[Pkg-opencl-devel] intel/compute-runtime (Neo)

[Daniel Vacek]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 12:35 PM, Rebecca N. Palmer
<rebecca_palmer at zoho.com> wrote:
> On 10/03/18 07:21, Daniel Vacek wrote:
>>
>> And one more on the wishlist. Could Intel's NEO driver be added aside
>> to beignet? At least to experimental to begin with... That would be
>> nice :-)
>
>
> That's probably a good idea, but as I have only just become aware of its
> existence (the beignet development list just faded out, with no 'use this
> instead' announcement that I've seen), I will need time to investigate.
>
> https://01.org/compute-runtime
>
> Potential issues noted so far:
> - They seem to be using a patched LLVM/Clang 4:
>   - the various microcontroller GCCs (-avr etc) are a sort-of-precedent for
> allowing target-specific patched compilers in Debian, but not a promise that
> this would be allowed.
>   - some of the patches are marked "internal only".

The code was just released recently. I guess they are going to clean
it up, merge to upstream llvm and build/link against it. At least they
present it as a new preferred fully supported production quality
driver for better future. So I hope it's just a matter of time.

> - Support for Gen7 (Ivy Bridge/Haswell) hardware appears to have been
> removed:

Beignet would have to stay as a legacy driver for older HW, yes.
Though I believe they can be co-installed simultaneously. And rumors
say NEO is going to meet OpenCL 2.2 soon.

>   - we probably want to also keep beignet as long as we reasonably can
> (though given its tendency to break in new LLVM/Clang versions, that might
> only mean "as long as LLVM/Clang <=5 is still in Debian").

True. As pointed above, beignet is to stay for the HW support.

>   - the new package(s) may need a maintainer other than me so they can be
> tested.

I am not a Debian developer (yet), if you're suggesting something here :-)

> It's also unclear whether Neo is intended to be the official name of the
> project; I intend to ask upstream whether they prefer neo-opencl-icd or
> intel-opencl-icd.
>
Yep, good point.

--nX