Chapter 1. Hello OpenCL

Parallel Computing has been extensively researched over the past few decades and had been the key research interest at many universities. Parallel Computing uses multiple processors or computers working together on a common algorithm or task. Due to the constraints in the available memory, performance of a single computing unit, and also the need to complete a task quickly, various parallel computing frameworks have been defined. All computers are parallel these days, even your handheld mobiles are multicore platforms and each of these parallel computers uses a parallel computing framework of their choice. Let's define Parallel Computing.

The Wikipedia definition says that, Parallel Computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently (in parallel).

There are many Parallel Computing programming standards or API specifications, such as OpenMP, OpenMPI, Pthreads, and so on. This book is all about OpenCL Parallel Programming. In this chapter, we will start with a discussion on different types of parallel programming. We will first introduce you to OpenCL with different OpenCL components. We will also take a look at the various hardware and software vendors of OpenCL and their OpenCL installation steps. Finally, at the end of the chapter we will see an OpenCL program example SAXPY in detail and its implementation.