[Mesa-dev] EXTERNAL: Re: OpenCL Clang/Clover Offline Compilation issue

[Dorrington, Albert]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Francisco Jerez [mailto:currojerez at riseup.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 10:35 AM
> 
> Yeah, well, it's up to the implementation how device-specific the binaries
> are.  On r600 they're roughly half-way through the compilation process.  If
> that's not satisfactory to you, you could try to get clang to generate binaries
> directly in the clover format (or even better, get clover to understand ELF
> object files instead of the non-standard format we use now for serializing
> module objects) and get rid of the two-stage compilation process.  That way
> clover will have access to the actual GPU binaries.

I think getting Clover to understand the ELF format would be useful, and conform to the OpenCL spec.
Having it be able to output the ELF format from clGetProgramInfo() via the CL_PROGRAM_BINARIES would be something that would impact the Mesa drivers significantly; Since it would require moving the final binary generation from the drivers into the state tracker.

> >
> Is it that much overhead?  AFAIK a compliant OpenCL implementation has to
> include a compiler anyway, unless you're trying to do embedded profile.  Is
> that what you have in mind?
> 

We are targeting the embedded profile and since our target is also a real-time environment, there are concerns about how online compiles might affect the environment.

-Al