> Just one more comment. > Would not using OpenCL help with portability? > > Or I am mistaken and X configuration files are main place for that, like > you were saying. > Thank you! ;)
I remember reading that nVidia drivers provide OpenCL support as well, so VizStack could be used to run OpenCL apps as well. A complete answer is kind of OT for this list, but let me try explaining. I need to be clear on one aspect : VizStack helps setup X servers on GPUs - i.e. the primary focus is OpenGL based 3D apps. VizStack can help allocate GPUs and X servers, configure these, setup the DISPLAY environment variable and then run the OpenGL app. That's an oversimplification, but should generally give you an idea. Contrast this with GPGPU apps. I'll start with CUDA apps, since I have basic familiarity with them. There is no need to run an X server for CUDA apps. Also, AFAIK, there is no standard way to tell CUDA apps which GPU(s) to use. Most of the sample programs in the nVidia CUDA SDK use command line parameters to tell the program which GPU to use, typically something like "+device 1". VizStack provides a GPU_INDEX env variable, that can be used to tell the program which GPU to use. As you can see, VizStack is not doing anything more for GPGPU apps than giving them enough information so that they don't step on each others toes. VizStack cannot control who has access to the GPU, and cannot prevent a user from using a GPU allocated to another user. VizStack _could_ have some LD_PRELOAD kind of wrapper shared library that could ensure that a GPU assigned to a user is not used by anyone else, but it doesn't. As I see it, there is nothing in VizStack that prevents running OpenCL applications. Assuming that there will be similarities between OpenCL and CUDA, I hope that the GPU_INDEX environment variable could be used to run OpenCL apps in some way. PS: I will look into this and include a sample script that shows how to run an OpenCL app using VizStack. HTH -- Shree -----Original Message----- From: Nikola M. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 4:51 PM To: VirtualGL Users Subject: Re: [VirtualGL-Users] Announcing VizStack On 05/20/10 11:55 AM, Kumar, Shree wrote: >> I hope you will extend your support to more platforms, beside Gnu/Linux. >> (OpenSolaris, BSDs etc) >> > It is too early to say anything about this. Testing software on clusters > of these would be a whole lot of effort - so anybody trying to use VizStack > on such systems will have to be involved. > > >> And why (oh why) you are stranded yourself only on Nvidia chips shore ? >> >> That is problem that seems to be intentionally put in inside underlying >> components. >> If you use OpenCL, you could use all comutational power and Including >> Nvidia and AMD (cheaper per speed) GPUs and other processing CPUs available. >> > That's because the developers use nVidia cards. nVidia drivers provide a > consistent > interface to all their GPUs, and we use that. The API provided by VizStack > tries > to be vendor-agnostic, and relies only on concepts rather than actual > implementations > (e.g. "GPU Combiner" rather than "SLI"). > > The tool that generates the X configuration files is where most of the nvidia > specific logic resides. > > All said, I do not believe that VizStack should be limited to nVidia chips > only. > If anybody is interested to add support for other cards (ATI, for example), > I'd > welcome that - and aid it too ! > > However, note that adding such support is a significant amount of work - > VizStack > has a much more capable core than what it shows on the outside; we are hoping > to > add support for more applications over time. > > Regards > Thank you for your nice response ;) Just one more comment. Would not using OpenCL help with portability? Or I am mistaken and X configuration files are main place for that, like you were saying. Thank you! ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ VirtualGL-Users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/virtualgl-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ VirtualGL-Users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/virtualgl-users
