OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a multi-vendor open standard for general-purpose parallel programming of heterogeneous systems that include CPUs, GPUs and other processors.
Using the OpenCL API, developers can launch compute kernels written using a limited subset of the C programming language on a GPU. This language offers a a cross-vendor, non-proprietary solution.
OpenCL supports a wide range of applications, ranging from embedded and consumer software to HPC solutions. OpenCL is developed by multiple companies through the Khronos OpenCL committee.
Features include:
- Flexible execution model.
- Shared Virtual Memory – a single address space which is shared between the host and device.
- Dynamic Parallelism using task-based and data-based parallelism.
- Utilizes a subset of ISO C99 with extensions for parallelism.
- Defines consistent numerical requirements based on IEEE 754.
- Defines a configuration profile for handheld and embedded devices.
- Interoperates with OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and other graphics APIs.
- Generic address space removes the need to overload functions based on address space.
- Pipes – Built-in functions for kernels to read from or write to a pipe, providing straightforward programming of pipe data structures that can be highly optimized by OpenCL implementers.
- Blocks and device kernel creation.
- Optimised Image support: including support for 1D images and 1D/2D image arrays, 3D image reads and writes, read_write as a modifier for images, mip-mapped images as well as images with more than one sample per pixel.
Website: www.khronos.org/opencl
Support: Forums
Developer: Khronos Group
License: Not specified
OpenCL is written in C++ and C. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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