NVIDIA Releases new driver, brings hotfixes, WDDM 2.0, and yes, finally oCL1.2

[LukaP]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9139/nvidia-posts-35005-hotfix-driver-fixes-games-adds-opencl-12-support

 

 

With the new driver, 350.05, comes a new branch as well, R349. This is the branch used for W10 TP drivers, and includes WDDM2, which will come with the new OS.

 

What is more interesting though, is that this branch also adds support for openCL 1.2, which is a standard ratified in 2011... 

 

 

More importantly however is the fact that until now NVIDIA has declined to support OpenCL 1.2, opting instead to direct their energies into the growing CUDA ecosystem and its wider usage than OpenCL 1.x. Consequently the addition of OpenCL 1.2 support at this stage comes as a bit of a surprise, but we’ll take it. And hopefully this is a sign that NVIDIA is going to be catching up on OpenCL so that they can support SPIR/SPIR-V and OpenCL 2.x.

 

Im not sure why they are doing this, honestly. oCL is barely used in HPC, and hasnt gained much more adoption in consumer space, where Quadro and GeForce still dominate with their CUDA capabilities...

[flibberdipper]

So long as my 480 isn't gimped... Okay.

[Misanthrope]

Im not sure why they are doing this, honestly. oCL is barely used in HPC, and hasnt gained much more adoption in consumer space, where Quadro and GeForce still dominate with their CUDA capabilities...

 

Wendell from Tek Syndicate said otherwise, but alas on his usual "citation needed" mode so he might be wrong.

[LukaP]

 

Wendell from Tek Syndicate said otherwise, but alas on his usual "citation needed" mode so he might be wrong.

Basically all HPC market is either Telsa (with CUDA) or Xeon Phi (with modified x86, using 512SIMD). 

 

When it comes to professional markets, have you ever heard of any studio using a FirePro? I havent... but i know for certain Pixar and DW use Quadros with a CUDA renderer, as do many games studios and ArchViz houses, using iray

 

Most "prosumer" software has a CUDA renderer, but rarely does any have an oCL renderer that should be evidence enough

[Firearm2112]

OH MY GOD. WDDM2? THIS WILL SOLVE MY eGPU CRASHES

[MoonSpot]

Think India's announcement for open source might have something to do with this?

A market of a billion people isn't something Nvidia would choose to ignore.

[LukaP]

Think India's announcement for open source might have something to do with this?

A market of a billion people isn't something Nvidia would choose to ignore.

what? 

[Geekazoid]

Great news post LukaP. Thank you for not simply doing a complete copy & paste job, that's always appreciated.

[MoonSpot]

@LukaP answering a question with a question...

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/338969-indian-govt-made-it-mandatory-to-usebuild-open-source-apps/#entry4622386

It's just the first thought that popped up inbetween my ears. Not saying if its a good thought, was asking before.

[Sauron]

Are you sure OpenCL is so rare to come by? Most productivity suites I know support it afaik.

[Misanthrope]

what?

India will mandate all official computer stuff to be open source. No doubt big chunks will include things that are currently Cuda and will need to migrate to opencl

[LukaP]

@LukaP answering a question with a question...

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/338969-indian-govt-made-it-mandatory-to-usebuild-open-source-apps/#entry4622386

It's just the first thought that popped up inbetween my ears. Not saying if its a good thought, was asking before.

They are not making the driver open source though

 

Are you sure OpenCL is so rare to come by? Most productivity suites I know support it afaik.

its not rare to come by in software. its rare to come by studios that depend on it, in comparison to studios that depend on cuda. Of course there are those that use FirePros, and ocl. but mainly, especially as you go towards enterprises, those start to drop out in the percentage.

[LukaP]

India will mandate all official computer stuff to be open source. No doubt big chunks will include things that are currently Cuda and will need to migrate to opencl

ooooh... that seems retarded. you cant just mandate such a thing. they will lose good programmers to this. People doing cuda now, wont just throw their expertise int he bin and learn ocl... 

[Misanthrope]

ooooh... that seems retarded. you cant just mandate such a thing. they will lose good programmers to this. People doing cuda now, wont just throw their expertise int he bin and learn ocl...

They might loose some experienced  and competent programmers, good programmers will easily adapt though. But actually is not as crazy as it seems: It will save the government large chunks of cash in the long run to not depend on any one company, plus if any country is ready to take those steps is India: they do have some of the best CS and engineering schools on the planet and they historically have to let a lof of them go abroad, offering government jobs and benefits that come with them will help retaining many of them.

But again I must stress the point that just changing to open source doesn't "throws their expertise in the bin" languages are improved and deprecated all the time and programmers have to adapt, part of the job.

[LukaP]

But again I must stress the point that just changing to open source doesn't "throws their expertise in the bin" languages are improved and deprecated all the time and programmers have to adapt, part of the job.

yes, but not with a mandate. languages get worse with time, and get replaced. programmers have time to adapt. with a mandate, they get a "start using this software, or lose market/job" thing. not exactly good for big businesses. 

Now i didnt go read the article, because honestly im lazy, but if that means that in india, no closed source software can be used, that is stupid

[patrickjp93]

Wait, Nvidia now supports OCL 1.2?! I thought they never would on principle because of their desire to keep CUDA so strong... Well, since they're losing market share to Intel at a break neck pace and Knight's Landing is fast approaching, I suppose it's not a total shock.

 

 

yes, but not with a mandate. languages get worse with time, and get replaced. programmers have time to adapt. with a mandate, they get a "start using this software, or lose market/job" thing. not exactly good for big businesses. 

Now i didnt go read the article, because honestly im lazy, but if that means that in india, no closed source software can be used, that is stupid

 

I wouldn't say C++ has fallen victim to that, except in its object-oriented stuff, though that's certainly gotten better as well.

[LukaP]

Wait, Nvidia now supports OCL 1.2?! I thought they never would on principle because of their desire to keep CUDA so strong... Well, since they're losing market share to Intel at a break neck pace and Knight's Landing is fast approaching, I suppose it's not a total shock.

how would supporting oCL1.2 do them any benefit. noone in HPC uses it anyway. its eitehr CUDA or that Intel library, that uses x86 with AVX3.1

[patrickjp93]

how would supporting oCL1.2 do them any benefit. noone in HPC uses it anyway. its eitehr CUDA or that Intel library, that uses x86 with AVX3.1

Not true. There are a number of OpenCL implementations which use the Xeon Phi. And With OCL 2.0 and 2.1 especially (you can drop STL algorithms directly in. HALLELUJAH!) Nvidia will start losing even more ground.

 

Most Xeon Phi applications will either use OpenMP offload target(MIC) or will use OpenACC, but there are a good number which are OCL.

[LukaP]

Not true. There are a number of OpenCL implementations which use the Xeon Phi. And With OCL 2.0 and 2.1 especially (you can drop STL algorithms directly in. HALLELUJAH!) Nvidia will start losing even more ground.

 

Most Xeon Phi applications will either use OpenMP offload target(MIC) or will use OpenACC, but there are a good number which are OCL.

yeah meant MP and ACC. Didnt even know CL works on them learn something new every day

[Misanthrope]

yes, but not with a mandate. languages get worse with time, and get replaced. programmers have time to adapt. with a mandate, they get a "start using this software, or lose market/job" thing. not exactly good for big businesses. 

Now i didnt go read the article, because honestly im lazy, but if that means that in india, no closed source software can be used, that is stupid

 

True, but the focus here isn't "big business" the state affairs should not be run as for profit focus anyway. It's more cost effective and yes at the beginning more inefficient but it will improve over time with enough backing. 

[patrickjp93]

True, but the focus here isn't "big business" the state affairs should not be run as for profit focus anyway. It's more cost effective and yes at the beginning more inefficient but it will improve over time with enough backing. 

Programmers are not going to code for no pay and do it well. No matter how much Richard Stallman throws his tantrums it will not happen.

[Misanthrope]

Programmers are not going to code for no pay and do it well. No matter how much Richard Stallman throws his tantrums it will not happen.

 

Nobody is expected to work for free: The State would use tax payer's money to pay the programmers a fair salary. Yes the projects might not have "become a billionaire" potential like private endeavors do but it isn't a "Work for free cause it's free code you know" as you make it out to be.

 

Let's talk about something that is more relatable to you, see if we can put aside those militant "Stallman" misconception for a moment: Let's talk about utilities like electricity or water. Now if you privatize everything and you have the same situation as in software right now, it would mean that you're at the behest and wishes of corporations like Oracle or Microsoft for your infrastructure. They do the investing as they see fit, they do R&D they have total control. Whereas if you invest State funds into your own group of engineers doing R&D for the advancement of all, everything they create will have a more immediate benefit to the entire population, not just private corporations, as this resources (Water, electricity, gas) are considered too important for their benefits not to be shared among a community that should be investing in them.

 

Again nobody is working for free, it's just a different paradigm of advancement that should be sustained with public funds, not private, so that the outcome eventually benefits all. Not only that but getting back to IT the fact that you're now pushing for open source solutions means that said solutions are easy to continue to expand and develop unlike closed source which again puts all of the control on Microsoft who might or might not see fit investing in your country's infrastructure and such and might eventually take advantage of the state dependency on their tech to inject their own political interests and such.

[patrickjp93]

Nobody is expected to work for free: The State would use tax payer's money to pay the programmers a fair salary. Yes the projects might not have "become a billionaire" potential like private endeavors do but it isn't a "Work for free cause it's free code you know" as you make it out to be.

 

Let's talk about something that is more relatable to you, see if we can put aside those militant "Stallman" misconception for a moment: Let's talk about utilities like electricity or water. Now if you privatize everything and you have the same situation as in software right now, it would mean that you're at the behest and wishes of corporations like Oracle or Microsoft for your infrastructure. They do the investing as they see fit, they do R&D they have total control. Whereas if you invest State funds into your own group of engineers doing R&D for the advancement of all, everything they create will have a more immediate benefit to the entire population, not just private corporations, as this resources (Water, electricity, gas) are considered too important for their benefits not to be shared among a community that should be investing in them.

 

Again nobody is working for free, it's just a different paradigm of advancement that should be sustained with public funds, not private, so that the outcome eventually benefits all. Not only that but getting back to IT the fact that you're now pushing for open source solutions means that said solutions are easy to continue to expand and develop unlike closed source which again puts all of the control on Microsoft who might or might not see fit investing in your country's infrastructure and such and might eventually take advantage of the state dependency on their tech to inject their own political interests and such.

This is why we have contract law. Microsoft and Oracle have insanely fast response times for their clients when it comes to enterprise (such as utilities). Their top engineers are out the door and on a plane to you within the next 5 hours on average, and that's just for my school's wifi infrastructure which IBM built a couple years ago. When we had a huge influx of Wireless AC devices come in the network built in 2009 couldn't handle it, and one of IBM's level 3 (think one of the guys who manages nothing but one kind of project and is damn good at it) engineers left LA at 2:30 and landed here at 6:30 and worked through the night and the problem was fixed by the end of business the next day. 

 

These companies know they're on the hook. They deliver the absolute best they can as fast as possible. The open source community bickers endlessly and barely gets anything done, which is why Linux still has a boot loader from the stone age. Honestly there is no reason Mac OS should load in 6 seconds and Ubuntu takes 18 when it's the 4980HQ vs. the 2600K. I could understand 9, but 18?!

 

Open Source is an openly viewable disaster. OpenSSL, Linux for consumers (enterprise people were already competent enough to modify an OS at their whims), OpenCL, and many other open projects get practically nowhere. Even engineers hired by a government would additionally have to deal with outsiders submitting suggestions and revisions. Who's going to read through those, evaluate them, and bring them before the programming teams? 

 

There needs to be competition among private entities for your business, not a blind zeal for open-source software.

[Misanthrope]

This is why we have contract law. 

 

You give good arguments on the response times and such yes. However contract law still means that nobody has access to the source code. You just don't know if something could be done differently or better and just have to trust the corporations. While they do have contracts and service levels to adhere to you dont know if their profit margins are excessive. 

 

More over, there's inherent security concerns and this is basically the straw that's breaking the camel's back here: On top of all that now nations have to be concerned about security with the NSA and such potentially installing backdoors and things to compromise security. Each sovereign state should be entitled to have full control over their systems and not be spied upon by America and what they're potentially (and actually) doing in some cases. Open source from a security stand point works better because even if you do get major vulnerabilities like heartbleed at least you can potentially or eventually uncover them, whereas trusting in closed source contractors means trusting they're not sharing sensitive information back to NSA.

 

Like I said, this concerns do mean more investment, regressions, etc. But in the end they're ok trade offs vs the increased level of dependency on questionable private parties.

[patrickjp93]

You give good arguments on the response times and such yes. However contract law still means that nobody has access to the source code. You just don't know if something could be done differently or better and just have to trust the corporations. While they do have contracts and service levels to adhere to you dont know if their profit margins are excessive. 

 

More over, there's inherent security concerns and this is basically the straw that's breaking the camel's back here: On top of all that now nations have to be concerned about security with the NSA and such potentially installing backdoors and things to compromise security. Each sovereign state should be entitled to have full control over their systems and not be spied upon by America and what they're potentially (and actually) doing in some cases. Open source from a security stand point works better because even if you do get major vulnerabilities like heartbleed at least you can potentially or eventually uncover them, whereas trusting in closed source contractors means trusting they're not sharing sensitive information back to NSA.

 

Like I said, this concerns do mean more investment, regressions, etc. But in the end they're ok trade offs vs the increased level of dependency on questionable private parties.

This is why benchmarks came to be and why everyone is held to them, and why new ones are created every couple years to ensure everyone is actually playing fair and not optimizing for benches. IT managers are far from stupid. If it could be done better other companies will show it, complaints will be made to the contractor, and if the shortcomings are not abated then when it comes time to renew that company will either lose a customer because it couldn't deliver or will keep that customer because they did. You can easily tell if their margins are excessive. If they're not up at IBM's levels, they're far from excessive.

 

Security through obscurity is a good thing, even though you can't go and verify the security yourself. This is why banks run almost exclusively on IBM mainframes. 1) They're the only companies which can afford them. 2) No one knows how to even start trying to hack them. 

 

People worry overmuch about the reach of the NSA. Furthermore, I firmly believe if you have nothing to hide it shouldn't bother you. If there's nothing for which you could black mail me, why do I care? Your algorithm will sift through it, see I'm not up to anything interesting, and move on until it finds someone with criminal/terrorist ties. Privacy is not a right on the internet. There is no way to secure nor guarantee it because any system can be broken given enough time.

 

I'd consider that as a businessman my own personal watchdog. I don't give a rat's rear end if the NSA sees my business' financials and dealings. If I'm not doing anything criminal, then I'm fine. I'd much rather see my competitors get caught and look the saint then just let them get away with bloody murder. You people really fail to see the other sides of these arguments. Posner said it best: if our ancestors got along with no privacy, then why do we need it? (referring to the native americans and tribes of ancient history). Privacy primarily (not universally) benefits criminals, not the average citizen, in modern society. There are dictatorial countries such as China and Russia where this is more of a concern, but really? You're worried about the NSA?