OpenACC Front-Ends For C/C++ Are Moving Close For GCC 5

Code Sourcery developers are seeking permission to land their OpenACC C/C++ front-end support inside the mainline GCC code-base.

For the past year the developers at Code Sourcery / Mentor Graphics have been working on OpenACC 2.0 with GPU support for GCC. The GPU support is focused on NVIDIA hardware and includes a controversial NVIDIA "NVPTX" back-end for GCC that still requires NVIDIA's closed-source Linux driver for handling this compute support. The NVPTX back-end is ready for mainline GCC and now so is the OpenACC 2.0 front-end support, or it appears.

James Norris is seeking support for landing the C front-end and C++ front-end. Don't get too excited though as the files aren't even being compiled at the moment as there's still more middle-layer work involved in supporting this parallel programming standard.

Anyhow, GCC 5 is shaping up to be an incredibly interesting compiler release with numerous new features for its planned release in 2015.