AMD today announced that the world renowned ATI Radeon HD 4800 series, now found in some of the highest performance iMac and Mac Pro configurations, complements Snow Leopard’s fully compliant OpenCL Version 1.0 implementation.
As an open standard specification, OpenCL is a key enabler of ATI Stream technology, which allows developers to create highly efficient applications balanced across CPU and GPU resources for superior performance running on Snow Leopard systems.
“Software developers can better serve end-users through open standards and OpenCL, a major component of Snow Leopard, that enables AMD’s ATI Stream technology to accelerate mainstream applications through the processing the power of a GPU,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group, in the press release. “Whether you’re enjoying HD multimedia content or playing the newest games, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 and ATI Radeon HD 4850 in the latest Mac Pro and iMac help ATI Stream-enabled applications run faster.”
ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics are available in the latest Mac Pro, while the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics power the latest iMac. Designed as high-performance parts for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 family of products, these feature-rich graphics processors redefine computer entertainment with advanced capabilities including support for the latest games and a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience on HD-capable monitors for use at work, at home or at play.
ATI Stream technology leverages multi-core CPU and GPU architectures to accelerate the execution of stream-enabled highly parallel functions enabling software developers to enable improved performance and interactivity across a broad range of OpenCL capable compute platforms.
Source: Advanced Micro Devices
Can anyone with Snow Leopard tell me if About This Mac now indicates whether the Graphics card is OpenCL capable? Is there a list published somewhere of our Open Cl Graphic Card options for the Mac?
@Spark
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
The link contains the list. Scroll down to where it says OpenCL. On your computer, the graphics card information is in the System Profiler, which you can open from About This Mac.
My iMac with NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT, and snow Leopard, says nothing about OpenCL support in the profiler. This GPU is not supported, by the way, but the profiler says nothing and has no such field. So my guess is no. Unless it shows support where it exists and otherwise keeps quite, which seems doubtful.
@Andrew
Thanks for the link. I know about the graphic card info in the System Profiler. What I was asking is if that info now displays Open CL capability. And if so, is it Yes/No, or does it only display something if the graphics card IS Open CL ready. My old X1900 probably is not.
I can’t wait to buy the apps that actually take advantage of Open CL.
Er, what apps currently take advantage of Open CL?
Apples SL page lists OpenCL capable cards.. there a bunch of nvidia and only 2 ati cards supported. I went with the higher end nvidia for my imac for that reason…even if the ati is a better card.
Anybody that bit-torrents Snow Leopard makes me sick. Apple gave us such an amazing deal for such much goodness packed into the new cat.
For most of us, the graphics controller we have at time of purchase is the one we’re stuck with. My iMac from summer ’08 has the HD 2400 XT, which as I understand it, can’t take advantage SL’s new Open CL capability. Bummer. On the other hand, my box is no less capable than it was last week.
We just need the software. But is this not always the case. Software will always trail hardware, always.
Right now, no program supports OpenCL, much less uses it throughout.
But the standard is less than a year old, and only now has an OS to develop for, so give it a couple month, you’ll start seeing plugins and such.
Two Benchmark tools currently developed or ported (respectively):
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/32266/opencl-benchmark
http://kioku.sys-k.net/archives/2009/08/opencl_ao_bench.html
Very amusing (not) to read this boasting from AMD, my experience with OpenCL support on an AMD HD 4870 has been terrible throughout the SnowLeopard seed process and in the final release it is still much less capable than on NVidia cards, for instance there is _no_ OpenCL image support on AMD cards (it was removed in one of the last seeds due to extreme bugginess), which makes OpenCL useless for processing data that can be shared with OpenGL on AMD, something which works perfectly fine on NVidia cards…
OpenCL Info
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=170796
on a hackintosh
[Device 0]
Name: GeForce 9600 GT
Vendor: NVIDIA
Type: GPU
Device Version: OpenCL 1.0
Driver Version: CLH 1.0
Compute Units: 64
Work Group Size: 512
Clock: 1750 MHz
Global Memory: 1024 MB
Local Memory: 16 KB
Cache Size: 0 KB
Cache Line Size: 0 Bytes
Available: Yes
Double-Precision: No
Extensions:
cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
cl_APPLE_gl_sharing
cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor
cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions
[Device 1]
Name: GeForce 9600 GT
Vendor: NVIDIA
Type: GPU
Device Version: OpenCL 1.0
Driver Version: CLH 1.0
Compute Units: 64
Work Group Size: 512
Clock: 1750 MHz
Global Memory: 1024 MB
Local Memory: 16 KB
Cache Size: 0 KB
Cache Line Size: 0 Bytes
Available: Yes
Double-Precision: No
Extensions:
cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
cl_APPLE_gl_sharing
cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor
cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions
[Device 2]
Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz
Vendor: Intel
Type: CPU
Device Version: OpenCL 1.0
Driver Version: 1.0
Compute Units: 4
Work Group Size: 1
Clock: 2400 MHz
Global Memory (Total): 6144 MB
Global Memory (Host): 4608 MB
Global Memory (PCIe): 1536 MB
Local Memory: 16 KB
Cache Size: 4096 KB
Cache Line Size: 64 Bytes
Available: Yes
Double-Precision: Yes
Extensions:
cl_khr_fp64
cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics
cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
cl_APPLE_gl_sharing
cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor
cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions
I actually hope that some of the older cards will be supported in .x releases of Snow Leopard.
I have the 2600 XT and I’m hoping that AMD focused their efforts on the higher end cards to start with, and will possibly write whatever software or drivers are needed for earlier cards.
It may not be possible, but hope springs eternal!
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@GregoriousM
It sure would be nice if my iMac from Nov 2007 (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB of GDDR3 memory) could take advantage of OpenCL. But it isn’t going to happen.
The good news, however, is that by the time OpenCL is in widespread use I’ll be able to rationalize the need for a new Mac by passing the old one down to the kids
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WOW,
I can now get a non-upgradable $2,200 iMac with last year’s GPU tech. Cool!