Introduction to OpenCL / Overview of OpenCL

               The Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is a heterogeneous programming framework that is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium Khronos Group. OpenCL is a framework for developing applications that execute across a range of device types made by different vendors. It supports a wide range of levels of parallelism and efficiently maps to homogeneous or heterogeneous, single- or multiple-device systems consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other types of devices limited only by the imagination of vendors. The OpenCL definition offers both a device-side language and a host management layer for the devices in a system.

 

The device-side language is designed to efficiently map to a wide range of memory systems. The host language aims to support efficient plumbing of complicated concurrent programs with low overhead. Together, these provide the developer with a path to efficiently move from algorithm design to implementation. OpenCL provides parallel computing using task-based and data-based parallelism. It currently supports CPUs that include x86, ARM, and PowerPC, and it has

been adopted into graphics card drivers by both AMD (called the Accelerated Parallel Processing SDK) and NVIDIA. Support for OpenCL is rapidly expanding as a wide range of platform vendors have adopted OpenCL and support or plan to support it for their hardware platforms. These vendors fall within a wide range of market segments, from the embedded vendors (ARMand Imagination Technologies) to the HPC vendors (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and IBM). The architectures supported include multi-core CPUs, throughput and vector processors such as GPUs, and finegrained parallel devices such as FPGAs.

 

Most important, OpenCL’s cross-platform, industrywide support makes it an excellent programming model for developers to learn and use, with the confidence that it will continue to be widely available for years to come with ever-increasing scope and applicability.

 

 

 

 

OpenCLTM – Open Computing Language

Open, royalty-free standard C-language extension

For parallel programming of heterogeneous systems using GPUs, CPUs,CBE, DSP’s and other processors including embedded mobile devices

 

Managed by Khronos Group

(same group that manages the OpenGL std)