Top 7 Best OpenCL Books To Read in [2024] [UPDATED]

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This post contains a listing of the best OpenCL books that offer thorough coverage of the Open Computing Language.

OpenCL is a high-performance programming language that maximizes computational power by executing on CPUs, graphics processors, and other number-crunching devices. It’s perfect for speed-sensitive tasks like vector computing, matrix operations, and graphics acceleration.

Using the new OpenCL standard, you can write applications that access all available programming resources: CPUs, GPUs, and other processors such as DSPs and the Cell/B.E. processor.

Best OpenCL Books To Read

 

1. OpenCL in Action: How to Accelerate Graphics and Computations

best books to learn openclOpenCL in Action is a thorough, hands-on presentation of OpenCL, with an eye toward showing developers how to build high-performance applications of their own. It begins by presenting the core concepts behind OpenCL, including vector computing, parallel programming, and multi-threaded operations, and then guides you step-by-step from simple data structures to complex functions.

A background in C or C++ is helpful, but no prior exposure to OpenCL is needed.

OpenCL in Action blends the theory of parallel computing with the practical reality of building high-performance applications using OpenCL. It first guides you through the fundamental data structures in an intuitive manner. Then, it explains techniques for high-speed sorting, image processing, matrix operations, and fast Fourier transform.

The book concludes with a deep look at the all-important subject of graphics acceleration. Numerous challenging examples give you different ways to experiment with working code.

 

2. OpenCL Programming Guide

best OpenCL Parallel Programming Development booksWritten by five leading OpenCL authorities, OpenCL Programming Guide covers the entire specification. It reviews key use cases, shows how OpenCL can express a wide range of parallel algorithms, and offers complete reference material on both the API and OpenCL C programming language.

Through complete case studies and downloadable code examples, the authors show how to write complex parallel programs that decompose workloads across many different devices. They also present all the essentials of OpenCL software performance optimization, including probing and adapting to hardware.

Case studies dealing with physics simulation; image and signal processing, such as image histograms, edge detection filters, Fast Fourier Transforms, and optical flow; math libraries, such as matrix multiplication and high-performance sparse matrix multiplication.

What You Will Learn: 

  • Understanding OpenCL’s architecture, concepts, terminology, goals, and rationale
  • Programming with OpenCL C and the runtime API
  • Using buffers, sub-buffers, images, samplers, and events
  • Sharing and synchronizing data with OpenGL and Microsoft’s Direct3D
  • Simplifying development with the C++ Wrapper API
  • Using OpenCL Embedded Profiles to support devices ranging from cellphones to supercomputer nodes

 

3. OpenCL Parallel Programming Development Cookbook

best OpenCL Parallel Programming Development booksThis cookbook is the perfect way to learn parallel programming in OpenCL because if offers a mix of enlightening theory and hands-on recipes. Ideal for experienced developers.

This book is roughly in two parts, where the first part is the fundamentals of OpenCL parallel development and the second part is the various algorithms we will explore with you. Each part is packed with many code samples and illustrations to demonstrate various concepts.

The first part is essential for a beginner to not only program in parallel, but also to think in parallel and become equipped with the mental model with which to tackle parallel programming. The second part consists of seven different algorithms that the author has identified; you will learn various parallel programming techniques that experts have used in the past 60 years that are applicable to OpenCL.

This book will demonstrate how you think in parallel by illustrating and demonstrating programming techniques like data partitioning, thread coarsening, register tiling, data pre-fetching, and algorithm transformation.

What You Will Learn:

  • How to use OpenCL
  • Understand data partitioning and transfers in OpenCL
  • Understand OpenCL data types
  • Learn about OpenCL functions including math, atomic, threading model, data transfer, and so on
  • Develop a histogram in OpenCL
  • Learn how to develop Sobel edge detection in OpenCL for image processing
  • Develop the Matrix Multiplication and the Sparse Matrix Vector Multiplication in OpenCL
  • You will learn to develop Bitonic sort and Radix sort in OpenCL
  • How to develop n-body with OpenCL

 

4. OpenCL Programming by Example

best books to learn OpenCL ProgrammingThis guide offers you a compact coverage of all the major topics of OpenCL programming. It explains optimization techniques and strategies in-depth, using illustrative examples and also provides case studies from diverse fields. Beginners and advanced application developers will find this book very useful.

Beginning with the discussion of the OpenCL models, this book explores their architectural view, programming interfaces and primitives. It slowly demystifies the process of identifying the data and task parallelism in diverse algorithms.

It presents examples from different domains to show how the problems within different domains can be solved more efficiently using OpenCL. You will learn about parallel sorting, histogram generation, JPEG compression, linear and parabolic regression and k-nearest neighborhood, a clustering algorithm in pattern recognition.

OpenCL Programming by Example explains OpenCL in the simplest possible language, which beginners will find it easy to understand. Developers and programmers from different domains who want to achieve acceleration for their applications will find this book very useful.

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5. Using OpenCL: Programming Massively Parallel Computers (Advances in Parallel Computing)

best opencl books to readThis book explains how heterogeneous computers work and how to program them using OpenCL. It also describes how to combine OpenCL with OpenGL for displaying graphical effects in real time.

Initially author describes briefly two older de facto standard and highly successful parallel programming systems: MPI and OpenMP. Collectively, the MPI, OpenMP, and OpenCL systems cover programming of all major parallel architectures: clusters, shared-memory computers, and the newest heterogeneous computers.

The technical core of the book, deals with OpenCL fundamentals: programming, hardware, and the interaction between them.

You will get information about such advanced issues as double-versus-single arithmetic precision, efficiency, memory use, and debugging.

Contain several examples of code and one case study on genetic algorithms. These examples are related to linear algebra operations, which are very common in scientific, industrial, and business applications.

 

6. Design of FPGA-Based Computing Systems with OpenCL

best books to Design FPGA Based Computing Systems with OpenCLThis book provides wide knowledge about designing FPGA-based heterogeneous computing systems, using a high-level design environment based on OpenCL (Open Computing language), which is called OpenCL for FPGA.

The OpenCL-based design methodology will be the key technology to exploit the potential of FPGAs in various applications such as low-power embedded applications and high-performance computing.

By understanding the OpenCL-based design methodology, readers can design an entire FPGA-based computing system more easily compared to the conventional HDL-based design, because OpenCL for FPGA takes care of computation on a host, data transfer between a host and an FPGA, computation on an FPGA with a capable of accessing external DDR memories.

In the step-by-step way, readers can understand followings:

  • how to set up the design environment
  • how to write better codes systematically considering architectural constraints
  • how to design practical applications

 

7. OpenCL: Practical Tools for Self-Assessment

best opencl booksFeaturing 700 new and updated case-based questions, organized into seven core areas of process design, this Self-Assessment will help you identify areas in which OpenCL improvements can be made.

In using the questions you will be better able to diagnose OpenCL projects, initiatives, organizations, businesses and processes using accepted diagnostic standards and practices. This book will teach you how to implement evidence-based best practice strategies aligned with overall goals

OpenCL: Practical Tools for Self-Assessment, integrate recent advances in OpenCL and process design strategies into practice according to best practice guidelines.