“SYCL 2020’s primary goal is to achieve closer convergence with ISO C++, furthering our work to bring parallel heterogeneous programming to modern C++ through open standards. SYCL can leverage diverse processors to accelerate problems in many application domains including HPC, automotive, and machine learning,” said Michael Wong, Codeplay distinguished engineer, ISO C++ Directions Group and SYCL working group chair. “SYCL has a growing number of implementers and researchers working on real-world applications in markets ranging from supercomputing to embedded processing. The insights from that work, along with the feedback we collected from the SYCL 2020 provisional specification, has enabled the SYCL Working Group to deliver a feature-rich final specification that balances enhanced performance with backwards compatibility. I am excited by the simplicity and higher expressiveness offered by SYCL 2020 and we will continue to evolve SYCL to meet market needs.”
SYCL uses generic programming with templates and generic lambda functions to enable higher-level application software to be cleanly coded with optimized acceleration of kernel code across the extensive range of various acceleration APIs, such as OpenCL. Developers program at a higher level than the native acceleration API, but always have access to lower-level code through seamless integration with the native acceleration API through the interoperability mode, C/C++ libraries, and frameworks such as OpenCV™ or OpenMP™
SYCL Single Source C++ Parallel ProgrammingSYCL implementations are available from an increasing number of vendors, including adding support for diverse acceleration API back-ends in addition to OpenCL.

SYCL 2020 is the newest release of the SYCL specification, ratified by the Working Group in late 2020, published by the Khronos Group in early 2021. It follows SYCL 1.2.1, the last version to be based directly on OpenCL. Previous release followed OpenCL base release and In light of the move to a more generalized backend model as well as following ISO C++’s release based on year, the project has adopted a year-based versioning scheme.
SYCL 2020 represents a major step forward, featuring over 40 new additions and improvements, including:
SYCL 1.2.1 revision 7 is now the latest release as of April 27, 2020, is based on C++11 and OpenCL 1.2, and is a major update representing 5 years of work by Khronos members. The new specification incorporates significant experience gained from 5 separate implementations and feedback from developers of machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, which now supports SYCL alongside the original CUDA accelerator back-end.
SYCL 1.2.1 builds on the features of C++11, with additional support for C++14 and C++17, enabling ISO C++17 Parallel STL programs to be accelerated on OpenCL devices. To support this effort, Khronos is backing an open-source project to support Parallel STL on top of SYCL, running on OpenCL devices. This project is hosted on GitHub . So, while SYCL brings the power of single-source modern C++ to the OpenCL and SPIR world, it also prepares the convergence with other standards such as Khronos' Vulkan, OpenVX and NNEF and ISO C++ (SG1, SG6, SG12, SG14, SG19).
These SYCL 1.2 specification and conformance tests were released on May 11, 2015 and includes the following features: