[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: OpenCLRaw 1.0.1000

[Jeff Heard]

There was a missing include in the cabal file.  fixed...

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 7:49 PM, Jeff Heard<jefferson.r.heard at gmail.com> wrote:
> All, I've released a raw binding to the OpenCL platform on Hackage.
> The main differences between it and the C bindings are that constants
> have been replaced by newtypes for type safety reasons, void-essential
> functions that return a token errorcode return a Maybe ErrorCode, and
> functions that return a handle/ptr and return an error-code through an
> out-parameter return instead an Either ErrorCode a.  Modules are
> grouped roughly by the section in which they appear in the standard.
>
> I'm working on an OpenCL binding that is a little more "cooked" as
> well as a high-level OpenCL binding.
>
> OpenCL is a platform for single-host heterogenous, data-parallel
> computing that follows roughly the OpenGL and OpenAL conventions for
> how the library is architected.  It will be available by default in
> the next version of Apple's OS-X, and there are drivers for AMD
> Opteron/Athlons and nVidia CUDA-based graphics cards.
>
> The basic procedure behind running an OpenCL program is:
>
> 1. get a list of platforms
> 2. choose a device on the platform that fits  your needs
> 3. create a context for the platform and the device
> 4. compile a program and "kernels" written in OpenCL/C
> 5. create memory buffer objects.
> 6. execute kernels on the memory buffer objects.
> 7. rinse hands, repeat.
>
> Obviously this is not very functional, but we can't get there without
> a raw binding.   Data Parallel computing is somewhere Haskell is
> excelling; hopefully this will generate some interest in creating a
> DPH binding to OpenCL's C99-based language, OpenCL/C.
>