Khronos SYCL 2020 status and future directions

Authors: Simon Mcintosh-Smith (University of Bristol), Michael Wong (Codeplay Software Ltd, Khronos Group Inc), James Brodman (Intel Corporation)

Abstract: SYCL is an open standard with a new release in February 2021. After SC17, SC18, SC19, and SC20's successful ISO C++ SYCL BoF, and with increasing use of C++ in HPC, there was popular demand for updates on the new SYCL 2020 features. It means developers there will be able to write their HPC software using the SYCL standard and that will enable the same software on the forthcoming all-Intel Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Lab, NERSC, LBL, ORNL, and potentially, supercomputers with other architectures, including AMD, ARM, or RISC-V.

Long Description: SYCL is an open standard framework using standard ISO C++ with heterogeneous computing. SYCL 2020 has been released with updates suitable for HPC. and enabling multiple backends. SYCL through Intel’s OneAPI and DPC++ is adopted to be the programming model for AURORA, the first CORAL exascale computer using Intel processors. In 2021, the Next platform asked “Can SYCL slice into Broader Supercomputing”, and that is based on the announcement of the collaboration with NERSC, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility on SYCL on the Perlmutter SC. There is the NSITEXE Kyoto Microcomputer joint work using SYCL on the RISC-V Vector system. There is triSYCL for Xilinx FPGA work from U West Scotland. There is the Renasas Codeplay Collaboration using SYCL and OpenCL on their R-CAR ADAS solutions. There is the hipSYCL implementation for AMD Rocm/CUDA GPUS suitable for Frontier and El Capitan. There is the tensorflow native support on powerVR using optimized SYCL libraries and one Intel XPU with oneDNN.

After last four year’s (SC 17, SC18, SC19, SC20) successful Heterogeneous & Distributed Computing in C++ for HPC BoF, SC19's SYCL BoF, SC20’s combined SYCL and C++ BoF, there was popular demand for updates on the new release of SYCL 2020. This is especially important with the increasing use of C++ workload in DOE’s ECP. ISO C++ does not yet recognize accelerators but with the help of SYCL and other heterogeneous frameworks (HPX, Kokkos, Raja and CUDA) it is being augmented towards heterogeneous computing. A recent LLVM keynote by the SYCL chair reinforces this direction: https://llvmdev18.sched.com/event/H89n/the-future-direction-of-c-and-the-four-horsemen-of-heterogeneous-computing

Two recent key developments for SYCL are the adoption of the Aurora supercomputer at ANL and Intel’s One API software.

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/u-s-department-energy-intel-deliver-first-exascale-supercomputer/

Intel disclosed at SC’19 and ISC’19 its One API project, which will be based on industry standards and open specifications including SYCL.OneAPi ecosystem has grown since the with oneMKL, oneDAL, and oneDNN suitable for machine learning and Linear Algebra. In 2021, SYCL found its way into NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) for its Nvidia GPU-dense Perlmutter supercomputer. Can SYCL Slice into Broader Supercomputing? (nextplatform.com) https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/02/03/can-sycl-slice-into-broader-supercomputing/ In this BoF our SYCL experts will devote all the time to answer questions based on audience contributions. This BoF is based on a set of successful tutorials and workshops from different conferences, such as Workshop at PPoPP’16 Berkeley Heterogeneous C++ Summit in 2016 IWOCL 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 SYCLCon 2020/2021 CPPCON 2017, 18,19, 20 SC17 Heterogeneous C++: goo.gl/y5HQQH, goo.gl/yh1ytV SC 18 18 Heterogeneous C++: goo.gl/TqH9oM, goo.gl/cuGS7n SC 19 SYCL: https://tinyurl.com/yg4vnlyl, https://tinyurl.com/yh38eywa SC 20 SYCL and C++: SYCL 2020 Tab https://tinyurl.com/yyckpe6a

This BoF is targeted to developers of open standard C++ programming models with requirements for heterogeneous programming looking for a vendor-neutral solution that is matching pace with modern C++.

URL: https://sycl.tech/


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