The Best Book on OpenCL 1.x

What makes “OpenCL in Action: How to Accelerate Graphics and Computation” special is that the author, Matthew Scarpino, truly tries to explain the programs. You learn the reasons behind his design decisions.

Learning OpenCL is not such an easy task. Before you even get to the programming part, you have to master a lot of infrastructure. In my opinion, Matthew Scarpino solves this problem excellently.

The example programs are drawn from various subject areas, well-commented, and sometimes very mathematical. However, that didn’t bother me, as OpenCL is also frequently used in the embedded sector, which is often very mathematical, such as in signal or image processing.

Admittedly, the book is now a few years old. The performance tips would likely need to be re-evaluated by now. Also, the chapter on interfaces to other programming languages—Aparapi, JavaCL, PyOpenCL—is probably somewhat outdated.

But the book contains so much knowledge about OpenCL 1.1 that it remains (as of February 2015) THE book for getting started with OpenCL. For me personally, this is the best book for learning OpenCL. It is an excellent introduction to OpenCL 1.1.

P.S. I worked as a technical editor on this book (see p. xvii).

• Matthew Scarpino
• OpenCL in Action: How to Accelerate Graphics and Computation
• Manning
• 2011

See also the review on Amazon.