[Pkg-opencl-devel] beignet 1.0.1 etc.

[Graham Inggs]

Hi Rebecca

On 24 January 2015 at 10:04, Rebecca N. Palmer <rebecca_palmer at zoho.com> wrote:
> do we want to try to
> get our "install all Free ICDs by default" scheme into that?

Can you point me to an explanation of "install all Free ICDs by default" please?

If it means that installing any application that is linked to
libopencl will install all opencl ICDs except the non-free ones, I am
against this.

In Ubuntu, WINE is compiled against libopencl, and I think most users
will never run an opencl windows application, so that is a lot of
extra packages to be installed.  In the opencl-capable windows
application I tested (GPU Caps Viewer [1]), running without an ICD
installed allowed all other functionality and only when attempting to
use a opencl-specific function did a warning message appear.
I think it may be similar for native Linux applications, they may have
cpu, opencl and cuda capabilities which are selectable at runtime.

Since the opencl-capable applications can report that no ICD is
installed and degrade gracefully, I think we should let the users
install ICDs as needed and choose what is appropriate for their
hardware.

Regards
Graham


[1] http://www.ozone3d.net/redirect.php?id=401