The debate over OpenMP versus OpenACC for manycore and heterogeneous computing is starting to heat up. Michael Wong (CEO of OpenMP Corp), Barbara Chapman (Univ. Houston), and Yonghong Yan (Assistant Prof. Univ. Oakland and OpenMP ARB representative) have written a nice, quick read, comparative article on HPCWire: "A Comparison of Heterogeneous and Manycore … [Read more...]
Provisional OpenCL 2.1 Enables Kernels Written Using a Subset of C++14 and Uses SPIR-V
The Khronos™ Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL™ 2.1 provisional specification viewable at www.khronos.org/opencl/ so developers and implementers can provide feedback before finalization at the OpenCL forums. Comments can be made via https://www.khronos.org/opencl/opencl_feedback_forum. The OpenCL 2.1 C++ kernel language is a static … [Read more...]
OpenCL SPIR Tutorial Teaches Portability Without Shipping Kernel Source
Intel has released an OpenCL tutorial showing how developers can use SPIR (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation) to preserve vendor and device portability without having to ship OpenCL kernel source code. For more information about how SPIR enables commercial OpenCl applications, see our article, "Commercial OpenCL! SPIR 2.0 Protects IP Yet Allows Powerful, Portable, … [Read more...]
OpenCL Programmed FPGAs Claim a 3X Performance-to-Power Advantage at Microsoft
The Microsoft white paper, "Accelerating Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Using Specialized Hardware" describes an OpenCL programmed implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that touts a conservative estimate of 3x the performance-to-power advantage over NVIDIA GPUs when running on new FPGA hardware. Doug Berger posted on the Inside Microsoft Research … [Read more...]
HTTP/2 Formally Approved
Mark Nottingham. the current chair the IETF HTTP Working Group and member of the W3C TAG blogged on February 18, 2015 that the IESG has formally approved the HTTP/2 and HPACK specifications, and they’re on their way to the RFC Editor, where they’ll soon be assigned RFC numbers, go through some editorial processes, and be published. This is a big deal in the HTTP world. New … [Read more...]
NP-Complete Parallel Thread Placement Addressed in Milliseconds via MIT “Best Paper” Heuristic
The problem of jointly allocating computations and data is a known NP-hard problem. A heuristic proposed by MIT researchers Nathan Beckmann, Po-An Tsai, and Daniel Sanchez recently the best-paper award at the IEEE Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture for a place-and-route algorithm that runs in milliseconds and finds a solution that is more than 99 percent as … [Read more...]
Multiple OpenACC Hackathons Scheduled Around the World
OakRidge National Laboratory has announced three GPU Hackathons for 2015. The first will be hosted April 20-24 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the UIUC Campus. The second will be hosted by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Lugano, Switzerland from July 6-10. The final one will be hosted by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility on … [Read more...]
Root Your Nvidia SHIELD Tablet Effortlessly
XDAdevelopers shows how to root your NVIDIA Shield effortlessly: http://youtu.be/_8O-oXYzB8g … [Read more...]
Rumor – Tegra X1 Powered Shield Tablet Announcement in March 2015
Rumors are circulating that the Tegra X1 powered update to the NVIDIA Shield Tablet will be announced at the GPU technology conference scheduled for March 17th or possibly earlier. Indications are the screen size will stay the same, but that appears to be the only leaked information. This is great news, along with the fact that Ubuntu 14.10 now runs on the Tegra K1 powered … [Read more...]
Guide to Get Ubuntu 14.10 Running Natively on Nvidia Shield Tablet
The XDA forum developer Bogdacutu reports they have Ubuntu 14.10 running on an NVIDIA Shield Tablet and have provided a guide so others can also get Ubuntu running on their Shield tablets. This is wonderful news and brings hope that Ubuntu will soon be running on the rumored Tegra X1 refresh of the Shield Tablet. What works: GPU acceleration (OpenGL … [Read more...]