

I'm not an advance tech person, so I would like to ask:

How would my Santa Rosa (June 2007) MBP benefit from this OpenCL and Snow Leopard?
(I keep thinking multiple cores = quad core+, not duo core)

[4np]

Originally Posted by Dreamer2go

I'm not an advance tech person, so I would like to ask:

How would my Santa Rosa (June 2007) MBP benefit from this OpenCL and Snow Leopard?
(I keep thinking multiple cores = quad core+, not duo core)

I have the same MBP. If I understand correctly, it's your dual core processor and the GPU. Applications on your MBP (if developed using this functionality) can use the processing power of your GPU as well. Which is even more interesting on the unibody MBP's, as these have dual core processors and two GPU's...

[attila]

Originally Posted by MacGohil

"====>" = "Implies"

so... Steve Jobs implies "because MS will fall anyway" ?

Still doesn't make sense

Steve Jobs is, therefore Microsoft will not?

[MacFly123]

Originally Posted by MacGohil

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

I agree! I think we have past the tipping point and Microsoft is screwed in more ways than one.

Windows is their main source of revenue and is way behind and has a horribly tarnished reputation. So much so that now even possibly HP and Google are secretly making their own OSs. This is after people already are staying away from Vista like a plague and will be maybe even more afraid of Windows 7 because of that.

Windows Mobile sucks, and is already being dominated by OS X iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc. And they won't even have Windows Mobile 7 out till the end of next year...wow!

Any OS that Microsoft makes is so crappy and so behind with no successor due to be out for so long that PC vendors like HP and cell phone vendors like HTC are developing their own software wrapped around the OS to try and make it even slightly appealing.

Windows Live and the whole Yahoo thing seems very desperate and is being dominated by Google.

Zune is not even branded as Microsoft because their name would tarnish the products attempts to be cool and is still nothing with no revenue.

X-Box is also not branded as Microsoft because it would tarnish it as uncool and is also still no source or revenue.

Ballmer says he wants to be the software on the phones instead of the hardware while Apple now has more market share in mobile OSs than Windows Mobile PLUS the hardware on top of that all while Microsoft copies Apple's hardware + software model with the Zune and X-Box but can't even turn a profit.

Seriously, Microsoft spends billions more to make products and is so behind and inefficient, why in the HELL has Steve Ballmer not been fired as C.E.O.??? He is nothing more than a moron that rode the coat tails of Bill Gates. Imagine what a company with those resources could do if they actually had a good visionary leader.

Apple is going to keep gaining huge market share in consumer and business, in computers and the mobile arena and their ecosystem will become even stronger than it already is.

Snow Leopard is going to be awesome and will trickle into OS X iPhone and every other product that now has OS X imbeded. I am very excited

[spetznatz]

Originally Posted by MacGohil

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever.

No, a new and better Finder will make SL the best OS ever...

But, yes, I agree, these technologies do sound extremely interesting.

But I'd still like to see a "One last thing...did we mention the new Finder?" at SL's launch. I can dream, can't I?

[MacGohil]

Originally Posted by spetznatz

No, a new and better Finder will make SL the best OS ever...

But, yes, I agree, these technologies do sound extremely interesting.

But I'd still like to see a "One last thing...did we mention the new Finder?" at SL's launch. I can dream, can't I?

Finder is very close to perfection, some missing features like cut-n-paste need to be added pretty soon so that PC-switchers.... are not let down by missing basic features like this one....

On the same note, why is it so difficult for apple to implement copy-n-paste on iPhone and cut-n-paste in Finder. Bring it on apple. We know there are some great projects and products under the wraps at Apple labs and the RnD team is working real hard but something so trivial should be addressed asap.