OpenMP Announces Improvements for Multicore and Accelerators

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Mar 27 — OpenMP, the de-facto standard for parallel programming on shared memory systems, continues to extend its reach beyond pure HPC to include embedded systems, multicore and real time systems. A new version is being developed that will include support for accelerators, error handling, thread affinity, tasking extensions and Fortran 2003. The OpenMP consortium welcomes feedback from all interested parties and will use this feedback to improve the next version of OpenMP.

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OpenCL Gains Ground On CUDA

As the two major programming frameworks for GPU computing, OpenCL and CUDA have been competing for mindshare in the developer community for the past few years. Until recently, CUDA has attracted most of the attention from developers, especially in the high performance computing realm. But OpenCL software has now matured to the point where HPC practitioners are taking a second look.

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http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-02-28/opencl_gains_ground_on_cuda.html

The Portland Group Ships OpenCL Compiler for Multi-core ARM

PORTLAND, Feb. 28 — The Portland Group (PGI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of STMicroelectronics and the leading independent supplier of compilers and tools for high-performance computing, today announced the general availability of the PGI OpenCL framework for ARM-based ST-Ericsson NovaThor platforms. The framework includes a PGI OpenCL compiler for multi-core ARM CPUs as a compute device and complements OpenCL for GPUs. NovaThor is a highly integrated complete mobile product platform with performance and power optimized multi-core ARM Cortex™ A-series CPUs, advanced graphics processors, powerful multimedia engines, and the latest mobile broadband and connectivity technologies. With this announcement, The Portland Group extends its product line to encompass both OpenCL and multi-core ARM-based microprocessors.

For full article, please visit:

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-02-28/the_portland_group_ships_opencl_compiler_for_multi-core_arm.html

AMD Intros OpenCL University Kit

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 23 — AMD today announced the introduction of the OpenCL University Kit, a set of materials that can be leveraged by any university to assist them in teaching a semester course in OpenCL programming.

This effort underscores AMD’s commitment to the educational community, which currently includes a number of strategic research initiatives, to enable the next generation of software developers and programmers with the knowledge needed to lead the era of heterogeneous computing. OpenCL, the only non-proprietary industry standard available today for true heterogeneous computing, helps developers to harness the full compute power of both the CPU and GPU to create innovative applications for vivid computing experiences.

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