title: OpenCL, half vs float performance
body: <p>I'm currently working on an application that requires large amounts of variables to be stored and processed (~4gb in float)</p>
  
  <p>Since precision of the individual variables are of less importance (I know that they'll be bounded), I saw that I could use OpenCL's half instead of floats, since that would really decrease the amount of memory.</p>
  
  <p>My question is twofold.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Is there any performance hit to using half instead of float (I'd image graphics cards being built for float operations)</p></li>
  <li><p>Is there a performance hit for mixing floats and half's in calculations? (i.e, a float times a half.)</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Sincerily,
  Andreas Falkenstrøm Mieritz</p>