OpenCL Specification Completed in Record Time for Snow Leopard
Macworld reports from the SuperComputing 08 conference which is taking place in Austin, Texas this week. The Khronos group was present to celebrate the launch of the upcoming OpenCL specification which Apple is planning to implement in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. OpenCL is a new programming interface (API) to allow developers to take advantage of parallel computing across graphics processing units (GPUs) and multi-core CPUs.
While few details were revealed, Khronos' president Neil Trevett explained how quickly the OpenCL specification had come together.
Trevett was very optimistic about the prospects of OpenCL specifically implemented in Snow Leopard:
Apple's Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) is expected to ship in 2009 with recent hints suggesting the first quarter of 2009.
While few details were revealed, Khronos' president Neil Trevett explained how quickly the OpenCL specification had come together.
"If you go to some other larger standards bodies, it's quite normal for a standard to take five years or more," Trevett said. "That's quite commonplace. You actually have to really push to get it down to eighteen months. Our record was 12 months, up to now; we've done this one in six [OpenCL]."
The speed at which they completed the specification was due to Apple's tight schedule to allow it to ship with Snow Leopard. The specification is now being reviewed by lawyers for the next 30 days to make sure no intellectual property has been breached. The specification will presumably be complete once it passes this 30 day inspection.Trevett was very optimistic about the prospects of OpenCL specifically implemented in Snow Leopard:
"If Apple ends up following through on the plans they stated on building this specification into Snow Leopard, I think you could see opportunity for imaging applications vendors, video application vendors to tap into the goodness of GPU hardware," Trevett said. "Everyone has a supercomputer locked away in their Mac, but it's hard to get at it. And OpenCL will unlock the potential of that supercomputer."
He also acknowledged that OpenCL would work from the cell phones to high end computers, leaving open the possibility that we could see OpenCL implemented in future iPhones.Apple's Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) is expected to ship in 2009 with recent hints suggesting the first quarter of 2009.
Top Rated Comments
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42 months ago
Sounds pretty impressive...!
I'd love to see an OpenCL app on an iPhone, purely out of interest as to what it could do.
AppleMatt
I'd love to see an OpenCL app on an iPhone, purely out of interest as to what it could do.
AppleMatt
42 months ago
Sounds good. I am glad to see this as an opportunity for applications to really shine. Hopefully Adobe will support this on the OS X side.
42 months ago
Seems like apple are really pushing this forward. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks.
Anything to bring some extra speed to a computer is welcome.
Snow Leopard sounds very very interesting, wish apple had given a bit more away but I suppose they were hurt by the Leopard Secret features.
Anything to bring some extra speed to a computer is welcome.
Snow Leopard sounds very very interesting, wish apple had given a bit more away but I suppose they were hurt by the Leopard Secret features.
42 months ago
the Khronos has never been known for super speedy standard formalization. I am glad that OpenCL got rocketed through by apple. lets just hope that rushing it doesnt lead to issues like OpenGL 3.0 being put out a little before it was ready (many are looking forward to 3.1 to add teh features they wanted to see in 3.0)
42 months ago
The question that comes to mind for me is whether the quality, stability, or reliability of the interface will have suffered from the tight schedule. Of course, Apple can churn these out much more quickly because it isn't a standard at all, whereas Trevett's comparison is to "larger standards bodies", which bring a number of parties together to work on a standard that will benefit all of them. Apple is doing this on a unilateral basis, so of course they can do it faster.
Yes yes, good job Apple. Just don't waste too much time patting yourselves on the back.
Yes yes, good job Apple. Just don't waste too much time patting yourselves on the back.
42 months ago
This is good, really good. Most of all, I like 'tight schedules'... Snow Leapord can't come soon enough.
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