Can I force an exe to run on the GPU?

[miller745]

Hello folks,

Bit of an odd question, but I have a problem with an external program for MS Flight Sim and Prepar3D. Simply put in 32bit FSX this external program that draws graphics for some gauges in the cockpit is fine, but in 64bit P3D the gauge update rate is in the frames per minute. The developer says they don't support AMD cards and seem to be blaming AMD for it. So is there any way I can force this exe to run on the GPU? From googling it looks like it was possible in some old cataylst versions, but I'm not sure if that was just for laptops.

 

[NoobCannon]

Fairly sure the answer is no

 

[rtho782]

No, you can't force an executable to run on the gpu. It sounds like the Dev supports CUDA, which is nVidia only, and not say, OpenCL which works with both.

The stuff you found about laptops was likely making something run on the AMD GPU rather than the integrated intel graphics - i.e. it was already running on a graphics processor just a different one.

 

[Orcvader]

What is the external program?

But yes as mentioned before, there's no way to force it to use the GPU.

 

[henson0115]

if it was an nvidia card, you could force it to use the inbuilt gpu if it has one. not seen it on desktop for AMD though, afaik yes it was just on laptops for AMD.

edit: it seems people are missunderstanding the question, ignore the executable people, the question is can you choose which gpu a program runs on.

 

[miller745]

The program is called WebSimConnect, it renders gauges to take the workload out of the simulator which has poor performance to start with! I'm not sure how he programmed it. All I can tell them is using process monitor, GPU usage is between 1-30 in Flight Sim X and between 1-8 in Prepar3d, so it's no wonder the update rate is so low.

Found that lowering all graphical details within P3D does increase the update rate, so I wondered if P3D is "stealing" the GPU and not giving WebSimConnect the chance to do its thing.

 

[Orcvader]

edit: it seems people are missunderstanding the question, ignore the executable people, the question is can you choose which gpu a program runs on.

If you look at his sig, there's only 1 GPU in his system anyway. So anything that can use hardware acceleration will use his 480.

The program is called WebSimConnect, it renders gauges to take the workload out of the simulator which has poor performance to start with! I'm not sure how he programmed it. All I can tell them is using process monitor, GPU usage is between 1-30 in Flight Sim X and between 1-8 in Prepar3d, so it's no wonder the update rate is so low.

Found that lowering all graphical details within P3D does increase the update rate, so I wondered if P3D is "stealing" the GPU and not giving WebSimConnect the chance to do its thing.

Just because it's a low usage, doesn't mean it's poorly using it.

It might be just the way the software is coded. Having a look at WebSimConnect, 64-bit support was only added back in July. And even then, it shouldn't really matter if the sim software is 32 or 64-bit. It's more likely that there could be a possible issue of the software not polling the data fast enough or even something on P3D's side not properly sharing the data, but it's really hard to say. If anything, it looks like the developer coded it by himself so there's not really much systems he can test it on. Are you using a browser on the same PC to look at WebSimConnect? Tried Firefox, Chrome, etc? Or even another device on the same network?

 

[silversurfer]

Wasnt AMD trying to enable Nvidia code usable on their hardware, I think it was for deep learning nothing like this

If you were smart, very dedicated and had a lot of time you might be able to write an interpreter possibly. Usually it doesnt work because emulation of hardware features at a software level causes disproportionate lag. I know people have tried do the reverse, make up for missing shader processing on a gpu by cpu emulation, it caused fps to lose 90% but it kinda worked (badly) as an emergency stopgap. I thought it was a noble effort all the same, in future I would hope for a more open landscape in development

Attempt to google anything related:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-simulate-emulate-code-the-thinking-power-of-a-CPU-on-a-GPU
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-dolphin-...early-impossible-to-solve-stuttering-problem/

 

[henson0115]

If you look at his sig, there's only 1 GPU in his system anyway. So anything that can use hardware acceleration will use his 480.

could be another machine completely missed the sig

 

[miller745]

It might be just the way the software is coded. Having a look at WebSimConnect, 64-bit support was only added back in July. And even then, it shouldn't really matter if the sim software is 32 or 64-bit. It's more likely that there could be a possible issue of the software not polling the data fast enough or even something on P3D's side not properly sharing the data, but it's really hard to say. If anything, it looks like the developer coded it by himself so there's not really much systems he can test it on. Are you using a browser on the same PC to look at WebSimConnect? Tried Firefox, Chrome, etc? Or even another device on the same network?

While it uses html to to render the gauges, I can't directly open the .html and view the data its drawing. It's a "void" file with one reference to the pixi.js.

Giving up for now, will keep having a play with it. The developers have given up as well