[Digikam-devel] GPU Implementation of image processing algorithms

[Aditya Bhatt]

Hi Kunal,

If you wish to use GPGPU, OpenCL is the right choice over CUDA. CUDA's API
is not only proprietary, it also is specifically for nVidia hardware. OpenCL
is good in this sense. If you have an nVidia card, it seems that OpenCL will
internally use CUDA, therefore OpenCL will work on all users' computers.

However, I'm not sure, but there seems to be a small problem with adoption
: http://www.khronos.org/opencl/adopters/
There are some weird conditions regarding publishable usage that I'm not
entirely sure about - it seems that you must gain some sort of approval and
pass some tests before you are allowed to say that you used OpenCL in
digiKam. If one doesn't want to publish his/her code, but keep it for
personal/closed usage, then you don't have to pay royalty.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, since this seems free as in speech/usage,
but not free as in beer - there are some royalty issues if you don't pass
the conformance tests.

As a side note - I had a talk with Alex about using EBGM a few days ago, and
we decided not to use it for the moment. We don't have anything against the
algorithm, it's just that if only I did it, there won't be enough time to
implement all the algorithms and also complete the tagging part within the
GSoC period. We definitely want to have eigenface and fisherface, despite
the limitations - the retraining is slow only if there are more than ~400
tagged friends in the database, which is a rarity. The main concern is pose
variation - for that, I plan to link multiple poses of the same person with
the same ID. As a consequence, the initial accuracy while training shall be
less, but after some time it would be good enough.

But still, if you can implement EBGM for libface, it'd be great :) We'd have
one more algorithm in the bag. It's just that one person can't finish
everything in time. So since you're willing, start EBGM then. Eigenfaces is
almost complete.

PS: Hopefully someone will figure out if OpenCL can be used in digiKam or
not.

Cheers


On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 9:21 PM, kunal ghosh <kunal.t2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> I am implementing the face recognition algorithm for digikam, and wanted to
> use GPGPU <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPGPU> frameworks for the same.
> But
> was not able to decide which framework to use OpenCL<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL>or
> CUDA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA> (C for CUDA specifically).
>
> PS: I am willingly not including any more information about either of the
> above frameworks to attract unbiased opinions.
>
> Also, i could code part that would execute on the GPU in python ,
> shortening the development cycle. Good python bindings exist for either GPU
> programming frameworks. Py[CUDA,OpenCL] are the bindings.
>
> Python functions are easily callable from within C/C++ code as demonstrated
> by Link 1 <http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/ext/callingPython.html>
> Link2 <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/embedpython_1.aspx> and Link3<http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8497>
> so, is it fine if the algorithms are implemented in python and then called
> from within digikam.
>
> all suggestions , comments welcome.
>
> --
> regards
> -------
> Kunal Ghosh
> Dept of Computer Sc. & Engineering.
> Sir MVIT
> Bangalore,India
>
> Quote:
> "Ignorance is not a sin, the persistence of ignorance is"
> --
> "If you find a task difficult today, you'll find it difficult 10yrs later
> too !"
> -----
> "Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail"
>
> Blog:kunalghosh.wordpress.com
> Website:www.kunalghosh.net46.net
> V-card:http://tinyurl.com/86qjyk
>
>
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>


-- 
Aditya Bhatt
Blog : http://adityabhatt.wordpress.com
Face Recognition Library : http://libface.sourceforge.net
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