Altera Corporation announced Microsoft is using Altera Arria 10 FPGAs to achieve compelling performance-per-Watt in data center acceleration based on CNN (convolutional neural network) algorithms. This performance is achieved using the open software development language known as OpenCL, or VHDL to code the Arria 10 FPGA and its IEEE754 hard floating point DSP (digital signal processing) blocks.

A short tutorial offering a brief introduction to Khronos SPIR. The tutorial will also touch on the differences between a SPIR binary and an Intel proprietary Intermediate Binary, and demonstrating a couple of ways to create SPIR binaries using tools shipped with Intel INDE and a way of consuming SPIR binaries in your OpenCL program.

The Khronos Group and ImmersiON-VRelia will be sponsoring the annual ITA meeting March 4 at 9AM, at SF Green Space @EEFG. Scheduled speakers include Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group and Dr. Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, among others. Neil Trevett will talk about the litmus test for helping determine when the ideology of ‘Open Standards’ holds true, and how the alliance is working to honor this methodology in their working groups pertaining to standards and industry growth. Later the same day and in the same place, the Khronos Group will be holding an ‘OpenCL Ecosystem Advances: OpenCL, SYCL, and SPIR’ session and a WebGL Meetup. Although the WebGL meetup is now filled to capacity, there is still some room remaining for the OpenCL venture, and the two special sessions on March 5th for ‘Next Generation of Graphics and Compute API’. All of these events are being held at SF Green Space @EEFG in San Francisco.

The International Workshop for OpenCL (IWOCL) papers from 2013 and 2014 are now available online from the ACM digital library. The next IWOCL conference will be held at Stanford University this coming May 12-13. Next week during GDC the Khronos Group is holding an OpenCL session on March 4th to present significant announcements in the OpenCL ecosystem, including SYCL and SPIR.

Intel has updated its graphics drivers for users of 4th generation Core processors. The headline benefits to updating your Haswell based system’s drivers is that the integrated graphics component will give you up to 10 per cent better performance in games and up to 30 per cent better performance in OpenCL. This driver update may be particularly interesting to those with systems which rely upon Intel graphics and have no graphic card upgrade options - laptops and devices like the Surface Pro 3.

The Khronos Group will be holding a number of sessions off-site during GDC week. There will be two sessions dedicated to discussing the Next Generation of Graphics and Compute API, as well as an OpenCL and WebGL meetup. These sessions will be taking place at SF Green Space (EEFG) just a few minutes walking distance from the Moscone center on Wednesday and Thursday. Registration is highly advised for the off-site sessions as space is limited and a good crowd is expected. Complete details are available on the Khronos GDC 2015 event page.

OpenCL support at Intel is now going mainstream with a full integration into Intel’s portfolio of software development suites. The Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications features are now integrated into various development tools under the new name of OpenCL Code Builder. The different solutions are tailored to the target development environment: for mobile and PC development, the OpenCL Code Builder is now integrated into Intel Integrated Native Developer Experience (Intel INDE); For media server usages, the code builder is now integrated into Intel Media Server Studio. For other usages, a standalone Linux* version of the OpenCL Code Builder is also available. Two major new features are now supported: Commercial OpenCL Linux driver for Intel Processor Graphics is available with Intel Media Server Studio; OpenCL 2.0 support for 5th Generation Intel Core Processors with fine-grained SVM on Intel HD and Iris Graphics is available in Intel INDE.

Join Valve and Khronos for the unveiling of Khronos’ glNext initiative, the upcoming cross-platform graphics API designed for modern programming techniques and processors. glNext will be the singular choice for developers who demand peak performance in their applications. Presentations will include a technical breakdown of the API, advanced techniques and live demos of real-world applications running on glNext drivers and hardware.

A Khronos sponsored BDTI workshop featuring OpenVX and OpenCL on algorithms, processors, sensors, tools, libraries, and standards for practical computer vision systems and applications. This workshop, developed in collaboration with the Khronos Group, provides an efficient launching pad for engineers, developers, and technical managers seeking to incorporate vision into next-generation products and applications. Attendees will get a practical introduction to key hardware and software topics including algorithms, processors, sensors, tools, libraries, and standards currently used for vision-based application and system design. Register today.

Neuro-Systems Emulsion is a photorealistic rendering studio using OpenCL for realtime and non-realtime physically-based techniques that can transform brute 3D models into photorealistic images, adjusted in real time. Emulsion can easily integrate these projects directly into a video source or digital pictures using photorealistic augmented reality.