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C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (danielmoth.com)
26 points by ukdm on June 15, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments



Video of the presentation is here:

http://hothardware.com/News/Microsoft-Demos-C-AMP-Heterogene...

Impressive. Especially at the end when they use two discrete GPUs.


AFAICT not only is it Windows-only, it's DirectX- and Visual Studio 2010-only. Not interested.

I wish Microsoft would quit calling stuff that only works on their one particular compiler "C++ this-or-that". This MS blogger even calls it "heterogeneous", I guess because it runs on two AMD chips in the same PC. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2011/06/15/targeti...


This MS blogger even calls it "heterogeneous", I guess because it runs on two AMD chips in the same PC.

No, I think its hetergeneous because the code can target the CPU, APUs, or GPUs, or a combination thereof.

Also, according to some articles on it, "Herb also disclosed that the C++ AMP is going to open specification such that other compilers can target C++ AMP optimizations."

So in theory Intel's compiler can also target it. From looking at one snippet of code, it looks like something that would also work on any platform, even non-Windows, despite the current implementation sitting on DX. But I haven't seen the spec to know for sure.


No, I think its hetergeneous because the code can target the CPU, APUs, or GPUs, or a combination thereof.

Right, two AMD chips in the same PC, unless its a combined CPU/GPU thingies they're always talking about.

Well OK, maybe it could be an Intel emulating the AMD64 instruction set and an Nvidia GPU running DirectX. But still, just two, and only one implementation of the compiler and runtime environment.

Like the Microsoft habit calling their stuff "cross platform" because it runs on both XP and Vista, the term "heterogeneous" means something different to the rest of the world.

So in theory Intel's compiler can also target it.

Note that one of the prerequisites for Intel's Windows compiler is Visual Studio.


Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you expect heterogeneous to mean in this context? It's mixing ISAs.


It sounds to me like one of the ISAs is x86/x64 Windows and the other is the thing you get with Direct3D. Sure it's "heterogenous" but only in the same sense as, say, .Net managed and native code both built with Visual Studio are.

I need to watch the video if I'm going to complain any more.


Heterogeneous in this context is GPU+APU+CPU. I'm not clear what is throwing you here. What are you expecting?

From (written by NVidia): http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&...

What is heterogeneous computing?

Heterogeneous computing is the idea that to attain the highest efficiency applications should use both of the major processors in the PC: the CPU and GPU. CPUs tend to be best at serial operations with lots of branches and random memory access. GPUs, on the other hand, excel at parallel operations with lots of floating point calculations. The best result is achieved by using a CPU for serial applications and a GPU for parallel applications. Heterogeneous computing is about using the right processor for the right operation.


OK, that makes sense.

I was used to the older concept of "heterogeneous systems" which tended to emphasize interoperability between independent platforms and vendors.


Note that one of the prerequisites for Intel's Windows compiler is Visual Studio.

Is it really? That would be funny, because it's not even a prereq for the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler!


Not sure, it may have actually been for a non-crippleware MS Visual C++, rather than the whole Visual Studio.

Just checked again, it looks like the "Intel C++ Composer XE 2011 for Windows" has relaxed that requirement a bit. http://software.intel.com/file/31856 It looks like it actually can be installed with just the Microsoft SDK now and no longer requires MSVC++ or Visual Studio.


Agreed -- this sounds pretty worthless to me. Of course, I'm not building any games in the near future...

For those who grudgingly accept vendor lock-in as a matter of practicality, this is probably worth keeping tabs on though.


Agreed - this is ridiculously vendor specific. The article misrepresents it.


Its written by a Microsoft guy, in an MDSN group, about the AMD Fusion conference. With that context its understandable.


It looks like someone's private blog. Nowhere does it say anything about MSDN. In the subtitle it says the author works for MS. The article itself does not state the technology limitations at all but does call it "heterogeneous", which is misleading.


Which article are you talking about? The Soma blog, which is hosted on MSDN, or the Daniel Moth blog, which isn't?

If the Daniel Moth blog. I'm not sure how you can argue that the Daniel Moth blog misrepresents anything.




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