On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 20:36:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> May I suggest, however, that the name DCompute is a bit generic, and provides no hint that it provides GPU programming for D.
>
> How about calling it D-GPU ? I bet you'd get a lot more clicks on a name like that.

For what it's worth, I see "Compute" used all the time to refer to this stuff. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language and you'll see it reference "compute devices" frequently in documentation about it. CUDA (originally) stood for Compute Unified Device Architecture.

We're all in the business of computation but the hardware accelerated processing people seem pretty keen on using "compute" to describe what they do. DCompute would fit right in and its purpose would be clear to anyone in that particular field, I think.

On 30 May 2017 at 16:00, Brad Anderson via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 20:36:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>>
>> May I suggest, however, that the name DCompute is a bit generic, and provides no hint that it provides GPU programming for D.
>>
>> How about calling it D-GPU ? I bet you'd get a lot more clicks on a name like that.
>>
>
> For what it's worth, I see "Compute" used all the time to refer to this stuff. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language and you'll see it reference "compute devices" frequently in documentation about it. CUDA (originally) stood for Compute Unified Device Architecture.
>
> We're all in the business of computation but the hardware accelerated processing people seem pretty keen on using "compute" to describe what they do. DCompute would fit right in and its purpose would be clear to anyone in that particular field, I think.
>

I kinda wanted to add a +1 here too; I read 'compute' used as a noun(-ish) as a synonym for GPGPU these days... I think the industry is more-or-less agreed on that.

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 08:16:06 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I kinda wanted to add a +1 here too; I read 'compute' used as a noun(-ish)

Ah, isn't English wonderful. I guess Walter is suffering the inverse of the Calvin & Hobbes "Verbing nouns weirds the language", nouning verbs does weird the language, but only to those who aren't used to that particular nouning of the verb.

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 06:00:57 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
> On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 20:36:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> May I suggest, however, that the name DCompute is a bit generic, and provides no hint that it provides GPU programming for D.
>>
>> How about calling it D-GPU ? I bet you'd get a lot more clicks on a name like that.
>
> For what it's worth, I see "Compute" used all the time to refer to this stuff. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language and you'll see it reference "compute devices" frequently in documentation about it. CUDA (originally) stood for Compute Unified Device Architecture.
>
> We're all in the business of computation but the hardware accelerated processing people seem pretty keen on using "compute" to describe what they do. DCompute would fit right in and its purpose would be clear to anyone in that particular field, I think.

+1

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 12:21:02 UTC, piotrklos wrote:
> On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 06:00:57 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
>> On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 20:36:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> For what it's worth, I see "Compute" used all the time to refer to this stuff. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language and you'll see it reference "compute devices" frequently in documentation about it. CUDA (originally) stood for Compute Unified Device Architecture.
>>
>> We're all in the business of computation but the hardware accelerated processing people seem pretty keen on using "compute" to describe what they do. DCompute would fit right in and its purpose would be clear to anyone in that particular field, I think.
>
> +1

+1

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 14:25:12 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 12:21:02 UTC, piotrklos wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 06:00:57 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
>>> On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 20:36:26 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>
>>> For what it's worth, I see "Compute" used all the time to refer to this stuff. OpenCL stands for Open Computing Language and you'll see it reference "compute devices" frequently in documentation about it. CUDA (originally) stood for Compute Unified Device Architecture.
>>>
>>> We're all in the business of computation but the hardware accelerated processing people seem pretty keen on using "compute" to describe what they do. DCompute would fit right in and its purpose would be clear to anyone in that particular field, I think.
>>
>> +1
>
> +1

-1

When I see compute I think also at mir glas, BLAS, GEMM stuff, i.e. HPC stuff. There is often GPGPU involved but not necessarily.

On 5/30/2017 5:12 AM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> Ah, isn't English wonderful. I guess Walter is suffering the inverse of the Calvin & Hobbes "Verbing nouns weirds the language", nouning verbs does weird the language, but only to those who aren't used to that particular nouning of the verb.

Just to clarify, I find that "Compute" is not evocative of "GPU". I read "CUDA by Example" a couple years ago, and even downloaded the CUDA SDK and compiled/ran a simple program on a graphics card. But I never noticed that "Compute" had anything specific to do with GPU programming.

I fear the conversation will go like this, like it has for me:

 N: DCompute
 W: What's DCompute?
 N: Enables GPU programming with D
 W: Cool!

instead of:

 N: D-GPU
 W: Cool! I can use D to program GPUs!

The problem with the first conversation is W may just move on to the next topic rather than investigate what DCompute is.

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 18:06:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I fear the conversation will go like this, like it has for me:
>
>  N: DCompute
>  W: What's DCompute?
>  N: Enables GPU programming with D
>  W: Cool!
>
> instead of:
>
>  N: D-GPU
>  W: Cool! I can use D to program GPUs!

This was literally what happened to me when I saw the headline.

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 07:23:42PM +0000, Jack Stouffer via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 18:06:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > I fear the conversation will go like this, like it has for me:
> > 
> >  N: DCompute
> >  W: What's DCompute?
> >  N: Enables GPU programming with D
> >  W: Cool!
> > 
> > instead of:
> > 
> >  N: D-GPU
> >  W: Cool! I can use D to program GPUs!
> 
> This was literally what happened to me when I saw the headline.

I confess the first conversation was also my reaction when I saw the name "DCompute".  I thought, "oh, this is some kind of scientific computation library, right? That comes with a set of standard numerical algorithms?".  Programming GPUs did not occur to me at all.


T

-- 
WINDOWS = Will Install Needless Data On Whole System -- CompuMan

Dne 30.5.2017 v 21:23 Jack Stouffer via Digitalmars-d-announce napsal(a):

> On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 18:06:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> I fear the conversation will go like this, like it has for me:
>>
>>  N: DCompute
>>  W: What's DCompute?
>>  N: Enables GPU programming with D
>>  W: Cool!
>>
>> instead of:
>>
>>  N: D-GPU
>>  W: Cool! I can use D to program GPUs!
>
> This was literally what happened to me when I saw the headline.
Same for me. I was thinking about mir or about some big computation. I understand, there are people who are able to match compute with GPU, CUDA, OpenCL ..., but this does not change anything about wrong name.
It is nice to know, that there are people who will find this, but there will be plenty of us who will not.