Codeplay Software announces Acoran™, the standards based platform for AI programmers

18 November 2019

Acoran is compatible with Khronos compute standards and Intel's oneAPI platform, enabling AI processor solutions to align with application developers by taking advantage of established standards and libraries.

The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is stimulating the development of new processor and accelerator hardware designs, while software frameworks are adapting to keep pace with the latest machine learning techniques. In order to take advantage of this AI revolution, processor companies need to build compatible solutions for software developers that integrate with existing software frameworks and technologies.

Codeplay's Acoran provides all the performance and programmability solutions that developers need to target accelerated processors, delivering a software platform that accelerates a range of AI software on a wide range of hardware platforms using industry standards.

Since 2002, Codeplay has been involved in the definition of industry open standards and developed many solutions using them, gaining a reputation as a leader in enabling the latest processors. These open standards are used in Acoran to enable the latest AI software and make full use of the performance of the latest accelerated processors.

Codeplay has developed the Acoran platform based on the most relevant and preferred standards, with a comprehensive set of libraries that give AI developers an assured feature set for their applications. With strong momentum in Khronos standards in the industry, SYCL, OpenCL and Vulkan are at the core of the platform, with further support that includes these open source projects:
  • SYCL - An open standard framework for developing software for accelerator processors in C++
  • OpenCL - A framework for developing software for accelerator processors in C
  • Vulkan - A low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and computing API.
  • SYCL-BLAS - A library offering BLAS operations for linear algebra
  • SYCL-DNN - A library offering deep neural network algorithms
  • oneAPI - Intel’s recently announced unified programming model
  • TensorOpt - A standardized interface for processor specific graph compilers
  • Eigen - The most widely adopted C++ high-performance dense linear algebra library
  • TensorFlow, GLOW and TVM AI - The major machine learning frameworks
  • OpenCV - A library of functions for computer vision
  • C++ Parallel STL - A parallel implementation of C++ standard library algorithms
  • SPIR-V - a compiler intermediate representation for supporting AI graph compilers and new accelerated programming languages


    Codeplay is already working extensively with processor companies and is capable of delivering the Acoran platform for processors supplied by, but not limited to, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Renesas, Arm and Imagination Technologies.

    “The AI industry is advancing at such a pace that companies are evolving products without aligning their software strategy, resulting in many proprietary implementations and confusion for AI software developers.” said Andrew Richards, founder and CEO of Codeplay. “Our existing products are already helping to define and align the AI industry, and the Acoran platform takes this one step further to help the industry evolve faster.”

    Codeplay will be presenting and discussing Acoran, and its benefits at SuperComputing in Denver from 17th - 22nd Nov.

    About Codeplay Software
     Codeplay Software is a world pioneer in acceleration technologies for AI, having developed some of the first tools to enable complex software, such as AI, to be accelerated using graphics processors. Today, most AI software is developed using graphics processors designed for video games. Codeplay is the world’s leading company providing the tools to enable software to be accelerated by graphics processors or the latest specialized AI processors. Codeplay works with the world's leading technology businesses to build advanced intelligence into devices ranging from smartphones to self-driving cars.

    Codeplay’s Press Contact:
    Charles Macfarlane - charles.macfarlanecodeplay.com - +44(0) 131 466 0503

    Codeplay Software Ltd has published this article only as an opinion piece. Although every effort has been made to ensure the information contained in this post is accurate and reliable, Codeplay cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy, validity or completeness of this information. The information contained within this blog is provided "as is" without any representations or warranties, expressed or implied. Codeplay Sofware Ltd makes no representations or warranties in relation to the information in this post.
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    Charles Macfarlane

    CBO