Learn and share ideas at the Brisbane GPU Users group. Founded to bring together GPU users from all fields and experience levels from southeast Queensland. Topics of discussion include general GPU computing, GPGPU, CUDA, OpenCL, OpenGL, DirectCompute, DirectX and related technologies. The next meetup is tentatively scheduled for June 23rd at GP Library (V Block) Room V714 Queensland University of Technology, from 6pm - 9pm.

AMD is offering an introductory tutorial to OpenCL™ that will be held alongside the 2010 Symposium on Application Accelerators in High Performance Computing (SAAHPC’10). This will be a “programmer’s introduction” where we cover the ideas behind OpenCL™ but also show how these ideas are translated into source code. We will do this through a series of progressively more challenging examples—thereby providing examples that experienced programmers will need to become productive OpenCL™ programmers.

Inotube.com has posted an interesting demo of WebGL that displays non-streaming sparse octal voxels. The demo runs fairly quickly and gives one some good insight into the future of using octal voxels for computer graphics. A short article behind the building of this demo is here, and the demo is here.

The goal of the COLLADA Web Viewer is to allow the drawing of COLLADA content using the O3D API without the need for an offline converter. COLLADA Web Viewer provides a fast open source tool that uses cross domain xhttp requests to directly download and draw a COLLADA scene directly into any web browser without the need for an offline converter. We make use of standard browser techniques to ensure it works on any O3D compatible platform.

JogAmp will be at SIGGRAPH 2010 with their own BOF Session “3D & Multimedia Across Platforms and Devices Using JOGL.” This BOF session, on Tuesday, 27 July from 4:00pm to 6:00pm, will discuss the features, contributions, and future of OpenGL, OpenCL, and OpenMax across devices and OS exposed on top of Java using the JogAmp open-source libraries.

Using OpenCL to manipulate OpenGL objects has important advantages: the GPU is usually faster and data transfer from Host memory to Device memory is kept to a minimum. CMSoft OpenCL/GL interop tutorial shows detailed implementation of circular wave interference simulation using CL/GL interop, including commented source code available for download.

Tony Parisi, one of the co-creators of VRML—Virtual Reality Modeling Language—along side Mark Pescue, recently discussed the future of Virtual Worlds. When asked “What conditions should be present that are not today for a serious widespread of virtual worlds in the future?” Tony response was “two things. First, a ubiquitous client. Either Unity, or a Unity competitor; or WebGL (maybe not version 1.0 because it might not have all the features).” The second item is game play within the virtual worlds.

Scientific American interviewed several institutes to discover how they plan on using OpenCL. Read how researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and The National Institutes of Health plan on using OpenCL to further their studies within the small budgets at their disposal.

Andor Salga has posted a good collection of 3D sketches for WebGL. You can view the code beside the WebGL window. The variety of sketches gives one a good sense of what is possible at this stage of WebGL development. A WebGL enable browser is required.

AMD has posted a case study on OpenCL™ Optimization. The article discusses performance optimizations for AMD GPUs and CPUs using as a case study a simple, yet widely used computationally intensive kernel: Diagonal Sparse Matrix Vector Multiplication.

COLLADA started a Video Group on Vimeo.com. There are already 19 videos in the group, and you are invited to share your own COLLADA videos with group.

After the tremendous success of the first seven entries to the ShaderX book series, and the upcoming success of the GPU Pro book, we are looking for authors for GPU Pro 2. The upcoming book will cover advanced rendering techniques that run on the DirectX and/or OpenGL run-time or any other run-time with any language available. It will include topics on: Geometry Manipulation; Rendering Techniques; Handheld Devices Programming; Effects in Image Space; Shadows; 3D Engine Design; Graphics Related Tools; Environmental Effects and a dedicated section on mathematics used in graphics programming. Proposals are due by May 17th, 2010. Contact information, an example proposal, writing guidelines and a FAQ can be downloaded here.

GPU Computing, a term coined by Jon Peddie, like most things, was born out of necessity when it was discovered that a cheap PC with a decent graphics card could perform engineering structural analysis for much less money than a workstation. Jem Davies, the self proclaimed god father of technical talent in ARM, does a great job of outlining what the GPU can do today, and where it’s going tomorrow with OpenCL, DirectCompute and Augmented Reality.

Imagination Technologies demonstrates the capabilities of the OpenVG 1.1 API on their POWERVR SGX and POWERVR VGX IP Cores, in a short video.

KitGuru recently interviewed the well known and highly respected AMD employee Terry Makedon. Covering ATI Stream SDK and OpenCL, among other things, Terry gives a peak into the direct AMD is going with these technologies.