On Thursday, 23 January 2014 at 11:50:19 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
Why not just generate SPIR, HSAIL or PTX code instead ? -- Paulo
We advertised an internship at my work to look at using D for GPUs in HPC (I work at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, which recently acquired are rather large GPU-based system). We do a lot of C++ meta-programming to generate portable code that works on both CPU and GPUs. D looks like it could make this much less of a pain (because C++ meta programming gets very tired after a short while). From what I can see, it should be possible to use CTFE and string mixins to generate full OpenCL kernels from straight D code.
One of the main issues we also have with C++ is that our users are intimidated by it, and exposure to the nasty side effects libraries written with meta programming do little to convince them (like the error messages, and the propensity for even the best-designed C++ library to leak excessive amounts of boiler plate and templates into user code). Unfortunately this is a field where Fortran is still the dominant language.
The LLVM backend supports PTX generation, and Clang has full support for OpenGL. With those tools and some tinkering with the compiler, it might be possible to do some really neat things in D. And increase programmer productivity at the same time. Fortran sets the bar pretty low there!
If anybody knows undergrad or masters students in Europe who would be interested in a fully paid internship to work with D on big computers, get them in touch with us!
