OpenCL framework for ARM processors with NEON support

The state-of-the-art ARM processors provide multiple cores and SIMD instructions. OpenCL is a promising programming model for utilizing such parallel processing capability because of its SPMD programming model and built-in vector support. Moreover, it provides portability between multicore ARM processors and accelerators in embedded systems. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of an efficient OpenCL framework for multicore ARM processors. Computational tasks in a program are implemented as OpenCL kernels and run on all CPU cores in parallel by our OpenCL framework. Vector operations and built-in functions in OpenCL kernels are optimized using the NEON SIMD instruction set. We evaluate our OpenCL framework using 37 benchmark applications. The result shows that our approach is effective and promising.