[libre-riscv-dev] Vulkan vs OpenCL and Alternatives

[Lauri Kasanen]

On Fri, 6 Mar 2020 20:32:57 +0000
"Immanuel, Yehowshua U" <yimmanuel3 at gatech.edu> wrote:

> So one question that I’ve been thinking about is “how good is Vulkan” for GPGPU?
>
> That is, how easy is it to express thing like matmul and dot in Vulkan?
>
> How does it compare against OpenCL. From a practical standpoint, I think it makes more sense for us to support Vulkan since Apple, the original proponents of OpenCL withdrew their support from the standard a few years ago anyways.
>
> Also, will the LibreSOC “GPU” be able to execute OpenCL code? I imagine that we could compile OpenCL into SPIR-V and then perhaps have some SPIR-V driver evaluate the SPIR-V?

There are a number of "opencl on a cpu" drivers. I'd imagine it's a
lower-hanging fruit to pick one of those and teach it the most
important opcodes.

- Lauri