[Bf-cycles] AMD OpenCL

[Nazim Mer]

Thanks, looking forward to my next GPU purchase

On 22 July 2015 at 09:12, Sergey Sharybin <sergey.vfx at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I can't tell on behalf of AMD team about plans for porting improvements
> from OSX to Windows/Linux. We are in contact with the team and when things
> becomes more clear we'll let the community to know. All i can say from
> myself here -- i'm really willing to have those improvements ported to
> other platforms as well.
>
> The split kernel we'll continue improving/fixing. There are some issue in
> it which makes it unstable on certain platforms (some bad memory access or
> so, makes kernel to stuck). This thing is to be investigated and fixed
> there first. After that we'll be looking into supporting wider variety
> range of features there (SSS, Volume, branched path tracing). And
> eventually we'll need to switch to OpenCL 2.0 and use dynamic kernel
> scheduling, which will eliminate roundtrip to CPU for every kernel
> invokation.
>
> As for CUDA -- it should also benefit from split kernel. In fact, one of
> the first ever tasks i did after picking op development of the initial
> patch was to organice the code in a way which will be most simple for reuse
> on CUDA.
>
> it's also to be mentioned here that the work which was done by AMD OSX
> team will help us a lot improving performance of the split kernel and
> remove some workarounds in the code. So even in the scope of split kernel
> their work is really welcome and useful.
>
> As for feature difference, you can check this
> https://blender.org/manual/render/cycles/features.html Roughly speaking
> currently it's only transparent shadows which is a difference, but it
> should be possible to enable volume/SSS. I'm looking into this to happen
> for the 2.76.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 9:49 AM, Nazim Mer <nazim.mer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello Blender heads,
>> Its great that Blender Cycles is finally working on AMD GPUs.
>> However, I got to ask.
>> Are the osx amd opencl developers gonna move those improvements made in
>> el capitan to the official amd driver for other users on windows and linux?
>>
>> If the megakernel works in el Capitan, whilst also be better than the
>> split kernel, where is the future for the split kernel?
>>
>> I thought the split kernel was going to make its way into the cycles cuda
>> code?
>> Especially since DUDE from luxrender has seen massive improvements from
>> splitting the luxrender kernel?
>>
>> Is the split kernel going to be shelfed, or is it going to be the new
>> code face of cycles, as i heard that even nvidia gpus are starting struggle
>> with the megakernal
>>
>> What are the plans for the split kernel....
>>
>> "AMD team who's working on OSX drivers for El Capitan (OS X 10.11) did
>> really nice work on improving the driver which is now capable of compiling
>> and running OpenCL megakernel. The following features are supported:
>>
>>    - Hard and rough surface BSDF
>>    - Transparent shadows
>>    - Motion blur (camera, object, deformation)
>>    - Hair
>>
>>
>> "
>> Are these features working for the split kernel ?
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> Nazim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Bf-cycles at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
>
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>
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