Comment by mschuetz
2 hours ago
> The best way to program GPUs is face up to the reality that they are not the same machine as the CPU, write your kernels in separate files, and launch them manually,
Yes, I also prefer doing it that way, but in Cuda with the driver API. Allows you to handle kernels like shaders, including editing and hot-reloading at runtime.
The reason I'm sticking with CUDA is because it's by far the most convenient API to use, without nonsense like 50-liners to alloc memory or the need to manage descriptors, bindings, queue families, etc.
> The reason I'm sticking with CUDA is because it's by far the most convenient API to use, without nonsense like 50-liners to alloc memory or the need to manage descriptors, bindings, queue families, etc.
I was there when the OpenCL committee was deciding on that sort of stuff.
As I recall, and it's been two decades and a lot of sleepless nights since then, there was real pushback at the time against OpenGL-style default bindings. So folks didn't want to establish an implicit command queue or any other default objects attached to other objects. Part of it is because OpenGL was perceived as clumsy and passé, some of it was because it is not friendly to multi-threaded applications.
Those first meetings were a shitshow full of tension, implicit threats from Apple, and backroom deals. Kudos to Neil Trevett for chairing the group; I I bet it wasn't fun for him either.
That's unfortunate. Cuda has shown that, when done right, defaults and a convenience layer can make for a well received API without sacrificing performance.
Yes, I wanted defaults as well, particularly a default context and command queue.
Design by committee is a real phenomenon. And people in a committee know that, but they are also helpless.