Assessment of OpenCL software development for GPGPU

OpenCL is an open and relatively new standard for programming heterogeneous systems. It was created to answer the increasing demand for a way to program a variety of devices capable of parallel execution, such as GPUs or CPUs, through one common language. Until the writing of this thesis, research on OpenCL has mainly been focused on scientific computing and thus it’s desired to investigate the standard’s capabilities in consumer software development. This thesis will investigate the process of implementing computational acceleration, through the use of graphics hardware and OpenCL, into existing applications. It will describe how performance is affected and what graphics hardware is suitable to use. The assessment is done by implementing two different algorithms in OpenCL, which will be integrated into the existing software. During the development process, experiences of importance will be noted and summarized in a discussions section. Jonas developed the GStreamer plug-in wrapper and did research for sections 2.1 and 4.1. Niklas developed the OpenSSL engine wrapper and did research for sections 2.3 and 3.1. All other parts were developed and researched together.