At Google I/O, ZiiLABS and Symphony Teleca demonstrated a new camera application on an Android tablet that uses OpenCL to implement key image processing effects, comparing the performance of the algorithms implemented in both ‘C’ and OpenCL. The OpenCL code exploits the performance and flexibility of the underlying ZMS-40’s media processing array to deliver significant advantages over CPU-only code. The demonstrations being shown use the ZiiLABS ZMS-40 based HanZpad Android reference platform.
Tom’s Hardware tests OpenCL acceleration in Adobe PhotoShop CS6, Musemage, GIMP and a pre-release version of Corel’s AfterShot Pro, tweaked by Corel to bring early OpenCL support, across five system configurations and looks for patterns in the results. How much does open standards-based GPU acceleration (OpenGL and/or OpenCL) really help in these image-oriented tasks? Is there a difference in how much APUs and GPUs leverage accelerated features? Does acceleration scale evenly with graphics horsepower?
Some quick takeaways:
In the GIMP tests, the benefits of OpenCL-based GPU acceleration are very strong. Without acceleration, filters are nearly unusable on any system. Workflow comes to a complete stop as the system creeps through adding the blur one block at a time. With OpenCL turned on, there is very very even, expected performance scaling moving from mobile to desktop APU and APU into discrete.
In AfterShot Pro Corel doubles the performance for RAW to JPG conversion when using OepnCL GPU acceleration compared to running only through the CPU in software.
In Musemage, the application clearly leverages the GPU for scaling, and circumvents bus-imposed bottlenecks. OpenCL for HDR processing shows a 66X speed increase.
In Adobe Photoshop, with GPU-based OpenGL enabled, there is a performance increase by roughly 200% to 500%. There is also a 200% or more performance scaling using OpenCL in Liquify and Blur filters.
Adobe and AMD announced that Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 will feature OpenCL acceleration to dramatically speed up critical imaging features and generating real-time results when editing. The new Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine within Photoshop CS6 utilizes both OpenCL and OpenGL, to accelerate new and existing features such as the new Blur Gallery that runs up to 10x as fast on the upcoming “Trinity” APU with OpenCL GPU acceleration turned on.
Tom Malloy, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe’s Advanced Technology Labs will deliver a keynote address at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) running June 11-14, 2012.
I’ve been wondering when Adobe would announce their support for the OpenCL open standard and today I read that the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 will add OpenCL powered GPU-acceleration for effects like color correction, image control, perspective, dissolve and more than three dozen other FX. OpenCL will also be used to accelerate the export from video source format to your preferred destination format by up to 241%. Users will experience an immediate dramatic performance increase with this new OpenCL-accelerated release.
