Fwd: GPU Engine for Octave

[jaideep singh]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jaideep singh <address@hidden>
Date: Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 10:41 PM
Subject: Re: GPU Engine for Octave
To: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>


Dear All,

We want to know if there has been any initiative in the past to use GPUs for Octave, if yes, we can do the same.

-js

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 10:32 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:

On  8-Dec-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 4:54 PM, jaideep singh <address@hidden> wrote:
| >> So, if octave users want to use the immense parallel computing
| >> capabilities of the GPUs, is there any solution for the license conflict,
| >> how do we go about it?
| >> -js
|
| As long as you don't distribute the result, you can link Octave to
| whatever you want to. For free software using GPUs, there's OpenCL:
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opencl#Implementation
| Note that OpenCL is a standard, not a specific software, so it can be
| implemented as a wrapper over CUDA. You'll be even able to distribute
| the binaries (under GPL terms) that can link to any OpenCL
| implementation, including a proprietary one.

Is there any free software library that interfaces with GPU hardware?
Just because OpenCL is an "open standard" (whatever that might mean in
this case) does not mean that using it is necessarily GPL compatible.
Simply declaring some interface to be an "open standard" doesn't allow
you to sidestep the terms of the GPL.

jwe