[Opensim-dev] Feature Proposal: BulletSim GPU Acceleration via OpenCL

[Sean McNamara]

On 9/10/13, R.Gunther <rigun at rigutech.nl> wrote:
> A quick reply, i see one problem. most of the servers (inlcudeing mine)
> dont have realy openCL support.
> So not sure what benneifit you want to get from openCL if the GPU dont
> support it.

This may be true, but it is changing. Old CPUs (Core 2 era, Nehalem,
etc.) didn't have an on-board GPU, but if you use a modern CPU,
chances are fairly good it'll have a GPU. The number of GPUs in
datacenters is going up very rapidly, especially since the Ivy Bridge
generation of E3 Xeons introduced on-board GPUs on several models.

Also, many datacenters are switching over to desktop-grade hardware to
reduce costs. The perception that "Xeon is the only way if you are
serious about your data" is evaporating, partly because server-grade
hardware is imperfect and still crash occasionally, and partly because
the quality of desktop-grade hardware is actually very high. The
advantages that Xeon used to have, like huge L3 cache, are becoming
less relevant, especially in comparison to the added cost of purchase
(and thus the cost of hosting plans / rentals involving these chips).

I agree that Linux based servers with only an Intel IGPU will have a
hard time for a little while until the Intel GPU OpenCL support is
fully stabilized and optimized, but Intel and other community members
over at the mesa project are working on it, and you can see the
enormous activity in this space just by reading the commit logs over
at the Mesa project: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa

I've updated the wiki documenting some of the advantages and
disadvantages that we have discussed.

Thanks,

Sean

>
> On 2013-09-10 19:30, Sean McNamara wrote:
>> Hi, all.
>>
>> I think my proposal mostly speaks for itself, so I won't belabor the
>> point in this email. Suffice it to say, if you are interested in
>> performance of OpenSimulator, and in particular physical objects
>> performance, please check out my feature proposal here and provide
>> feedback, either by editing the page directly or replying to this
>> email.
>>
>> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Feature_Proposals/BulletSim_OpenCL
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Sean McNamara
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>
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