Intel Still Slowly Hacking Towards Open-Source OpenCL 2.0 Linux Support

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 26 August 2015 at 02:28 PM EDT. 4 Comments
INTEL
Following last month's update to Beignet, the Intel open-source project for providing open-source OpenCL compute support for their HD/Iris Graphics hardware, that brought Skylake support, SPIR, and other updates, there was some hope that OpenCL 2.0 support might become a greater focus to complement Beignet's OpenCL 1.2 support. Sadly, it looks like things are still moving slowly on the CL 2.0 front.

For months there's been an OpenCL 2.0 branch of Beignet being worked on by the Intel China developers maintaining this project. After the Beignet v1.1 release I was curious if Intel would invest more resources into focusing on the OpenCL 2.0 compliance or merging that branch to master, but nothing like that has taken place.

The OpenCL20 branch was re-based earlier this month off the latest Beignet master code following the v1.1 release and bumping of the master version to v2.0. There was also the updating of the OpenCL 2.0 header files, but unfortunately nothing magical to indicate the Intel OpenCL 2.0 development might be picking up pace or on track for becoming a reality soon.

Since Intel's OpenCL SDK 2014 Release 2 last September there's been OpenCL 2.0 support in their closed-source software for Windows and on Linux via their commercial Intel Media Server Studio. What will be really exciting though is when Intel moves on to supporting OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V, the common intermediate representation shared with Vulkan.
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