Open CL

Open CL

Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs) and other processors. OpenCL includes a language (based on C99) for writing kernels (functions that execute on OpenCL devices), plus application programming interfaces (APIs) that are used to define and then control the platforms. OpenCL provides parallel computing using task-based and data-based parallelism. OpenCL is an open standard maintained by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. It has been adopted by Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Nvidia, Altera, Samsung, Vivante and ARM Holdings.

For example, OpenCL can be used to give an application access to a graphics processing unit for non-graphical computing (see general-purpose computing on graphics processing units). Academic researchers have investigated automatically compiling OpenCL programs into application-specific processors running on FPGAs, and commercial FPGA vendors are developing tools to translate OpenCL to run on their FPGA devices.