OpenCL Compute (Paperback)

Decent, but uneven. Some chapters are much stronger than others.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The chapters on parallel programming are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.

Useful in parts. Fine as a reference, less so as a cover-to-cover read.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Borrow it first if you can, or at least check the table of contents carefully before buying.