Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Details on Ettus E100?

[Elvis Dowson]

On Dec 14, 2010, at 11:14 PM, Matt Ettus wrote:

>>> Since the OMAP has a GPU incorporated does that mean that we could use it
>>> for processing? Is there a CUDA equivalent for this type of GPU?
> 
> 
> Doug has it pretty correct here.  This is one of those areas I would call 
> theoretically possible, but unlikely to be worth the trouble.  You would need 
> Imagination Tech and TI to get together to release an OpenCL implementation 
> for the GPU, and even then it isn't the world's fastest.
> 
> The way I look at it, you have 3 much better, easier to use options -- the 
> ARM, the DSP, and the FPGA.  If you put all those to good use and still need 
> more power, the GPU is not likely to contribute appreciably.


A quick search on the internet yields some interesting info, but at the end, 
you'd probably get much better results off the FPGA. 

Some work done by Nokia:

http://www.hotchips.org/archives/hc21/1_sun/HC21.23.2.OpenCLTutorial-Epub/HC21.23.270.Pulli-OpenCL-in-Handheld-Devices.pdf

The OMAP4430 seems to have support for OpenCL as mentioned in this article:
http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/mobile_momentum/archive/2010/02/15/omap-4-platform-ready-to-lead-the-human-device-interaction-revolution.aspx

You can get a Pandaboard from DigiKey for USD$179 which has the OMAP4430 and 
the required GPMC interface available on the Pandaboard expansion header, to 
experiment with. 

A statement from TI from this link: 
http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/omap_applications_processors/f/447/t/43845.aspx

"TI does not support OpenCL for the SGX530.   IMG does advertises GP-GPU 
applications on the SGX, but TI does not license these OpenCL drivers.  The 
best available solution would be to use the OpenGL ES 2.0 shading language 
(GLSL ES 1.0) to do the single precision matrix operations that you need.  
Rather than displaying the output results as pixels in a framebuffer, your 
program on the ARM can use the results."

Another statement from Imagination Technologies from this link: 
http://www.imgtec.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=194&PID=2668

"The SGX530 core design that's in an OMAP 3530 board is an example of one of 
our products. This was licenced to TI and is a design with the capability of 
supporting the OpenCL Embedded profile. However, it requires the correct 
software i.e. drivers to expose this functionality, just like drivers are 
required for OpenGL ES, DirectX etc. Once we have licenced a core like this we 
work with the customer (in this case TI) to support them in exposing the 
functionality that they wish to have available in their product. So if a 
customer wants to expose OpenCL then this work happens, but it requires time 
and the desire of the customer. This means that developers don't always have 
full access to every feature that our cores are capable of because the driver 
support is still being added or the customer doesn't wish to expose that 
feature. 

In summary: we advertise an ability of our core design and our customers get a 
core design that can do this if they choose to enable it. The developer gets a 
core with access to the features that our customer has exposed. So developers 
don't always have access to every feature of our core. 

Licence deals involve a certain amount of confidentiality so I can't talk about 
future products or support from our customers so I can't tell you when or if 
OpenCL will be enabled on specific platforms on this forum at this time."

Elvis Dowson