Mac Mini, Intel GMA 950 and OpenCL

[CrArC]

I've been poking around for about half an hour now and I've found very little information on how OpenCL might interact with the Intel GMA 950 graphics chip found in products like the old Mac Mini.

I've read over at macosrumors that although the GMA 950 has no GPGPU support, some basic OpenCL functionality would be possible on it - albeit at a reduced speed. I'm assuming the reduced speed would still be faster than using the CPU to complete such tasks, or why would they bother?

What they didn't elaborate on is what functionality would be available on the GMA 950 and other such GPUs in the Apple range. Obviously the most immediately obvious benefit of OpenCL support would be the ability to encode video much faster. Say if that is not possible on the GMA 950 with limited OpenCL (note: they didn't say it wasn't) then what on earth are they talking about when they said some functionality will remain? What would OpenCL do on such systems?

There's only a very small pool of information about this available that I can find, does anyone have anything to contribute? I'm sure everyone with GMA 950-based hardware would love to know if OpenCL would actually be of benefit to their systems, regardless of reduced speed.

[synagence]

Its pretty poor in terms of a GPU ... don't expect much benefit from it

[CrArC]

Originally Posted by synagence

Its pretty poor in terms of a GPU ... don't expect much benefit from it

Yeah, I wouldn't expect miracles - but the question is, what COULD we expect? What would 'basic' OpenCL offer, albeit at reduced speeds? The GMA 950 is generally accepted as rubbish, but it can't be denied it's way faster at what it does than the CPU would be - depending on what functionality will be available, it could have potential benefits... we just need to know what functionality/benefits we're gonna get

[gkarris]

The benefits on the 950 will probably be very minimal. I would imagine slightly more on the x3100 (on the MacBooks).

The nVidia will see the benefits. I don't know about Intels newest 4500's or when Intel will catch up to nVidia in regards to OpenCL in IG...

[synagence]

Expectations are somewhat difficult right now .... it all depends on the apps you're using and whether they're coded to benefit openCL ...

I guess some people who have the current dev builds and are coding for them might be able to indicate but its not as simple as just the GPU