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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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12 years ago

How to evaluate Altera's openCL support?

HI,

I've just downloaded Quartus-13.1+ + AOC to see what we can expect for our algorithms.

Using the free 30 days evaluation license works for Quartus, however AOC complains about a missing license file.

Is it possible to get a time-limited evaluation license for AOC, too?

- Reggi

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    12 years ago

    As far as I know there are no time-limited evaluation licenses for Altera's OpenCL SDK at the moment but this may change in the future.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    12 years ago

    Thanks for your reply.

    I know we have Quartus volume licenses at the company, would those be sufficient to use AOC?

    Or is AOC covered under a separate license? Unfourtunately the Altera's OpenCL page does not mention licensing...

    - Reggi
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    12 years ago

    I filled a doc request to have this information enhanced since it's not readily available as far as I can tell as well. OpenCL has it's own feature line so it uses the same license management scheme as Quartus but it's a separate license. I think when OpenCL licenses are cut they come with the necessary Quartus II license as well since it's a prerequist but I'm not sure what happens if you already have a Quartus II license (I'm guessing you'll just end up with two Quartus II feature lines in that case). I'm not overly familiar with the procedure to get an OpenCL license but I would chat with your Altera sales rep to see if something can be worked out.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    12 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    I filled a doc request to have this information enhanced since it's not readily available as far as I can tell as well.

    --- Quote End ---

    Thanks a lot, hopefully this will make it more clear.

    --- Quote Start ---

    OpenCL has it's own feature line so it uses the same license management scheme as Quartus but it's a separate license. ... I'm not overly familiar with the procedure to get an OpenCL license but I would chat with your Altera sales rep to see if something can be worked out.

    --- Quote End ---

    This puts me into an awkward position:

    Basically what I would need as a starting point are some estimates how well (or if at all) a given kernel would run on a Cyclone-V SoC.

    With some numbers I could approach my superiors and ask them to buy a license for AOC (when there is at least a slight chance AOC works better than the DSP solution planned). However, currently, the full "risk" is on my side.

    Couldn't the compiler be adapted to create a compilation report and resource useage / throughput estimates but no binaries in case it is unlicensed?

    Or some kind of online evaluation, where this information can be generated at Altera servers for OpenCL code uploaded.

    Thx