I've been fiddling with a lot of developer stuff lately, and set up a temporary testing environment running OS X 10.9 13A476u from an external drive (USB 3, so the bottleneck is much less noticeable). Actually, I primarily want to compile my own applications, and then test BOINC applications. So I started with BOINC itself.

For now, I'm not building it from source, so I am using 7,1,17 which is, at the time I'm writing this, the current beta. I attached to a couple reliable + stable projects. So far, so good. :)

I noticed that WUProp@Home either doesn't notice my Intel graphics (older server software?) or just doesn't query the onboard chip because there aren't any live applications using the intel_gpu plan class that I know of...yet. No point in collecting and aggregating data in a category for which there IS no data, I suppose.

But PrimeGrid sees it! It looks like this, leading me to believe that OpenCL support is present by default in OS X 10,9. Perhaps that's because it's a development build?

Before I even ask about applications in testing for Intel HD Graphics 4000/5000, I want to know if OpenCL is even a thing for OS X besides AMD GPUs. I've crunched tons of Collatz in the past on a farm of iMacs with AMD 6750Ms running OS X 10,7,5, but have had a very difficult time running NViDIA OpenCL apps (or cuda_opencl, or opencl_nvidia, or what have you) on this new MacBook Pro. I seem to remember running pure CUDA apps in the recent past, but from what I understand, the driver broke itself around April and there's still not a working version?

I looked for OS X OpenCL drivers from/for Intel, but the closest I found was Linux (no specific distro, just "Linux"). On the PrimeGrid page, where it's seeing Intel HD Graphics 4000 - is that BOINC beta reporting it, or OS X 10.9? Are the drivers even there? I don't see any tangible way to find out, since I don't know of any applications for OS X utilizing Intel graphics, and don't have the time or resources currently to go about trying to port the Linux drivers to OS X!

If I'm getting way too ahead of myself, okay, how about this: I've got a 3770K in the mail (supposedly) and plan on building a system around it, even if just temporarily. That would run Windows, for which there are definitely Intel OpenCL drivers available. The only socket 1155 motherboard I have currently is a H67 chipset, and Z77 would probably be the best choice for a 3770K, I guess.

(while I have your attention, any clues about NViDIA GT650M CUDA and/or OpenCL on OS X 10,8,4 or 10,9 would be appreciated... :))

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Or maybe nobody knows...!

Collatz offers an intel_gpu_100 plan class app for 64-bit Windows only - I assume this means OpenCL 1.00 or later, which is fine. I've got a 3770K new-in-box without any other components, or I'd be testing/running that for sure...

No ideas? Anybody...?

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You don't say what model Mac you are using. The only experience I personally have with Macs that have an Intel GPU is with a borrowed dual-GPU Retina Macbook Pro running OS 10.8.3. On that Mac, OpenCL supports and recognizes only the discrete (NVIDIA) GPU. Since BOINC only checks for CUDA and OpenCL capable GPUs, it does not report or use the Intel GPU. However, Apple's System Report does show both GPUs, so it is possible that PrimeGrid is detecting the Intel GPU independently.

We have temporarily disabled CUDA support on these dual-GPU Macbook Pros because of an issue with battery life, but the next alpha version of BOINC (7.0.21) should have that restored.

I know of no problems running OpenCL applications on both ATI/AMD GPUs and NVIDIA GPUs on Macs, unless the GPU is a very old model. I have not tried the OS 10.9 beta, but in the past I know that CUDA drivers in particular often did not work on beta versions of OS X until NVIDIA upgraded them.

I have emailed someone who has tried OS 10.9 and may be able to post more information.

I'm a Mac guy, so I can't answer your questions about Windows.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

leading me to believe that OpenCL support is present by default in OS X 10,9. Perhaps that's because it's a development build?

OpenCL is included in OS X as a regular framework since 10.6.

I looked for OS X OpenCL drivers from/for Intel, but the closest I found was Linux (no specific distro, just "Linux").

There are no and there is no need for dedicated OpenCL drivers for OS X. As I said above, OpenCL is an OS X framework provided by Apple. This means Apple is the OpenCL platform vendor and it will support all devices Apple "wants" to support. Apple's OpenCL framework taps into the vendor-specific drivers that are also provided by Apple. If you can't get access to an OpenCL-enabled device on OS X you need to file a bug report with Apple and hope for the best.

I can't tell you anything about Intel GPUs on OS X since we don't have any. ATI and NVIDIA OpenCL support works fine in general. However, NVIDIA can sometimes be problematic since their overall OpenCL support has been dwindling and will most likely be discontinued rather sooner than later.


Cheers,
Oliver

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Einstein@Home Project