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.