[Openicc] GSoC & oyranos

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009, Cyrille Berger wrote:
>
> That said, I trully believe OpenCL is definitively the way to go over GLSL.

It is not clear to me that OpenCL and other existing GPU interfaces 
are a clear path forward in open systems.  These concerns need to be 
addressed:

   o Resource allocation

   o Privilege managment

   o Priority management

   o Security

   o Scheduling

   o Server systems ("headless" with GPU, or shared use of video card
     GPU).

In open systems based on POSIX resource allocation, privilages, and 
security are well understood and supported since these have been core 
to the system since the dawn of time.  With GPU-based acceleration the 
GPU is an adjunct to the rest of the system so an adequate system for 
shared use of the add-on hardware does not automatically exist.  It 
seems to me that proper implementation of this requires direct support 
in the operating system and can't be added via a user space library or 
a device driver.

If only trivial "exclusive use" is supported (i.e. only user owning 
the "console" may use the GPU) then a huge number of potential 
applications are blocked from taking advantage of the GPU and OpenCL 
becomes a hinderance rather than a clear path forward.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/