Comments on: Michael Wolfe on what we can (and shouldn’t) expect from OpenCL http://insidehpc.com/2009/09/11/michael-wolfe-opencl-promises-challenges/ HPC News Without the Noise for Supercomputing Professionals | insideHPC Sun, 19 May 2013 10:46:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: <fb:name linked="false" useyou="false" uid="1175563457">John West</fb:name> http://insidehpc.com/2009/09/11/michael-wolfe-opencl-promises-challenges/#comment-182256 John West Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:41:28 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=7046#comment-182256 Well it didn't turn out that way for MPI, but it wouldn't have been terrible if it had. I think that a key difference between then and now may be that it is actually relatively easy to get an MPI program that will run. It is slightly harder to get one to run correctly, and very difficult to get one to run correctly, at scale, in a way that is performance portable. But there is a very gentle slope to get started with it. This is not true (at least from my perspective) of OpenCL (or CUDA for that matter). That pool has no shallow end. Well it didn’t turn out that way for MPI, but it wouldn’t have been terrible if it had.

I think that a key difference between then and now may be that it is actually relatively easy to get an MPI program that will run. It is slightly harder to get one to run correctly, and very difficult to get one to run correctly, at scale, in a way that is performance portable. But there is a very gentle slope to get started with it. This is not true (at least from my perspective) of OpenCL (or CUDA for that matter). That pool has no shallow end.

]]> By: Chris http://insidehpc.com/2009/09/11/michael-wolfe-opencl-promises-challenges/#comment-182245 Chris Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:34:31 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=7046#comment-182245 Everyone said that MPI would just be for language and library developers too. Remember how that turned out? Everyone said that MPI would just be for language and library developers too. Remember how that turned out?

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