An Overview of OpenCL Vendor Extensions Supported in Qualcomm Adreno GPUs

Abstract

One of the key advantages of using OpenCL is its openness and flexibility, as it allows OpenCL vendors to extend the standard OpenCL features or add new features through the extension mechanism. OpenCL allows three types of extensions, the KHR extensions, the external extensions, and the vendor extensions. Vendor extensions are less restrictive than the KHR and the external extensions, which normally require multiple vendors to adopt or conformance tests to pass. This poster focuses on the vendor extensions solely available on the Adreno mobile GPUs in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SOCs (system-on-chip). Adreno GPUs support a wide range of vendor extensions. This poster will provide a high-level overview of the extensions. More detailed descriptions and examples can be found in [1]. Note that Adreno GPUs have many tiers and generations featuring different capabilities. Generally, developers must query its availability on the device before using the extension via API calls such as clGetDeviceInfo , to avoid possible incompatibility or portability issues in future.