ATI Stream upgrade embraces OpenCL

The ATI Stream software development kit was bumped up to version 2.1 on Monday, receiving a hefty dose of OpenCL capabilities in the run-up to AMD's Fusion series of "accelerated processing units" (APUs) scheduled to appear next year. Not that devs using the new ATI Stream SDK 2.1 will have to wait until then to take advantage …

[Christopher E. Stith]

Do OpenCL + OpenGL as standards = standards-based games?

Only time will tell, of course, but what a boon that could be to OS X and Linux. I know the whole ball of hype around OpenCL has been for scientific clusters and business-critical apps. However, if there's a standard way to get vector math for game logic and physics that meshes well with OpenGL for graphics, and assuming SDL or something is up to the input tasks and audio, then that sounds like a good cross-platform substitute for DirectX.

With Apple, IBM, ATI, Arm, NVidia, and more behind it, it might actually catch on well enough to gain some traction among developers. If the cross-platform (OS and hardware) wrinkles can be ironed out and the end-user libs work acceptably well everywhere, not only things like render farms and investment banking could use it. Everything that needs lots of processing help from a vector engine could use it. That includes games -- and for more than graphics -- as NVidia's few PhysX titles have shown us.

[Colin Barfoot]

rights for mice!

"assuming SDL or something is up to the input tasks"

Had a quick look. As Kajagoogoo once said, "I don't think so".

Why is it that Input Device API's are always neglected? Usually they're lowest common denominator affairs: keyboard & mouse. Down the stack is the excellent HID protocol, but it's a bit awkward to use in an application. Microsoft wraps this up in DirectInput - which it then, bizarrely, slags off. I don't think there's a Linux equivalent.

So come on, API writers: a flexible one for all those haptic glove applications.