This year at HiPEAC 2020 (20-22 January in Bologna, Italy) John Lawson, Staff Software Engineer and Rod Burns, Developer Relations Manager from Codeplay, will be talking to academics and students about how they can use the open standard SYCL to teach heterogeneous programming to the next generation of developers. You can also come and talk to us about internship opportunities at Codeplay for Summer 2020.

SYCL (pronounced ‘sickle’) is a royalty-free, cross-platform abstraction layer that enables code for heterogeneous processors to be written using completely standard C++. SYCL enables "single source" development, where C++ template functions can contain both host and device code to construct complex algorithms that use the acceleration of multi-core processors. This is a modern approach to heterogeneous programming in C++ that allows developers to write software that takes advantage of low powered but highly parallel hardware. Some examples of the C++ features supported in SYCL are templates, operator overloading, static polymorphism, and lambdas.

SYCL has been endorsed and adopted by many major semiconductor vendors, including Xilinx, Intel, Renesas, and Imagination Technologies. One of the most powerful features of SYCL is that the same code can be used to target a wide range of processors: You can target GPUs and FPGAs through to specialist AI processors, and the same code can be used with any of the SYCL implementations that are available. It's currently possible to target Intel GPUs and CPUs, Arm CPUs and GPUs, AMD GPUs, and Renesas IMP-X5 using SYCL - with capabilities for PowerVR GPUs soon to come.

If you are teaching at a university, you will also find that the skills your students learn by using SYCL are transferable, because it uses many common modern C++ features (such as lambdas and templates) and since it's all standard C++, any code that is written can be easily transitioned to other frameworks. Its programming model is also similar to CUDA(copyright), one of the most popular but a proprietary programming model.

Codeplay is contributing to a set of open source learning materials for SYCL™, called "SYCL Academy." These materials have been delivered during tutorials at CppCon and IWOCL and enable educators to teach and individuals to learn all about SYCL.

Talk to Rod or John at the Codeplay booth if you are heading to HiPEAC 2020 and find out more.

The HiPEAC conference is the premier European forum for experts in computer architecture, programming models, compilers and operating systems for embedded and general-purpose systems. Associated workshops, tutorials, special sessions, several large poster session and an industrial exhibition will run in parallel with the conference.

For more information on HiPEAC do please click on the link HiPEAC

You can contact Codeplay via LinkedIn or using our contact form on Codeplay’s website, or follow us on Twitter @codeplaysoft

Codeplay are hiring, if you're interested in working for Codeplay then please follow the attached link & apply directly to any of the positions we have advertised. Please ensure the following documents are attached to your application: Cover Letter, CV and Code Samples - Codeplay Careers.