Is it possible to program GPU for Android

android gpu renderscript
Timothy picture Timothy · Sep 9, 2012 · Viewed 11.3k times · Source

I am now programming on Android and I wonder whether we can use GPGPU for Android now? I once heard that Renderscript can potentially execute on GPGPU in the future. But I wonder whether it is possible for us to programming on GPGPU now? And if it is possible for me to program on the Android GPGPU, where can I find some tutorials or sample programs? Thank you for your help and suggestions.

Up till now I know that the OpenGL ES library was now accelerated use GPU, but I want to use the GPU for computing. What I want to do is to accelerate computing so that I hope to use some libraries of APIs such as OpenCL.

Answer

Morrison Chang picture Morrison Chang · Sep 9, 2012

Actually Renderscript Compute doesn't use the GPU at this time, but is designed for it.

From Romain Guy who works on the Android platform:

  • Renderscript Compute is currently CPU bound but with the for_each construct it will take advantage of multiple cores immediately
  • Renderscript Compute was designed to run on the GPU and/or the CPU
  • Renderscript Compute avoids having to write JNI code and gives you architecture independent, high performance results
  • Renderscript Compute can, as of Android 4.1, benefit from SIMD optimizations (NEON on ARM)

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-developers/m194NFf_ZqA/Whq4qWisv5MJ

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