The Khronos™ Group announced the immediate availability of the finalized OpenCL™ 2.2 specification, incorporating industry feedback received from developers during the provisional specification review period. In addition to releasing the specification in final form, Khronos has, for the first time, released the full source of the specifications and conformance tests for OpenCL 2.2 onto GitHub to enable deeper community engagement. The conformance tests for OpenCL versions 1.2, 2.0 and 2.1 have also been released on GitHub with more open-source releases to follow.
OpenCL 2.2 brings the most developer-requested feature into core — the new OpenCL C++ kernel language for significantly enhanced parallel programming productivity. OpenCL™ 2.2 has been released in parallel with SPIR-V 1.2 which brings full support for the new OpenCL C++ kernel language into the Khronos-defined intermediate language. OpenCL 2.2 finalization further complements SYCL 2.2, which leverages OpenCL 2.2 to provide the power of single source C++ programming.
“By finalizing OpenCL 2.2, Khronos has delivered on its promise to make C++ a first-class kernel language in the OpenCL standard,” said Neil Trevett, OpenCL chair and Khronos president. “The OpenCL working group is now free to continue its work with SYCL, to converge the power of single source parallel C++ programming with standard ISO C++, and to explore new markets and opportunities for OpenCL — such as embedded vision and inferencing. We are also working to converge with, and leverage, the Khronos Vulkan API — merging advance graphics and compute into a single API.”
Khronos is announcing these new features at the IWOCL 2017 Conference, hosted at the University of Toronto and sponsored by the Fields Institute, in Toronto, Canada, where participants have a choice of four tutorials, 19 technical sessions, a Khronos panel discussion, posters, demos, and a conference dinner and networking event. The Khronos Group, alongside other Khronos Group Members, is the primary sponsor of IWOCL.
The new specifications for OpenCL 2.2 and SPIR-V 1.2 can be found at www.khronos.org.
