LibreOffice Calc Set To Get GPU Powered Boost From AMD

darthcamaro writes "We all know that the open source LibreOffice Calc has been slow — forever and a day. That's soon going to change thanks to a major investment made by AMD into the Document Foundation. AMD is helping LibreOffice developers to re-factor Calc to be more performance and to be able to leverage the full power of GPUs and APUs. From the article: '"The reality has been that Calc has not been the fastest spreadsheet in the world," Suse Engineer Michael Meeks admitted. "Quite a large chunk of this refactoring is long overdue, so it's great to have the resources to do the work so that Calc will be a compelling spreadsheet in its own right."'" Math operations will be accelerated using OpenCL, unit tests are being added for the first time, and the supposedly awful object oriented code is being rewritten with a "modern performance oriented approach."

Comments

If you need it you are doing it wrong.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If your spreadsheet needs a gpu to speed up calculations, you are probably misusing spreadsheets. I know most accountants love the spreadsheet and they make insanely complicated things using spreadsheets pushing it far beyond what these are designed to do. But if you have a spreadsheet that needs this much of cpu time to recompute, you should probably be using a full fledged data base with multiple precomputed indexing.

Re:If you need it you are doing it wrong.

[Russ1642]

Custom database applications are expensive and inflexible. Stop trying to tell people what they can't do with a spreadsheet.

Re:If you need it you are doing it wrong.

[gstoddart]

you should probably be using a full fledged data base with multiple precomputed indexing

Well, you can put together a spreadsheet in a few hours.

What you're describing is likely months of custom development and design, and a whole new thing to maintain.

Spreadsheets are popular because they're easily deployed, don't require any extra licensing, and the people who know how to use them can likely do things with them that some of us would be astounded at.

I know people who use spreadsheets for pretty much everything, because it's available to them readily, and they've been using them for a long time.

It's all well and good to suggest that they use a full-fledged database -- but in reality, they can probably get something useful in a few days for a fraction of the cost.

It sounds like in this instance, the code was just horribly inefficient.

Re:If you need it you are doing it wrong.

[jellomizer]

Spreadsheets are good for "throwaway applications" you need to do these calculations fast or gather data, and after a few weeks you don't need it anymore.
If you are going to be following a process with a fairly rigid data sets. You are going to be better off spending the time and money to make a real application with a real database with it. That way the rigidness is to your favor to prevent incompatible creep, and allow for future data gathering abilities.

Using Spreadsheets for your application needs works but it is very flimsy and over the long run you will be spending a lot more time fixing your mistakes (say a bad sort) Or a mistime change and save, or just the wrong click of your mouse you messed up a lot of data.

Re:If you need it you are doing it wrong.

[gstoddart]

You're a developer. Good for you. Good for me too. But our jobs are not to make patronising unrealistic suggestions to smart people who don't have our particular skillset. Our job is to make it easier for other people to do their jobs. Telling them to hire programmers or run off and learn our skills isn't "making it easier".

This. A thousand times this.

Somewhere along the way, our industry has developed a collective mentality "we're smarter than you, and we will give you what we want even if we have no idea of what you need".

Once you get a little further removed and realize that the stuff we're writing/supporting is intended to help the people who do the real, bread and butter parts of the business -- you start to realize if we're an impediment to them, it's worse than if we weren't there at all.

They're not interested in some smug little bastard looking down his nose at them because they couldn't possibly do what he does. They're interested in getting their stuff done as quickly as possible.

I can tell you there is nothing more frustrating and counterproductive than some kid straight out of school who thinks the world needs to bow at his feet and stand aside to allow him to tell them how they should do things. Sadly, I've also met developers who have been in the industry a long time who still act like that.

In many industries, the people who do the real work of the company have highly specialized knowledge, and software is just a tool. And that tool is either helping them get stuff done, or frustrating the hell out of them.

Acting like we know better than they do (when we in fact know nothing at all about their domain expertise) is at best condescending, and at worst an impediment and a liability.

Re:Libre Office Calc isn't that good.

[gstoddart]

An unsuitable tool might do as a temporary substitute, but long term you really want to use an appropriate tool for the job.

Look at it this way ... the 40-ton truck in your metaphor (Excel or something like it) is provided to everyone in the company from day 1. From the receptionist to the CEO, everyone gets a 40-ton truck. You know that everyone can carry the same stuff in their 40-ton trucks because they are all pretty much the same.

Furthermore, before you even leave highschool, people tech you how to use that 40-ton truck.

Now, imagine that you need to solve a new problem, which is shockingly similar to problems you've already solved.

So you could go through 6 months to a year of fighting to get someone to help you build a station wagon with a baby seat and tinted windows, because the 40-ton truck is overkill. And you need to convince someone help pay for the station wagon since they didn't budget for one of those.

After you've gone through all of that process, the station wagon has never materialized, the cost overruns make it look like you're buying a gold-plated Rolls Royce, but the engine is still a cardboard mock-up, and the people building it for you have forgotten to include headlamps, windshield wipers, turn signals, seatbelts, and a speedometer. But if you will submit a change order to have them build those, you can wait another period of time (and even more money).

Or, you take the 40-ton truck to do what you need, take a little extra time to find a parking spot, and in the end you've got something which covered your needs in a shorter period of time and for no extra costs except your time. You can get to the grocery store and back in a few hours, and you're done.

That is why people use spreadsheets and don't always jump straight for the custom application.