C++ AMP on Windows 7 & Windows 8

Question

Hi,

We are very interested in using C++ AMP in our forthcoming development.

We would like to know if Windows 7 will fully support all features announced or will Windows 8 be required from some functionality? For example, would we be able to run a parallel_for_each on CPU on Windows 7?

Are there some announced features that are not yet available with the VS-11 Beta version?

Best Regards

-Martin

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Martin Paré

Answer 1

Hi Martin,

Glad to hear about your interest in C++ AMP.

Did you get a chance to read our team's blog posts related to C++ AMP.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nativeconcurrency/

These blogs provide you all the information you are looking for and they are definitely worth reading.

Please go through these blogs and start experimenting with C++ AMP.

- Pavan

Answer 2

Hi Martin

Yes C++ AMP is fully supported on Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2).

The visual Studio 11 Beta has all of our funcitonality.

To learn more please visit the links on the right of our blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nativeconcurrency/

Looking forward to answering any quesitons you may have,

Cheers

Daniel

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http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/

Answer 3

Hi Daniel,

One thing that concerns us is the ability to run C++AMP code on the CPU to take advantage of the multi-core and SSE2.

We are following closely C++AMP and the quote below from on of your earlier post seems to indicate that the CPU acceleration migth only be supported on Windows 8.

"It is not currently clear if we will have a CPU fallback solution for non-Windows 8 platforms when we ship." quote from "http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/Running-C-AMP-Kernels-On-The-CPU.aspx"

This said, will CPU acceleration be available on Windows 7? If the answer is yes, will it require a service pack of any kind?

Best Regards

-Martin.

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Martin Paré

Answer 4

Hi Daniel,

(First I want to say that I work with Martin and I am not trolling his thread :)

According to this answer to a similar question regarding "C++ AMP SIMD acceleration on a CPU",

Caught exception: Concurrency::parallel_for_each not supported on the selected accelerator "CPU accelerator"

, we need to use D3D WARP to achieve this, and it is only supported on Windows 8. We've tried running a C++ AMP example on Windows 7 by forcing it to run on WARP ( accelerator default_device(accelerator::direct3d_warp) ) and I get an exception in the default_device declaration. Hence the Windows 8 minimum requirement seems to be enforced.

C++ AMP looks really promising! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards

- Fred

Answer 5

Hi Fred and Martin

You are right, at this very specific moment in time (Beta), our CPU fallback requires Windows 8. There will also be an RC and then the final RTM of v1. All I can say is, stay tuned ;-)

Cheers

Daniel

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http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/

Answer 6

Thank you Daniel,

Have a nice week-end!

-Martin

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Martin Paré