Heterogeneous Computing Using Modern C++ with OpenCL Devices: Tutorial at IWOCL 2017

Abstract

SYCL™ is a royalty-free, cross-platform C++ abstraction layer that builds on the underlying concepts, portability and efficiency of OpenCL™, while adding the ease-of-use and flexibility of modern C++11/14. For example, SYCL enables single source development where C++ template functions are compiled for both host and device to construct complex algorithms that use OpenCL acceleration, and then re-use them throughout their source code on different types of data. Using SYCL can simplify development and reduce the amount of code required for applications using OpenCL devices by over 50% compared to standard OpenCL code. This is because of the use of template functions and a simplified, streamlined host API. This hands-on session will provide an opportunity to get experience with SYCL using ComputeCpp™ Community Edition, a free to use implementation of the SYCL 1.2 standard. Attendees will be shown how to set up ComputeCpp and use it to write their own SYCL code to run on supported GPUs and CPUs.