Several Chinese phones bring OpenCL to millions of users, as MediaTek offers their drivers to all phone vendors who use their (recent) chipsets.
Mediatek said that you just need a phone with one of the below chipsets and you can run your OpenCL-app, as they provide the driver-stack with the hardware to their customers. I’ve added a few phone names, but there is no guarantee OpenCL drivers are actually there. So be on the safe side and don’t buy the cheapest phone, but a more respected China-brand. Contact us if you got a phone with the chipset that doesn’t work – then I’ll contact Mediatek. Share you experience with the chipset in the comments.
In case you want to use the phone for actual use, be sure it supports your 4G frequencies. Also check this Gizchina article on the below chipsets. There are more MediaTek-chipsets that support OpenCL, but not openly – they prefer to focus on their latest 64-bit series.
Important note on conformance: Mediatek is an adopter and does conform for a few processors. Of the ones listed below, only MT6795 is certain to have official support.
MT6795 (Helio X10)
The phones using MT6795 are just coming out. Sources claim it has a Imagination Technologies PowerVR G6200.
- 64-bit True Octa-core™ LTE SoC with clock speed up to 2.2GHz
- Dual-channel LPDDR3 memory clocked at 933MHz
- 2K on device display (2560×1600) @ 120MHz
Phones using it:
- Gionee Elife E8
- Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
- Vivo X7
- Oppo R7
MT6752/MT6753
The MT6752 is used in many, many, many phones. MT6753 in many, many more.
- ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit octa-core processor (1.7GHz)
- ARM Mali-T760 GPU
See productpages of the MT6752 and MT6753.
MT6735
- ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit quad-core processor (1.5GHz)
- ARM Mali-T720 GPU
- Rel. 9, Cat. 4 LTE (FDD & TDD), DC-HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000 1x/EVDO Rev. A, EDGE
Phones using it:
- Oukitel U2
- Kingzone N5
- Umi Hammer S
- Amigoo MG100
- IPRO Sight Silver
- ZTE Blade
- D6 Meizu M2
- more
OpenCL getting popular on phones?
The chip vendors giving stronger support over the years:
- Qualcomm has always ignored Google’s push for Renderscript. For example Sony has an extensive and very fast OpenCL based camera app. You can find drivers on practically each Qualcomm phone/tablet.
- Vivante/Freescale was the first with a very stable OpenCL driver. The Freescale iMX6 is very popular in the embedded world, even though it is not the fastest processor around.
- Imagination Technologies is pushing OpenCL since a few years. See their blog with some articles on OpenCL.
- ARM is taking up OpenCL fast on MALI, mainly because interest is stronger than expected (products under link not all OpenCL).
MediaTek is making use of the drivers provided by Imagination and ARM. The important part is that the Chinese market is huge and these phones get delivered to millions and millions, creating a large and increasing userbase for OpenCL-apps.
This is good news, because not so long ago Google (and Apple) seemed successful in blocking the open standard. We’re looking forward to program more in OpenCL than in OpenGL shaders for software that needs to run on all phones!
