OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is an open royalty-free standard for general purpose
parallel programming across CPUs, GPUs and other processors, giving software developers
portable and efficient access to the power of these heterogeneous processing platforms.
OpenCL supports a wide range of applications, ranging from embedded and consumer software to HPC solutions, through a low-level, high-performance, portable abstraction. By creating an efficient, close-to-the-metal programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.
OpenCL consists of an API for coordinating parallel computation across heterogeneous processors; and a cross-platform programming language with a well-specified computation environment. The OpenCL standard:
- Supports both data- and task-based parallel programming models
- Utilizes a subset of ISO C99 with extensions for parallelism
- Defines consistent numerical requirements based on IEEE 754
- Defines a configuration profile for handheld and embedded devices
- Efficiently interoperates with OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and other graphics APIs
The specification is divided into a core specification that any OpenCL compliant implementation must support; a handheld/embedded profile which relaxes the OpenCL compliance requirements for handheld and embedded devices; and a set of optional extensions that are likely to move into the core specification in later revisions of the OpenCL specification.
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