AMD vs NVIDIA and some NESTing for SAR

While nVIDIA provides backward compatible OpenCL drivers. AMD in opposition to nVIDIA who supports DirectCompute even in GeForce 8 series (8400 GT and up) for a long time ago, forgets about older than HD5000 series. I managed to get OpenCL eigenvalues kernel tested on my other machine but fell flat on my laptop with a 3670 ATI.

Some work by Orfeo Toolbox guys has recorded large performance gains in non-trivial (i.e not pixel by pixel) operations using GPU options. The eigenvalue problem is typical in SAR analysis and I would like to implement it on the GPU.

Talking about SAR, first there was BEST (Basic ESA SAR Toolbox), now ESA is funding development of NEST (Next ESA SAR Toolbox). The product so far looks impressive , Java based pulling in all the goodies including NASA WorldWind. There are plans afoot to include the DORIS InSAR processor as well.

DORIS as such is very script based and difficult to use properly. Hopefully providing and easy interface will open-up more INSAR processing options.