Processing Graphs 2

So, I looked into implementing the graph idea on Friday.

I came up with a really simple bit of code that runs everything in the right order, and a few 'nodes' which wrap some of the stuff in socles in re-usable components. I'm working on a simple component architecture that could let a GUI for example auto-query some of the node capabilities and data i/o ports.

I changed my idea on the data format stuff, and now the components explicitly import and export a given type: so either the application can know what is needed to interface disparate functions, or potentially graph code could just add it in as needed.

For example, something that might take two images and blend them together might have:

 ImageSouce getOutputImage();
 void setInputA(ImageSource);
 void setInputB(ImageSource);
 void setInputFactor(ValueSource);

The *Source types are interfaces which let you retrieve the actual data or value (and perhaps meta-data thereof). Reflection can be used based on the names (setInput/setOutput) and/or the argument/returns (instanceof Source) in order to auto-create GUI or auto-connect parts.

Although I didn't quite get that far I pretty much worked out the event generation stuff too: each node takes a CLEventList condition, and CLEventList events (these are the way all CL calls are synchronised) and honours/updates them as if it were a single call. i.e. waits on the condition, and then sets a single event on events either via a enqueue call or using user events when it's done. And although the graph is invoked synchronously, this allows for asynchronous operation: i.e. any call that might block (e.g. read-modify-write from gpu) just shuffles it's work off to another thread/work queue and it can sync up later. Well that's the intention anyway. I'd like to be able to automate the parallelisation via queues across the graph paths as well, but I should get something working first.

I hit a bit of a hurdle with JOCL not allowing user events to be added to an event list: which means I couldn't get much further with some of the stuff I wanted to do (allow java code to participate in the OpenCL managed event graph). If JOCL wasn't such a pain to build and then propagate to the various projects I would've added the trivial patch to get it working, but by then it was pretty much the end of the productive day anyway so I left it at that.

As an aside: i'm not sure what possessed me to actually start work on this, but I have previously considered - and dismissed - hacking together another jni binding for opencl (there's little things every now and then that get me thinking about it, but usually my senses kick in before I start). Because there's a lot more involved than just the code it's really not an avenue I want to cycle down. But this morning - complete with hangover - ugh, which still seems to be lingering now at the other end of the day - I started with openal and then looking into opencl. I use gcc and cproto to simplify the stuff I need to parse, filtered further by a few greps in a shell script. Then another big ugly perl script to process these into bindings and classes. Anyway, that stuff probably wont go anywhere. Probably.