st: GPU use in Stata 12?

[László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I use Stata 11.1 on a Mac. I will be shopping for new hardware
shortly, and I would be grateful for any updates or educated guesses
on the GPU use of the upcoming release.

Two years ago, when Snow Leopard and Stata 11 were coming out, there
was a conclusion that Stata 11 will not support OpenCL or use CUDA
(like Matlab or Mathematica...), as the Nvidia chips at the time (and
still used in the configuration currently on sale) could not make
double precision floating point calculations.

Two years later, you might know more about recent GPUs (and some
rumors about what is going into the upcoming mac product line?) and/or
Mac OS X 10.7 scheduled for "this summer." Of course, many fellow
statalisters would care more about PC hardware for Stata.

I might spend a few hundred dollars extra for a dedicated GPU in a
laptop in case Stata can make use of that. (I heard speed improvement
by orderS of magnitude possible) But it would be nice to get some
advance notice before Stata 12 actually comes out. My hardware upgrade
cannot wait until the summer, but I don't want the new piece become
obsolete that soon either.

Thanks!

Laszlo

László Sándor
PhD candidate
Department of Economics
Harvard University

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