SIMD support...

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 16:09 +0100, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> From what I see in HPC conferences papers and webcasts, I think it might  be 
> already too late for D
> in those scenarios.

Indeed, for core HPC that is true:  if you aren't using Fortran, C, C++,
and Python you are not in the game.  The point is that HPC is really
about using computers that cost a significant proportion of the USA
national debt.  My thinking is that with Intel especially, looking to
use the Moore's Law transistor count mountain to put heterogeneous many
core systems on chip, i.e. arrays of CPUs connected to GPGPUs on chip,
the programming languages used by the majority of programmers not just
those playing with multi-billion dollar kit, will have to be able to
deal with heterogeneous models of computation.   The current model of
separate compilation and loading of CPU code and GPGPU kernel is a hack
to get things working in a world where tool chains are still about
building 1970s single threaded code.  This represents an opportunity for
non C and C++ languages.  Python is beginning to take a stab at trying
to deal with all this.  D would be another good candidate.  Java cannot
be in this game without some serious updating of the JVM semantics -- an
issue we debated a bit on this list a short time ago so non need to
rehearse all the points.

It just strikes me as an opportunity to get D front and centre by having
it provide a better development experience for these heterogeneous
systems that are coming.

Sadly Santa failed to bring me a GPGPU card for Christmas so as to do
experiments using C++, Python, OpenCL (and probably CUDA, though OpenCL
is the industry standard now).  I will though be buying one for myself
in the next couple of weeks. 

> "Russel Winder"  wrote in message 
> news:mailman.107.1325862128.16222.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 16:35 +0200, Manu wrote:
> [...]
> 
> Currently GPGPU is dominated by C and C++ using CUDA (for NVIDIA
> addicts) or OpenCL (for Apple addicts and others).  It would be good if
> D could just take over this market by being able to manage GPU kernels
> easily.  The risk is that PyCUDA and PyOpenCL beat D to market
> leadership.
> 

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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