What is the current status of C++ AMP

Question

I am working on high performance code in C++ and have been using both CUDA and OpenCL and more recently C++AMP, which I like very much. I am however a little worried that it is not being developed and extended and will die out.

What leads me to this thought is that even the MS C++AMP blogs have been silent for about a year. Looking at the C++ AMP algorithms library http://ampalgorithms.codeplex.com/wikipage/history it seems nothing at all has happened for over a year.

The only development I have seen is that now LLVM sort of supports C++AMP, so it is not windows only, but that is all, and not something which has been told far and wide.

What kind of work is going on, if any, that you know of?

Answer 1

What leads me to this thought is that even the MS C++AMP blogs have been silent for about a year. Looking at the C++ AMP algorithms library http://ampalgorithms.codeplex.com/wikipage/history it seems nothing at all has happened for over a year.

I used to work on the C++AMP algorithms library. After the initial release, which Microsoft put together I built a number of additional features and ported it to newer versions of VS. It seemed like there was a loss of momentum around C++AMP. I have no plans to do further work on the project.

Make of this what you will. Perhaps someone from Microsoft can clarify things?

Answer 2

I've found that AMD is still using the C++AMP.. http://developer.amd.com/community/blog/2015/09/15/programming-models-for-heterogeneous-systems/ http://developer.amd.com/community/blog/2015/01/19/bolt-1-3-whats-new/ and there are some forum references where Intel is mentioning it too.

The main thing I see is that we the programmers are finally starting to play with the idea that we can use the GPU for ordinary tasks also. Especially now that the HBMs are coming to the APUs you could do a lot on a relatively cheap system. So no copying of data to graphic card or main memory, but keep it in a BIG HBM "cache" where it can be accessed "real-time" i.e. without GPU latency.

So Microsoft build a really really nice technology which will become relevant only in next few years i.e. when the hardware is finally "user friendly". But the thing can become obsolete if they wont advance as others do. Not that something wouldn't work in C++ AMP, but because the speed of change is so big lately that programmers wont risk to start using it, if they don't see some advancements... at least a blog or two per year, where they tested something with it so that you see Microsoft still believes in it.