Ten Reasons Why Android Should Support OpenCL

Ten Reasons Why Android Should Support OpenCL

>> WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2013

In an earlier post, I explained why a Google engineer's grievance with OpenCL was mistaken. Now here are ten reasons why Google should make OpenCL the high-performance language of choice on Android:

10. GPU vendors are the driving force behind OpenCL and their tools provide stable, high-speed kernel execution. When GPU technology improves, OpenCL improves immediately.
GPU的计算能力强

9. If Android becomes a desktop OS, it should be able to access desktop GPUs and mobile GPUs. OpenCL has broad support on both platforms.

移动设备也支持GPU

8. Aparapi makes it easy to launch OpenCL kernels from Java. It's open-source and GSS Mahadevan has successfully used it on Android.

有方便的工具让OpenCL的kernel被java调用，有一些android应用已经在使用这些了。

7. In addition to CPUs and GPUs, OpenCL kernels can be executed on DSPs and FPGAs. Future high-performance devices will be more likely to support OpenCL than any other language.

很多的硬件设备都开始支持OpenCL，将来还会有更多。

6. When OpenCL devices are added to a context, they can work together to execute kernels. With OpenCL, embedded devices have the potential of accessing more powerful systems to crunch data.

OpenCL的架构可以让kernel在不同的device之间调度，这样可以在嵌入式设备上用OpenCL，同时可以通过让他访问更牛的设备上计算。

5. One of OpenCL's chief advantages is OpenCL-OpenGL interoperability, which allows OpenCL kernels to process OpenGL buffer data before rendering starts. It would take a lot of work to add a similar capability for Renderscript.

OpenCL可以直接调用OpenGL的buffer。

4. Currently, native Android developers need to learn x86 and ARM/NEON instructions to ensure high-performance. Intel and ARM are both strong supporters of OpenCL, so if Android adopted OpenCL, native developers would only have to learn one language.

Intel和ARM的android设备都想要更高的性能，这个时候正好他们都支持OpenCL。

3. Google has put aside O3D in favor of WebGL and the Renderscript graphics engine in favor of OpenGL. If history is any guide, Google will choose OpenCL over Renderscript computation.

Google大力支持WebGL和OpenGL，将来也会支持OpenCL。也就是业界有几个大牛公司领头。。

2. The general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) community is small and fragmented. It's unlikely that a new, OS-specific language will attract a developer base large enough to justify its existence.

其他的GPGPU的编程语言社区比较小，基本上不能挑战OpenCL的地位。说白了这也就跟当年的OpenGL类似。

1. If iOS supports OpenCL and Android doesn't, GPU-accelerated apps will run faster on iOS. High-performance mobile computing isn't a big deal yet, but there's no telling what the future may bring.

如果iOS的设备支持了OpenCL如果android的不支持，GPU支持的app就可以很快。将来移动设备的高性能计算，将会是一个方向^ps：这句话我也说过。。

Posted by Matt Scarpino  at 9:56 PM 

http://www.openclblog.com/2013/04/ten-reasons-why-android-should-adopt.html