BrookGPU: General Purpose Programming on GPUs

An anonymous reader writes " BrookGPU is a compiler and runtime system that provides an easy, C-like programming environment (read: No GPU programming experience needed) for today's GPUs. A shader program running on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra achieves over 20 GFLOPS, roughly equivalent to a 10 GHz Pentium 4. Combine this with the increased memory bandwidth, 25.3 GB/sec peak compared to the Pentium 4's 5.96 GB/sec peak, and you've got a seriously fast compute engine but programming them has been a real pain. BrookGPU adds simple data parallel language additions to C which allow programmers to specify certain parts of their code to run on the GPU. The compiler and runtime takes care of the rest. Here is the Project Page and Sourceforge page."

Comments

Re:Basically like having two processors...

[Doc Ruby]

Keeping the prehistoric Atari/Commodore flamewar alive, I point out that I used to program multiprocesing on my Atari 400. Syncing its ANTIC vertical blank server routines with 6502 client routines through its wonderfully generic SIO scheduler, I was multiprocessing in 1981! Harnessing fast GPUs to speed general logic is at least as old as the Roman spatial metaphor for value, where "superior" means both "higher" and "better", et cetera.