New mac pro and open cl support

[SpencerCarpenter]

Hi,

I was wondering what the low down is on the benefits of using the new mac pro with it's ati cards with open cl?

I've looked around and can't see any recent articles about it, I'm assumng that Adobe will capitilse on open cl but not sure of any details...

Thanks for any info on this.

Spencer

[Todd_Kopriva]

Premiere Pro already uses OpenCL for a lot, as does Photoshop.

This page has some commentary on OpenCL and After Effects:

http://adobe.ly/AE_2013_requests

[SpencerCarpenter]

Thanks for the info. It appears there is little consideration for open cl at present. Could I ask, do you expect further integration of open cl to have a major impact on the speed of rendering many of the effects? I know fcpx is making good use of it, can we expect to see similar performance improvements?

I know mavericks has updated open gl. Does this then mean a new Mac Pro will already see great performance increases even without much open cl support?

Thanks again for the info.

Spencer

[Todd_Kopriva]

> It appears there is little consideration for open cl at present.

That is entirely the wrong conclusion to draw.

As I said, Premiere Pro and Photoshop use OpenCL extensively. And the page that I pointed you to only said that OpenCL couldn't ever be used for one very narrow thing; it then went on to say that the After Effects team is looking into ways to use non-vendor-specific technologies like OpenGL and OpenCL to accelerate as much as possible.

For the current version of After Effects, nearly everything is done on the CPU, so the GPU is a nearly irrelevant consideration (with the exceptions described here).

[SpencerCarpenter]

Apologies, I meant there is little consideration - in the current release. I know it must be high on the agenda and didn't realise it's mainly CPU driven.

It's a shame I can't expect a huge leap in performance with my new Mac Pro (compared to my current mbp) but i do have confidence that adobe ae will integrate open cl quite quickly.

Can I ask does ae lend itself well to utilise the gpu or is it a huge overhaul to convert CPU driven processes to gpu driven. Or in other words will be looking at mainly new features using gpu and leaving existing ones as CPU driven?

Thanks again

Spencer

[SpencerCarpenter]

Erm, I'm in the wrong forum, how did that happen. Sorry thought I was in the ae forum. Please take this into account!

[SpencerCarpenter]

It appears this thread was moved from 'ae discussions' to 'premiere hardware' which explains the mix up of context of my questions...

[Todd_Kopriva]

This is actually the forum for discussion of hardware for all of the Adobe video applications. It just happens to be under the main Premiere Pro forum because there's no easy way to have a forum that isn't associated with a specific application.

It's useful to have this discussion in the context of the other applications, since the long-term After Effects GPU strategy is closely aligned with that of Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Photoshop.

[SpencerCarpenter]

Oh I see. So it sounds likely ae will benefit from open cl in the future. It would've great to get feedback on some of the questions above in the context of ae if possible (updated open gl in mavericks, conversion of existing features to open cl vs only developing new features in open cl).

Thanks

Spencer

[SebastiaanFP]

Yes I would also like to know more about Adobe's roadmap for the near future concerning GPU support. I am also planning on a new workstation somewhere the coming year, but I will wait until there is some more clarity about these issues. Especially if it will still be beneficial to go the Nvidia + Windows way because of now still some exclusive benefits from the Cuda support, or if soon the Mac Pro will be able to offer exactly the same CC experience on it's ATI GPU's. If the CC will actually be reprogrammed so that both platforms Windows and Mac can offer the same full Adobe CC experience is also a big question that keeps me up at night!!

[SpencerCarpenter]

I'm betting it comes down to the size of the mac user base against PC. I think the mac camp will grow due to the value proposition of the new Mac Pro for the professional and enthusiast markets. Therefore open cl buy in grow and and adobe will react accordingly. That expectation is however offset against the iMac users still on nvidia.

[SebastiaanFP]

Hi Spencer,

I would love to use the new MacPro for my "mobile trips", like the Z1 HP Workstation (only of course it doesn't include a monitor and will need some external HDD's too on the road), and at my office continue on a more powerful Windows workstation. Or maybe GPU-computing is going to take such a flight that really dual CPU is not going to be needed anymore? If of course Adobe will respond to it by reprogramming the CC to become maximum GPU-driven too? Then the new MacPro will really be a complete CC workstation. I would just like to know how much the GPU-computing is expected to grow / enhance performance and take over more and more parts which before the CPU had to do.

[SpencerCarpenter]

I'm no expert by any means but it looks like gpu has more potential so it seems logical it will be exploited. But like you I'd love to get a sense of the adobe ae roadmap for open cl.

[SebastiaanFP]

Yes, but I cannot imagine anything else that quite quick MacPro / OSX will be able to give full Adobe CC experience just like windows/nvidia doing know.

You actually have the new MacPro?, if so than congratulations, it looks to be a really beautiful machine. And much more powerful than my present Windows 7 workstation I build 3 years ago....

[SpencerCarpenter]

I've got a full spec one on the way thanks. I've got faith the professional market that I believe are mainly mac based will exert enough pressure to get open cl support. Also of course you can run windows on a mac so you've got the software front covered if you go mac.

[chfilm2]

I'm curious for those question as well! I'm planning to get a new mac Pro, but can't decide if the d700 is worth the upgrade over the d500, considering I'm mostly working in Adobe CC Tools.

It's mostly After Effects Animation, Premiere Editing and Media encoding in AME.

Plus Photoshop/illu of course but those already are quite fast enough on my current late 2012 imac.

Any thoughts on that decision?

[SpencerCarpenter]

Personally if you're busy in that market I would take the risk of the upgrade. it only needs to save you one days pay max over the years you'll use for it to pay for itself with the upgrade being relatively inexpensive.

[chfilm2]

Yes I know, that was my thinking as well.. but really - what single app except fcp x will make use of the power today? I read that premiere uses dual gpu setups since recently. So I guess rendering will be improved by the d700?

/edit

I just read that Red Cine X has dualgpu support for Open CL since October..ha I finished my last red job just before that. So that's awesome news and gives me a definite push in the direction of the bigger gpu.

[Trilo Byte]

According to Adobe's published information, the current versions of Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC are able to recognize dual GPU's and put them to work, no special customizations or tweaks required.  Additionally, the Mercury Playback Engine in both those apps is able to work with cards that support OpenCL (in addition to nVidia cards supporting their proprietary CUDA format).

From the published info, only the hardware acceleration for AE's Optix ray tracing engine still requires a CUDA card.  Machines with AMD and Intel integrated GPU's can still use ray-tracing in AE, it's just done through software/CPU.

Based on what I've seen so far (published specs and a handful of reviews), the FirePro GPU's in the new Mac Pro are each monsters in the Open CL bang-for-the-buck department, especially considering that the machine comes with two of them.  I'm sold, I can't wait to get my hands on one and put it to work.

It's probably a bit nerdy, but I think there's something to be said for making dual GPU's standard on the lineup.  Hopefully it provides some additional incentive for developers to start supporting and leveraging that in their apps in the months ahead.

[jasonvp]

Trilo Byte wrote:

According to Adobe's published information, the current versions of Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC are able to recognize dual GPU's and put them to work, no special customizations or tweaks required.

Pr and AME (I have no AE experience) should use the cards without any modifications, but you'll be warned about using an "unsupported card".  Delete the opencl_supported_cards.txt files from the Pr and AME installation directories, and you won't get the warnings.

[Trilo Byte]

Good to know.  I thought I'd read that with the October 2013 update Premiere no longer required any kind of tweaks or adjustments, but perhaps that was just After Effects.  My primary machine's GPU is on the list of supported cards (and am still a couple months from getting the new machine), so I've never had to mess around with it.

[jasonvp]

chfilm2 wrote:

I'm curious for those question as well! I'm planning to get a new mac Pro, but can't decide if the d700 is worth the upgrade over the d500, considering I'm mostly working in Adobe CC Tools.

The cost difference between the D700 and D500 is so minimal after spending that much on a decked out Mac Pro that it seems silly to cut corners there.  Spend the money, make the text file alterations for OpenCL support, and enjoy.

Also, read this.

[doctorsney]

Heya Todd,

so I'm here asking the same question which is when will there be comparable support for the fancy 3d features as provided by CUDA, available on Mac Pro's and their Open CL cards?

I've been holding off purchase of a Mac pro hoping comparable support would come through, but it's now late 2014 and I just brought a project home that flies on CUDA powered hackintoshes at a studio, but is really not performing particularly well on a 'top of the line' Mac Pro.

Given that I've just dropped a small fortune on this thing (my new mac) and that it's not an obscure piece of hardware, when will we see comparable support? I've just started using the ray-traced 3d features on projects for a particular client and they're expecting more of the same and it will really suck if the ridiculous workstation I just purchased cannot keep up with a vaguely reliable hackintosh built at a fraction of the cost.

Thanks

[JFPhoton]

....not Todd here.....but, I FEEL YOUR PAIN !!    Considering the many issues and complaints regarding compatibility between PPro and the Mac OS that are posted on the general PPro forum....you MAY want to consider SELLING your mac pro NOW that the NEW Haswell E CPUs are out , along with the new 980 and 970 Nvidia cards, too. It is apparent that the Macs are always behind the Windows machines.   The new Haswell E and NVidia cards are setting new levels of performance with PPro....rivaling the performance usually only found on massively expensive dual Xeon industrial machines !!! This is exciting for small businesses, as the cost of great performance is being reduced to affordable levels !!  Many are ADDICTED to the Apple format and are reluctant to consider change.....however, ...we free citizens of the world are not intended to be bound by chains to the past !!! Break the bonds of Apple servitude and escape into smooth scrubbing ecstasy !!!!

[ECBowen]

Really the X99 and Haswell E is a far better way to go now. That is i7 Gen 4 versus i7 Gen 3 on the nMPro's. DDR4 makes a significant difference with GPU acceleration and Nvidia cards still perform far better with Adobe. Along with that the new 8 Core CPU is unlocked and at higher clock speeds is king right now in performance with 4K, 5K, 6K media overall.

Eric

ADK