Nvidia OpenCL - GPU seen as CPU in Windows 7

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

Fully [H]
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
19,110
According to this article, a Nvidia DX11 graphics card, in Windows 7, along with installation of the OpenCL driver, will allow the GPU to be seen as a CPU by the OS. It can be viewed in the task manager and will be used to assist the CPU in processing task.

Don't mind my french, but, how fucking cool is that?
 
Hmm that some interesting stuff. Can't wait to see some more info on it.

It is pretty dang cool!
 
That doesn't mean anything though - the programming still has to (be able to) take advantage, its just the OS's will recognize GPU shaders
 
That is true but just goes to show how much gpus have evolved over the recent years.
 
Sounds really neat. Looks like we've some interesting stuff to look forward to.
 
Hmmm, a year ago I interned at a company and they were developing a massive computer simulation system. They were connecting something like 18 dual core machines with high speed interconnects. I told my boss they were retarded (my group wasn't directly responsible for this design decision we just had to work with them). I said that by the time they would need to use this they could use one machine with a couple of GPU's and get just as much processing power for less than a tenth of the cost.

Lowly intern - 1
Team of ~15 long term engineers - 0
 
this is cool for people who are running a single core intel Atom with a GTX 295.

But I can't imagine this making any difference with quadcore and above.
 
on a KEWL note
OSX snow leopard will also have this functionality

and this isn't for excel you tools :p
it's probably more for 3D Apps, Video / Photo editing and rendering
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
on a KEWL note
OSX snow leopard will also have this functionality

and this isn't for excel you tools :p
it's probably more for 3D Apps, Video / Photo editing and rendering
Click to expand...

NO THIS IS FOR SPREDSHEETS AND SPREDSHEETS ONLY. KILL THE BLASPHEMY SPREADER!
 
stevedave said:
this is cool for people who are running a single core intel Atom with a GTX 295.
Click to expand...

I almost spit out my drink. Thanks for that.

:D

Anyway, there was another thread about this and it died. I hope this one goes somewhere. I do find this very interesting.

btw Not just nVidia graphics cards but AMD as well. Both can do OpenCL. Right? Isn;t that kind of the point of OpenCL?
 
stevedave said:
this is cool for people who are running a single core intel Atom with a GTX 295.

But I can't imagine this making any difference with quadcore and above.
Click to expand...

umm, offloading heavy vector-ish type calculations to the gpu would OBLITERATE ANY cpu that you can buy now, even in using something as cheap as an 8800GT

I'm actually considering picking up a Quadro card for use with Premier / AE
 
ZerazaX said:
That doesn't mean anything though - the programming still has to (be able to) take advantage, its just the OS's will recognize GPU shaders
Click to expand...
I take it as it would be handled sorta like the 2nd core on a Hyperthreaded CPU. Windows XP is single threaded but that 2nd core still does a little work.
 
bigdogchris said:
I take it as it would be handled sorta like the 2nd core on a Hyperthreaded CPU. Windows XP is single threaded but that 2nd core still does a little work.
Click to expand...

Think of this rather like a specialized second CPU that can only do certain tasks. So for most things it won't matter much, but for some applications( or parts thereof ) it'll give a massive boost to the processing power.
 
This will be great once programmers start making their software capable. So maybe another 5 years? :p
 
bigdogchris said:
I take it as it would be handled sorta like the 2nd core on a Hyperthreaded CPU. Windows XP is single threaded but that 2nd core still does a little work.
Click to expand...

It's not. Shader's cant do all the math that an x86 based cpu core can do - it can do very parallel simple (relatively) calculations at blazing speeds, yes, but the program has to take advantage of it first as well

Imagine this analogy: You have 20 people you need to transport to different locations for a total of 100 miles with 5 taxis. Well, increasing the number of taxis (cores) would make the entire process faster. However, if your problem is getting 1 person to a location 100 miles away, having more taxis isn't going to make a difference.

BTW, this isn't Nvidia's OpenCL - OpenCL is an open standard so both Nvidia and ATI can use it, as will any DX11 compatible cards which follows the DX11 ComputeShader feature which is MS's version. Same thing, Nvidia is just trying to spin it as theirs.
 
bigdogchris said:
I take it as it would be handled sorta like the 2nd core on a Hyperthreaded CPU. Windows XP is single threaded but that 2nd core still does a little work.
Click to expand...

XP... single threaded... ummmm... no. Each process that is running has at least one thread. Each program you open in XP has at least one thread.

Open up your task manager and go to the performance tab... it shows how many threads and handles are running.
 
ZerazaX said:
That doesn't mean anything though - the programming still has to (be able to) take advantage, its just the OS's will recognize GPU shaders
Click to expand...

....such as things like Windows 7 itself?

"And what that essentially means to consumers is, if your laptop has an Nvidia GPU or ATI (AMD) GPU, it will run the operating system faster because the operating system will essentially see two processors in the system. For the first time, the operating system is going to see the GPU both as a graphics chip and as a compute engine," he said. Additionally, consumers using Windows 7 will see the GPU as a CPU in Task Manager.
Click to expand...

Windows 7 is going to kick so much ass. I can't wait.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top