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OpenCL 1.0 ratified; is Snow Leopard now ready for launch?

by Steven Sande Dec 10th 2008 at 2:00PM


There's been quiet anticipation for the last 6 months for OpenCL (Open Computing Language), which is an Application Programming Interface standard allowing developers to take advantage of the power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in parallel with multi-core processors. The result? Applications become much faster and responsive.

Apple announced in June that support for OpenCL would be built into Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). The Khronos Group, an industry consortium that creates open-standard, royalty-free APIs, put OpenCL on the fast track as a result, and announced yesterday that OpenCL 1.0 has been ratified by all of the consortium members.

Now that OpenCL has been officially blessed by the members of the consortium, could Snow Leopard be close behind? There has been speculation that the latest iteration of Mac OS X could be released as soon as Macworld Expo 2009 in early January. Snow Leopard, along with an announcement of quad-core iMacs, could throw a little fire into what is becoming an increasing chilly Expo. TUAW is attending Macworld Expo 2009 in force this year, so stay tuned for the latest news about Snow Leopard.

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There's been quiet anticipation for the last 6 months for OpenCL (Open Computing Language), which is an Application Programming Interface...
 

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imjeffro

Isn't this like saying, "NASA has ratified the design-specs of the intergalactic spaceship's landing gear so is the spaceship now ready to launch?"

December 11 2008 at 12:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jaroslav

I realize this is a tangential comment, but I didn't see any other likely topics to post this to:

Does anybody think there might be a refresh or update on the AppleTV at Macworld this year? That thing's been pretty static for a while now, no?

December 11 2008 at 8:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kelmon

"[I]s Snow Leopard now ready for launch?"

Stupid question - of course not. The flow of betas is still low and we know that there is a lot of work still to be done on them before we start approaching candidate builds. I mean, the 64-bit kernel is only supported for current Macs, let alone older Intel machines.

June 2009 looks like a more reasonable date. Certainly I would bet my mortgage on Snow Leopard not being ready for launch today or in time for MacWorld next month.

December 11 2008 at 3:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
EMoShunz

i can't find anywhere if my 2007 imac w/ the ati card will support opencl in 10.6. anyone know?

December 10 2008 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to EMoShunz's comment
Sebastian

ATI/AMD are one of the companies who've given their backing to OpenCL so I don't see why you should have any issues whatsoever on a fairly recent machine like that.

December 10 2008 at 3:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LJKelley

January is way too soon for a release as OpenCL was not the last thing needed to be done before release. Appearently you did not pay attention to the huge list of bugs or items that you shouldn't even try because they haven't been worked on yet released with the last beta.

In addition I assume that only now that the specifications are ratified can they be 100% implemented since obviously it would stupid to implement them when other members might want something changed and then you have to waste extra man power changing it because you moved to quickly.

December 10 2008 at 2:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nacho

No release at mw. No chance. SL is much more than just OpenCL.

December 10 2008 at 2:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adam Moss

I've got tickets this year for the MacWorld EXPO and conference.

I am pretty excited as this is the first time for me to attend an event such as this.

I'm hoping to get my hands on a Dev copy of 10.6

I are excited

December 10 2008 at 2:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Adam Moss's comment
Devon

I could see possibly a preview of Snow Leopard but I doubt they'd give out previews. They only do this at WWDC since attendies to WWDC are all under NDA.

December 10 2008 at 2:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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