Xilinx, Inc announced the 2015.1 release of the SDAccel development environment for OpenCL framework, C, and C++. This new release enhances the SDAccel integrated development environment (IDE), extends OpenCL standard compliance, and features an expanded ecosystem of SDAccel development environment-certified Alliance Members providing platforms, libraries, and design services.

Crosswalk 14 is now Beta. This release comes with the usual update to Chromium (M43)and introduces the WebCL API for devices that support OpenCL. Crosswalk Project enables you to deploy a web application with its own dedicated runtime.

The Blender Foundation has released the first testbuild of Blender 2.75 and is asking everyone to help test it. Among new features are AMD OpenCL rendering and stereo/multiview support!

Boston Khronos Chapter invites you to a presentation and demonstration of realtime fluid simulation using OpenGL compute shaders. Microsoft will be hosting our second event of the year at One Cambridge Center on Thu Jun 4, 6-9PM. The event will feature an in-depth talk on OpenGL and GLSL in simulation applications and will include a live demo. After the talk, there will be time for demos and networking.

Khronos Group Chapters will be hosting 2 meet ups this coming June. Our very active London Chapter will be hosting a WebGL meet up on June 2nd at Skillsmatter. We’d also like to ask you to welcome our latest Chapter addition in Milano Italy! The Milano Chapter will be holding a series of meet ups on Saturdays from June 2nd until June 27th. Khronos Chapters are local groups of Khronos API users who get together on a regular basis to expand their understanding of Khronos APIs, share their technical achievements, and socialize with like-minded colleagues. If you are interested in becoming a Chapter Leader, please take a look at our Khronos Chapter Website.

The Intel GPA now includes an expanded Frame Analyzer for OpenGL ES that includes performance optimization functionality. Developers can also run the System Analyzer and Platform Analyzer applications to analyze Android targets (Intel or ARM architecture) running OpenGL ES v1.0-3.1 from Windows 7/ 8.1 hosts as well as from Apple OS X 10.7, 10.8 or Ubuntu 12.04 or 14.04 host systems.

CVPR is the premier annual Computer Vision event comprising the main CVPR conference and several co-located workshops and short courses. The Khronos Group OpenVX working group members Victor Erukhimov from Itseez, Kari Pulli from Light and Thierry Lepley from NVIDIA will be presenting. The tutorial will focus on a tracking algorithm implemented with OpenVX. At the end of the session, participants will know how to develop code with OpenVX, and optimize for performance.

Toronto ACM SIGGRAPH is presenting “High Performance Computing in Computer Graphics” on May 20th 2015 at the University of Toronto. Continuing with their recent focus on the technical side of computer graphics, the Toronto ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter is delighted to invite you to their next event, focused on high-performance computing (HPC). Presenting will be AJ Guillon, German Andryeyev, and Ned Nedialkov. AJ Guillon is a Khronos member and a contributor to OpenCL 2.1 and the OpenCL C++ kernel language. He has worked extensively with OpenCL since December 2008, when the first OpenCL 1.0 specification was released. AJ will talk about some of the details of the new OpenCL 2.1 provisional specification, including the new C++ kernel language, and discuss its benefits and pitfalls.

The Mora research group at UML released SparkCL an open source unified programming framework for heterogeneous clusters based on Java, OpenCL, Aparapi and the Apache Spark framework. The motivation behind this work is to bring unconventional compute cores such as FPGAs/GPUs/APUs/DSPs and future core types into mainstream programming use. The framework allows equal treatment of different computing devices under the Spark framework and introduces the ability to offload computations to acceleration devices. There is a white paper describing this work and documentation and source repository on Gitlab.

AJ Guillon, who is a Khronos member and contributed to OpenCL 2.1 and the OpenCL C++ kernel language, has written an introduction to OpenCL C++. Previous versions of OpenCL have featured OpenCL C, based upon the C programming language. The provisional OpenCL 2.1 specification is the first OpenCL version to feature a kernel language based upon C++. The relative advantages and disadvantages of C and C++ are already well known, and OpenCL C++ inherits many of them. The OpenCL working group has responded to developers’ requests to be able to write high-level abstractions enabled by C++, while maintaining some compatibility with OpenCL C, by providing the OpenCL C++ kernel language.

Codeplay Software today announced ComputeCpp, an easy-to-use standards-based product for lowering the power consumption and increasing the performance of C++ software. The first commercial release of ComputeCpp will support SYCL for OpenCL, the open-standard C++ programming model from The Khronos Group. SYCL allows C++ application developers to write high-performance modern C++ and deploy it to multiple processor cores without hardware-specific rewrites or optimizations. The Khronos Group just released SYCL 1.2 Final Specification.

Intel Integrated Native Developer Experience (Intel® INDE) Update 2 introduced the OpenCV beta feature. Intel INDE OpenCV beta is compatible with the open source OpenCV 3.0. Provides pre-complied libraries for computer vision applications development for usages like enhanced photography, augmented reality, video summarization, and more. This release Includes IDE integration features. Provides easy to build and create environment for computer vision applications directly from preferred IDEs like Microsoft Visual Studio, Eclipse, or Android Studio. Also available open source at OpenCV.org, the standard optimizations with OpenCL and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel IPP) and Intel Threading Building Blocks (Intel TBB) ensures Intel INDE OpenCV applications are optimized to Intel’s heterogeneous platforms, accelerated with Intel HD and Intel Iris™ graphics family.

The Khronos Group announced the ratification and public release of the finalized SYCL 1.2 specification. SYCL for OpenCL enables code for heterogeneous processors to be written in a “single-source” style using completely standard C++. The multi-vendor SYCL 1.2 standard is available royalty-free for industry use, and the full specification together with details about the SYCL conformance test suite and Adopters Program can be found on the Khronos Group SYCL page.

Big Nerd Ranch is offering two one-week intense introductions to OpenGL programming concentrating on iOS. Geometry specification, transforms, lighting and post-effects are covered. Brief introduction to advanced topics such as Oculus Rift and Vulkan. Registration is now open.

AMD unveiled their new AMD 7000 Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), AMD Radeon 300 and M300 Series Graphics, and AMD A-Series desktop APU updates. The AMD A-Series Desktop APUs offer Windows 10 readiness including DirectX 12 Multiengine and Multiadapter features. Combined with existing support for AMD FreeSync, AMD Mantle, HSA features heterogeneous queuing (hQ) and heterogeneous uniform memory access (hUMA) as enabled by OpenCL 2.0 applications, and OpenGL 4.4.