Khronos Releases OpenCL 2.1 & SPIR-V 1.0 Specifications

The Khronos Group has formally released the OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V 1.0 specifications coinciding with this year's SuperComputing conference in Austin.

There's been tentative specs available for months now for OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V 1.0 -- the new intermediate representation used by OpenCL 2.1+ as well as Vulkan -- and now both of these are firmed up in an official capacity.

OpenCL 2.1 brings support for SPIR-V 1.0 (obviously) along with support for sub-groups, clCloneKernel, and low-latency device timer queries. More details on OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V via this earlier article.

With the release of SPIR-V 1.0, Khronos has also released a translator to go from LLVM to/from SPIR-V, an OpenCL C to LLVM compiler that generates SPIR-V, and a SPIR-V assembler/disassembler.

More details via the Khronos.org press release. With SPIR-V 1.0 now out the door as a pre-requirement, time for the public Vulkan specification.