Glide was simplified GL to run on cards that couldn't do full GL (e.g 16 bit textures).
CUDA is not simplified open CL, it's the other way around. Open CL is far behind CUDA for functionality and features not ahead.
CUDA is more Glide than Direct X.
In a year or two, every new x86 based PC shipped is likely to have OpenCL support. Even Direct Compute might be there.
While CUDA, like the Power architecture, will likely retain its (very profitable) niche for some time, its seems unlikely to persevere in the mainstream long term due to its closed ecosystem and limited vendor (ie, nvidia only) support.
Nvidia just doesn't (and won't) have the level of market share to pull that off - and they have said as much.
You can talk about ROI all you want, but vendor lock in is a huge off setting risk in that regard. You don't want to make a huge investment in the next Silicon Graphics - or similar. Those Octane workstations still look pretty sweet though...
In any case, we need to see AMD get their big boy pants on and show us the fruit of their Compute focus.
If BigK is to compute what the 680 is to gaming, I am ready to be impressed. Bring it on
I wasn't speaking technically, I was speaking from the standpoint that it is one vendors Special Sauce technology implementation.
An imperfect analogy to be sure, but they all are. The previous assertion is that CUDA is like Direct X versus Open GL, and that is more certainly far from the case.
My point was to emphasize the proprietary nature of directx just like cuda.
There's a difference here, though. DX isn't necessarily tied to hardware but rather software, namely Windows/Microsoft. The Intel CPU compiler example you gave is spot on with respect to why CUDA is so efficient but it also poses a problem as well: What if you want to have the same app on an ARM chip? You can't without breaking it down and building from scratch. nVidia knew this going in and knows this now better than before, which is why they signed on along with the others to push for openCL as a standard because in the end it helps them just as much as it does the others. The only real place where the two would meet would be in the HPC environment and only as openCL slowly creeps in but that's likely years away (though there have been some strides already made already in that respect).
Big Kepler should be a beast but I wonder about the price tag. Also, I wonder whether nVidia neutered it's CUDA/openCL performance in order to sell more Teslas as they carry better returns.
I definitely don't like the way they cripple their gaming hardware to sell more quadros and teslas.On the contrary it could have attracted a lot of people towards cuda.Hopefully we will see some breakthrough regarding opencl in the coming years.
With OpenCL there's AMD and nVidia.With nVidia, there is Cuda and OpenCL.
Better than AMD? I'm assuming you mean pushing for openCL as a standard? Otherwise...
in openCL nVidia haven't done very well at all.
As far as performance goes it's an absolute slaughter. The Tesla cards will certainly make up that gap and likely pull ahead but it'll be at a far higher cost. Recently AMD have been pushing openCL/Directcompute far harder than has nVidia and with good reason: They want to make use of their APUs and GCN architecture in the HPC segment as well as mobile and desktop. nVidia, on the other hand, has neutered their desktop discrete cards in order to push their Tesla designs.
How has their support been better? nVidia consistently pushes their proprietary solution in place of OpenCL. Sure they support OpenCL, but IMHO its more of just a bullet point to put on their spec sheet.
surely you will not be putting this card in your sig pc?Glad I could wait... well, glad the 680 availability is low or I would of got one.
Definitely getting one of these instead... that is if availability is there at launch. $50-100 more doesn't matter too much for me considering I get $250 off my next video card. This should be an awesome step up from my 9800GT.