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projectvrd
Journeyman III

BOINC and Partners are asking for help.

They cannot do this alone, they need actual AMD assistance.

I have been reading through the foums on Boinc and the messages coming from the those forum admistrators are all saying that the various different institutations are unable to provide GPU support because they have so much work to do. I suppose this is something to do with the cost cuts since 2008, that is purely an assumption.

Sure there is OpenCL but I think they want to go through the actual AMD employee route, an employee of nVidia managed to do it on his own, so nVidia are providing the same level of support as ATI which is none for moment. That could change ofcourse as we have heard nothing from either company.

But, considering there appears to be no support from AMD regarding research projects utilising the AMD/ATI GPU's is there anybody who could provide support for some of the projects so it will utilise the full capabilities of the double precision of the lastest and past GPUs?

This is a big and cheeky ask to be honest, because these are educational institutes and I doubt any coder would be paid. The guy from nVidia had to do it off his own back in his spare time, not as part of the company which is sad, and strange... considering this would be just one more "my stick is longer than yours thing" for both companies.

Preferbaly though, so no AMD employee loses out, can this flagged to ATI management? They only have to send one person anyway and even if just 5 projects within the BOINC system is looked at then that would be a massive milestone. Because currently the only one which kind of supports ATI GPU is Milkway@Home and the performance is blistering, so to get non-OpenCL support would probably shock the whole foundation and one thing the management of ATI should really be made aware of... Google searches would show how many people are waiting off from buying an AMD until their is BOINC Support. And I mean that.... they can google it and see the different forums, from gaming to research to anything to AMD's own fourms itself.... just not this one really because most people end up at the consumer forums, not the Developer Forums.

If something can be done, and AMD Management decided to allow just one employee... just one, that would be enough to bring the support to a professional level and maximise the throughput of the cards they have been manufacturing. Plus it would probably make a little news if the AMD Press Office put their mind to it. I mean come on, what Joe Bloggs who doesn't know much about PCs finds out from the BBC News website his PC can actually do this stuff, help cure cancer when a member of his family just passed away. That person is going to like AMD/ATI and see it in a good light, possibly affect the future sale that AMD may not have had otherwise.

I am thinking about it both from a helping the scientific community oint of view as well as trying to provide an argument for AMD/ATI to sit back, have a few minutes think about it, and look at what benfits this could bring to the company. I cannot see any downside, that is, from an outside perspective. I am just a user of BOINC and I hear them crying for help, and part of the community who are really eager to know what is happening from the HD5800/HD5900 perspective. That googling, you may also find these people prefer ATI but that is by-the-by, any GPU is superior to a CPU so for now they are happy buying nVidias.

 

Please pass this on if you can, it is PR dream to pull it off. "Graphics Kings Send Research Hyperspace"... that sort of thing breathes 100% Win!

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