[Bf-cycles] OpenCL and AMD GPUs

David Fenner d4vidfenner at gmail.com
Tue Jan 27 22:12:50 CET 2015


Hi mr. Kyriazis.
Been wondering if you guys at amd have made any progress, even if it's only
a start.
Thanks
David.

2014-10-27 21:44 GMT-04:00 Brecht Van Lommel <brechtvanlommel at pandora.be>:

> I think it's great to see AMD getting involved like this.
>
> Splitting the kernel is certainly a challenge, the Cycles megakernel
> is quite complicated, and to be honest it's been pushed further than
> it should be. We've had to do lots of workarounds and tweaks so that
> it runs on NVidia, and it just barely works.
>
> If the kernel splitting works out, that's likely to improve Cycles GPU
> rendering for everyone, not just for AMD users, but also to better
> support features like SSS or volumetrics, and reduce problems with
> display responsiveness. So this work is very welcome.
>
> Brecht.
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 1:50 AM, Thomas Dinges <blender at dingto.org> wrote:
> > Storm, that mail is totally inappropriate.
> >
> > AMD is offering their help, and whatever you might think about it, you
> should treat people with respect. Any other behavior is not welcome here
> and will be stopped.
> >
> > Thomas
> >
> > Am 28.10.2014 um 01:34 schrieb storm <kartochka22 at yandex.ru>:
> >
> >> В Пн, 27/10/2014 в 20:34 +0000, Kyriazis, George пишет:
> >>> Greetings bf-cycles,
> >>>
> >>> I work for AMD, and we have been thinking about working in the OpenCL
> kernel (read: have started working on it).  It is, I presume, a well-known
> fact that the OpenCL implementation has "issues" on AMD.
> >>>
> >>> Our current approach is to split up the OpenCL kernel into multiple
> (smaller) kernels, in order to get better utilization of the GPU.  I've had
> brief discussions with Martijn, Brecht and Ton, and they all seem eager to
> finally "fix" (for a lack of a better term)  OpenCL, which is a good sign.
> >>>
> >>> Technical details have not been discussed yet, but an open forum like
> bf-cycles is a better place for that.
> >>>
> >>> As a starter point of discussion, I'd like to comment about the main
> motivation of the kernel split.  As it is well known, the AMD OpenCL
> implementation has some problems compiling the current OpenCL kernel.  This
> has been mainly attributed to the length of the kernel, and problems with
> register allocation.  Although the above is correct, those causes fail to
> address the main issue, which is the fact that a huge kernel (like cycles)
> that is a straight-forward port of CPU code, does have a lot of code
> divergence.  Code divergence causes a lot of workitems go idle during
> kernel execution, which is not a good thing.
> >>>
> >>> Splitting the kernel allows for each (sub)-kernel to have better GPU
> utilization, and hence better performance.  As a side-effect, it decreases
> the size of each kernel, and makes things easier for the register
> allocator.  So, the current problems that the AMD OpenCL implementation has
> will not express themselves in a split kernel.  Our current thought is to
> have those individual kernels communicate via queues.
> >>>
> >>> Any questions / comments / etc. about our approach is welcome, of
> course.
> >>>
> >>> Appreciated,
> >>>
> >>> George Kyriazis
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Bf-cycles mailing list
> >>> Bf-cycles at blender.org
> >>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
> >>
> >> Enough is enough.
> >>
> >> Some maybe believe in that 3+year BS, but not I am.
> >>
> >> Compiler related theory was not discovered 5 years ago, but you and all
> >> other ATI/AMD predent that it is (again). You even have group that
> >> mastring it in some sense, making Open64 compiler fork.
> >>
> >> Your company very well avare if all issues, especially dirty internal
> >> workarounds because of hardware design complexity, deadlines, marketing
> >> department pressure, etc.
> >>
> >> I am very doubt any "lawyer talk" sentencens as above after your make
> >> not Turing complete hardware that can run only exterme limited size
> >> program due your make (intentionally, now it is obvious), but same time
> >> _claim that it is full complete and respect standards_. It was not, and
> >> you very vell aware and still say opposite.
> >>
> >> I believe that too many years, keep trying tossing code lines, as 1970
> >> kid was optimise first BASIC program trying shorten variable names,
> >> exchange "case" by "if" chains, manually unroll floatX, damn i cannot
> >> remember all that absurd shit i was trying _YEARS_ to make your half
> >> assed compiler pass w/o segfault. I even not talk about execution time
> >> here.
> >>
> >> ALl that years NVidia ppl just laughing in face.
> >>
> >> I wonder what happens if you fix at leaat 2-3 curent big bugs in you own
> >> OpenCL compiler and hit another bug (undiscovered yet now because we
> >> even cannot reach that corner case), and it will hit again in short
> >> splitted slow (because of obviousextra  PCI transfer hit), that mantra
> >> you will use again? Not "Split kernel", but ... "you must make you every
> >> line contain Fibonacci number of utf8 chars" or maybe "you must
> >> interleave every conditional move with fmad instruction, especially in
> >> full moon phase"?
> >>
> >> Your company too greedy, pissing on every very loyal customer, even such
> >> as I am, and you deserve to lose.
> >>
> >> You should climb Mount Fujiyama once in your life. Climb it twice and
> >> you're a fool. (Japanese Proverb)
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Bf-cycles mailing list
> >> Bf-cycles at blender.org
> >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-cycles mailing list
> > Bf-cycles at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-cycles mailing list
> Bf-cycles at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
>
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