Intel Opens Up Compute Library for Deep Neural Networks

[DrYak]

Considering terrible fp performance of intel graphics cards I can't even see these things being used,

It's not complex physics simulation.
Neural nets don't require that much precision.
e.g.: Google's own TPU is 8 bit

if Intel's GPU have terrible FP32 performance, but can be coaxed to use lower precision (FP16, intergers, 8 bit integers, etc.)
that might be fine for lots of applications.

[nevion]

At least AMD is working on ROCm, so that caffe will work. Funny how on the GPU side NVidia is monopolizing linear algebra (Matlab & Co)

I don't know if I'd say funny, but it's a long time thing that they've owned the researcher community. They had a viable product first, good marketing/sales people, better driver, better software (at the time), and while I like OpenCL, the amount of setup to get a hello-world like kernel in contrast to CUDA is quite different - this scares researchers away.

[TheBlackCat]

Hopefully they will open up MKL soon as well.

[ldo17]

Neural nets don't require that much precision.
e.g.: Google's own TPU is 8 bit

Hmm ... that sounds like a good use case for things like D-Wave. This whole quantum-computing thing seems like the old analog-computer idea reborn, anyway.

[cj.wijtmans]

I don't know if I'd say funny, but it's a long time thing that they've owned the researcher community. They had a viable product first, good marketing/sales people, better driver, better software (at the time), and while I like OpenCL, the amount of setup to get a hello-world like kernel in contrast to CUDA is quite different - this scares researchers away.

Then just make a library based on opencl to make it easier.

[gsedej]

Depends.
Normally, you can select that option in your BIOS/UEFI.

No, I don't want to use intel gpu for graphics or display. I actually do se some info about intel on clinfo, while using radeon, but there are errors.

If you are using Intel GPU as main display, you can set the primary GPU from BIOS/UEFI as iGPU or Integrated.

I'm not so sure you can use a dedicated card as primary GPU while also keeping Intel iGPU enabled without some external hack, you'd have to set the Intel GPU as primary in BIOS/UEFI and then hope that Linux comes up fine as quite a few BIOS disable both outputs if primary output does not have a screen connected.

If that's the case, you can trick it with a dummy screen adapter, these devices are very liked by cryptocoin miners and the like.
https://www.headlessghost.com/ (hdmi)
http://www.geeks3d.com/20091230/vga-...ga-dummy-plug/ (vga/DVI-I)

I have already seen such trics, specially for "mining" machines, only accesed via remote.
I have 2 PCs, at home (kaby lakeG4560 + R9 270) and work (skylake i7 6700 + RX 480), both cases using radeon as display device. In both cases I can see some output in clinfo, but many errors (if I install the intel opencl driver - "BOING"

[juno]

No, I don't want to use intel gpu for graphics or display. I actually do se some info about intel on clinfo, while using radeon, but there are errors.

From my experience, you still have to enable it in the BIOS.

[Royi]

Hopefully they will open up MKL soon as well.

I wish.
But first step is stop discriminating AMD cpu's (Or any x64 CPU for that matter).