> On Nov 16, 2013, at 11:22 PM, Jeff Law <l...@redhat.com> wrote: > >> On 11/16/13 21:58, Alec Teal wrote: >> Now while great, is this true!? Nvidia (IIRC, this was like a year ago >> though) don't even give out the instruction set for their GPUs, can we >> have GCC targeting closed things? Also there (must be and is) a Cuda >> runtime, wouldn't we need an open runtime to link against? > The various projects looking at supporting OpenACC are, to the best of my > knowledge, targeting PTX, which is a virtual ISA from NVidia which is > published. > > Going from PTX to the actual instructions for the particular GPU is the job > of a runtime system which would be provided by NVidia. >
If one wants to tilt at these windmills, we should belabor the lack of open documentation of the microcode corresponding to the x86 instruction set. Jeff > However, there's no reason why OpenACC couldn't target the host CPU or > another GPU. In fact, that's what I'd initially do if I were working on this. > >> >> This is by no means an accusation, I'm sure he's doing fine work; but >> he's doing something I didn't think the GPLv3 allowed (so I want to be >> corrected) he seems to have added something that requires a closed >> runtime for a target with a closed instruction set - probably for Nvidia >> (as he is responsible for "strategic partnerships" with them) > To answer that question you'd need to talk to your lawyer. > > jeff
