OpenACC 2.5 Includes Support for ARM and x86 Processors

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openaccThis week at SC15, the OpenACC Standards Group released the 2.5 version of the OpenACC API specification.

The OpenACC standard simplifies the programming of accelerated computing systems through the use of directives, enabling application developers to easily take advantage of the transformative power of these systems that are driving advances in science, engineering and industry. OpenACC is now available now in compilers from many leading vendors. In addition, it is supported by an expanding range of debuggers, profilers and other programming tools.

“The 2.5 specification addresses an essential challenge of profiling code where a few simple directives transform serial instructions and spread the work across thousands of cores,” said Duncan Poole, President of OpenACC-Standard.org. “Using tools that support OpenACC, developers have an important lead in creating code that performs well across a variety of multi-core host devices and accelerators, including Titan, and the upcoming DOE Coral systems.”

OpenACC Compilers Now Support Multicore ARM and x86 Processors

Two commercial OpenACC compiler vendors have recently announced support for multicore processors as parallel targets: the PGI compiler can now accelerate applications across multiple x86 cores, while the PathScale compiler supports acceleration across the 48 cores of a Cavium ThunderX ARM processor.

OpenACC elegantly allows the programmer to specify parallel execution on either an accelerator or a multicore CPU using the exact same syntax for parallel loops. I am happy to see PGI has added support for OpenACC on multicore x86 CPUs. We are one step closer to the day when we can write code for any of the compute building blocks of Exascale using a uniform programming model and source code,” Satoshi Matsuoka, Professor of Global Scientific Information and Computing Center & Dept. of Mathematical and Computing Sciences at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

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