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NVIDIA Tegra K1: First Mobile Chip With Hardware-Accelerated OpenCL

Posted by timothy on from the bragging-rights dept.

New submitter shervinemami writes (starting with a pretty big disclaimer: "I'm an Engineer at NVIDIA.") The latest CompuBench GPU benchmarks show NVIDIA's Tegra K1 running whole OpenCL algorithms around 5x faster than any other mobile device, and individual instructions around 20x faster! This huge jump is because mobile companies have been saying they support OpenCL on mobile devices since early 2013, but what they don't mention is that they only have software API support, not hardware-accelerated OpenCL running faster on their GPUs than CPUs. Now that NVIDIA's Tegra-K1 chip has started shipping in devices and thus is available for full benchmarking, it is clearly the only mobile chip that actually gives you proper hardware-accelerated OpenCL (and CUDA of course!). The K1 is also what's in Google's Project Tango 3-D mapping tablet.

10 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Tools available? by Vincent77 · · Score: 2

    Does it have tools support for OpenCL? For Geforce there is no tools support and without it, and I've found out the hard way that it's too difficult to make it perform without proper insights that tools can give.

  2. False. by WilyCoder · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Nexus 10 I purchased on launch day had a working OpenCL implementation. I ran some kernels on it and it was definitely GPU accelerated. A software update actually removed the CL driver later on as Google backtracked on CL support and began promoting their Renderscript instead.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/...

    Also, the nVidia jetson-tk1 that I purchased does NOT have a working OpenCL implementation.

    Look at the comments from the nvidia employee: http://devblogs.nvidia.com/par...

    This article is just free advertising for nVidia, and its false information too!

    They make great hardware, why do they have to be so damn dishonest all the time?

    1. Re:False. by shervinemami · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Anandtech article clearly mentions that OpenCL in Nexus 10 was an unsupported feature that hackers figured out how to use but it wasn't actually intended for developers to use officially, hence why it disappeared soon after an update. So I guess you are right that Tegra K1 is perhaps not the first mobile chip to do GPU accelerated OpenCL, but it is the first one to officially offer it and provide full support to ensure it runs well without bugs and without high power draw, etc.

      And yes it's true that the Jetson TK1 embedded Linux board doesn't support OpenCL at all, but that is due to Linux OS related issues. There are only OpenCL drivers for Tegra K1 on Android, not Linux (unfortunately!). That doesn't change the fact that the Tegra K1 chip supports hardware-accelerated OpenCL on Android.

      So I don't see either of those 2 points as being false information or dishonest.

    2. Re:False. by WilyCoder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Tegra K1 ... is the first one to officially offer it (OpenCL)"
      "TK1 embedded Linux board doesn't support OpenCL at all"

      ^^^That's some fine nVidia double-think right there ^^^

      "Tegra K1 chip supports hardware-accelerated OpenCL on Android."

      Ahh there it is, finally the cold hard truth. Took us a little bit of time to get to the truth now, hmmm?

      "but that is due to Linux OS related issues"

      Oh we are back to playing loose with the truth now!

      So we have Cuda on TK1 but not CL because of Linux OS issues. Yeah, right. This site is the PERFECT place to finger-point at Linux so thank you for providing us with some weekend entertainment!

  3. Re:I have K-9 9th generation K-1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    ALL it does is bark WTF?

    You must have a defective version. Maybe you should take it to see a doctor.

  4. sorry, but this is BS by awb131 · · Score: 4, Informative

    NVIDIA is not supplying a proper OpenCL toolchain for the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS-based developer's kit for the Jetson Tegra TK1 hardware. As a result, it is effectively not possible to develop OpenCL applications for the chip, unless you are a big enough operator to develop your own OpenCL compiler. If you click through to TFA, you will note that I pointed this out months ago. Claiming that OpenCL is properly supported for this hardware by NVIDIA is simply not true.

    --
    "There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
    1. Re:sorry, but this is BS by shervinemami · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OpenCL isn't supported by Tegra K1 on Linux4Tegra (ie: Jetson TK1 embedded board) but it is clearly supported on Android, hence why this benchmark was able to execute and post results.

  5. Re:Very misleading by shervinemami · · Score: 2

    "Conformant" does not mean it is actually running faster due to GPU hardware acceleration. On mobile, "conformant" OpenCL usually just means it runs on the CPU or runs on the GPU at a very slow speed, as opposed to Tega K1 that is giving clear GPU speedups.

  6. Re:What's the point of OpenCL on mobile by WilyCoder · · Score: 2

    image processing of the device's camera output would be one such use...

  7. Pointless because Android will not support it. by goruka · · Score: 2

    Google "do not be evil" single handedly decided that OpenCL will never run on Android and instead is pushing for their crappy alternative, RenderScript:

    https://code.google.com/p/andr...

    No matter how valid the arguments of those who favor OpenCL are, Google just answers with FUD.