NVIDIA has officially committed to restoring the OpenCL samples and full profiler support in the next SDK release. We forced their hand by demanding better industry standards for all developers. Keep watching their developer portal to ensure they follow through on this promise.
November 1, 2013
Final supporters
Introduction: CUDA, OpenCL, GPGPU
CUDA and OpenCL are techniques to program GPUs, where CUDA only works on NVIDIA GPUs. CUDA and OpenCL are often referred to as GPGPU- General-purpose computing on graphics processing units. Various researchers have concluded that with OpenCL and CUDA comparable results can be reached.
Besides GPUs, OpenCL is designed to also work on DSPs, mobile processors, FPGAs and modern CPUs. It is not performance-portable, but all techniques learnt can be used on the various platforms.
OpenCL is very promising, but like with all open standards it needs support of the developers and goodwill from the participating companies.
The problem
Nvidia is not including OpenCL samples in the latest CUDA SDK and has removed profiler-support for OpenCL, and instead focusing more on their proprietary CUDA. The reason is simple: every developer who chooses CUDA over OpenCL, is limited to NVIDIA hardware.
As a Khronos member with an excellent record in implementing and promoting standards like OpenGL, this is a surprising and even unacceptable behavior from Nvidia.
OpenCL developers need a full-blown SDK (such as OpenCL samples and aprofiler), so the potential and limitations of NVIDIA GPUs can be learned. Also industry standards like OpenCL help in building up a bigger market for GPU computing, and will be beneficial to Nvidia in the long term.
What I aim by signing this petition
By signing this petition, I request Nvidia to put back the OpenCL samples and profiler in their latest CUDA SDK. By this, the choice is put back to the developer, as it should.
Updates
Reached 500 supporters
August 29, 2013
August 6, 2013
NVIDIA remains silent on our request to restore OpenCL support in their SDK. Email your designated NVIDIA representative today and demand they stop locking developers into proprietary walls.
Reached 100 supporters
September 10, 2012
September 7, 2012
We are approaching one hundred signatures and need to push harder to get the attention of the leadership at NVIDIA. Post the link to your Facebook page right now. Text three contacts in the developer community and tell them to sign today.
68 Comments
Lack of OpenCL support is the only reason I haven't bought a Jetson. If Nvidia wants me to choose between them and everyone else(AMD, Intel, Qualcom, etc.), then I choose everyone else.
Dear Nvidia, Please provide top-tier support for OpenCL. You already make quality, stable hardware with reliable drivers on Linux. To hold on to this position of strength by slowly back-pedaling from OpenCL shows insecurity instead of confidence. It also signals a focus of Nvidia's GPGPU for only HPC and not mobile.
For me as a computational scientist who is funded by the public it is only fair to return the results of my research to the public in the form of free open source code. Consequently, I can only rely on open standards such as OpenCL. Good hardware does not need a software-based vendor-lock.
We are using OpenCL for delivering portable multicore/GPU-accelerated SAR image processing. We instructed our customers, partners and students to stop buying NVidia and move to other solutions to fully take advantage of the work we are doing. No more NVidia untill OpenCL 1.2/2.0 will be fully supported.
Not having OpenCL 1.2 or higher will require me to dump my Nvidia hardware and purchase new AMD Radeon hardware. I've been a huge Nvidia supporter for many years but with the lack of interest for what we want is making me change my mind.
Bought my NVIDIA because OpenCL was required for my Adobe Photoshop CC 2014
I'm tasked with developing software that is not exclusively tied to Nvidia.
Share Petition
Don't stop at signing, share the petition link with friends to multiply our impact
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NVIDIA has officially committed to restoring the OpenCL samples and full profiler support in the next SDK release. We forced their hand by demanding better industry standards for all developers. Keep watching their developer portal to ensure they follow through on this promise.
November 1, 2013
Final supporters
Introduction: CUDA, OpenCL, GPGPU
CUDA and OpenCL are techniques to program GPUs, where CUDA only works on NVIDIA GPUs. CUDA and OpenCL are often referred to as GPGPU- General-purpose computing on graphics processing units. Various researchers have concluded that with OpenCL and CUDA comparable results can be reached.
Besides GPUs, OpenCL is designed to also work on DSPs, mobile processors, FPGAs and modern CPUs. It is not performance-portable, but all techniques learnt can be used on the various platforms.
OpenCL is very promising, but like with all open standards it needs support of the developers and goodwill from the participating companies.
The problem
Nvidia is not including OpenCL samples in the latest CUDA SDK and has removed profiler-support for OpenCL, and instead focusing more on their proprietary CUDA. The reason is simple: every developer who chooses CUDA over OpenCL, is limited to NVIDIA hardware.
As a Khronos member with an excellent record in implementing and promoting standards like OpenGL, this is a surprising and even unacceptable behavior from Nvidia.
OpenCL developers need a full-blown SDK (such as OpenCL samples and aprofiler), so the potential and limitations of NVIDIA GPUs can be learned. Also industry standards like OpenCL help in building up a bigger market for GPU computing, and will be beneficial to Nvidia in the long term.
What I aim by signing this petition
By signing this petition, I request Nvidia to put back the OpenCL samples and profiler in their latest CUDA SDK. By this, the choice is put back to the developer, as it should.
Updates
Reached 500 supporters
August 29, 2013
August 6, 2013
NVIDIA remains silent on our request to restore OpenCL support in their SDK. Email your designated NVIDIA representative today and demand they stop locking developers into proprietary walls.
Reached 100 supporters
September 10, 2012
September 7, 2012
We are approaching one hundred signatures and need to push harder to get the attention of the leadership at NVIDIA. Post the link to your Facebook page right now. Text three contacts in the developer community and tell them to sign today.
68 Comments
I am new to FPGA dev in OpenCL as open development is they way of the future. I request Nvidia to put back the OpenCL samples and profiler in their latest CUDA SDK.
Lack of OpenCL support is the only reason I haven't bought a Jetson. If Nvidia wants me to choose between them and everyone else(AMD, Intel, Qualcom, etc.), then I choose everyone else.
Dear Nvidia, Please provide top-tier support for OpenCL. You already make quality, stable hardware with reliable drivers on Linux. To hold on to this position of strength by slowly back-pedaling from OpenCL shows insecurity instead of confidence. It also signals a focus of Nvidia's GPGPU for only HPC and not mobile.
For me as a computational scientist who is funded by the public it is only fair to return the results of my research to the public in the form of free open source code. Consequently, I can only rely on open standards such as OpenCL. Good hardware does not need a software-based vendor-lock.
We are using OpenCL for delivering portable multicore/GPU-accelerated SAR image processing. We instructed our customers, partners and students to stop buying NVidia and move to other solutions to fully take advantage of the work we are doing. No more NVidia untill OpenCL 1.2/2.0 will be fully supported.
Not having OpenCL 1.2 or higher will require me to dump my Nvidia hardware and purchase new AMD Radeon hardware. I've been a huge Nvidia supporter for many years but with the lack of interest for what we want is making me change my mind.
Bought my NVIDIA because OpenCL was required for my Adobe Photoshop CC 2014
I'm tasked with developing software that is not exclusively tied to Nvidia.
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I am new to FPGA dev in OpenCL as open development is they way of the future. I request Nvidia to put back the OpenCL samples and profiler in their latest CUDA SDK.