Focus on Software First with the oneAPI Construction Kit

Bring the open and standards-based SYCL programming model to your custom accelerator with the oneAPI Construction Kit.

June 5, 2023 – Edinburgh – Today, Codeplay® announces the latest extension of the oneAPI ecosystem with an open source project that allows code written in SYCL to run on custom architectures for HPC and AI. The oneAPI Construction Kit includes a reference implementation for RISC-V® vector processors but can be adapted for a range of processors, and is the latest step in our mission to build out the open ecosystem for accelerated computing.

With software evolving quickly, it has become increasingly common for hardware vendors to create specialist AI processors that run their software more efficiently than would be possible with out-of-the-box hardware. While these custom processors can offer the advantage of performance, they come with challenges for developers. Primary among these is the challenge of enabling the latest software on the latest generation of processors. This can involve major software porting efforts to proprietary and non-standard programming models, creating additional work for customers, who will need to work on time-consuming optimizations and porting for their applications.

The oneAPI Construction Kit was created to solve these challenges by bringing all the benefits of simplified heterogeneous programming to custom hardware. It extends oneAPI to custom architectures and makes it easy to access a wealth of supported SYCL libraries. This has tangible benefits for your customers who, rather than having to learn a new custom language for custom hardware, can instead use SYCL to write high-performance applications efficiently. All of this means less time spent on porting efforts and maintaining separate codebases for different architectures, and more time for innovation.

Codeplay has previously demonstrated a full software programming environment using oneAPI and SYCL for the next generation of RISC-V vector processors using the oneAPI Construction Kit, and in this short clip below, our CEO and co-founder Andrew Richards demonstrates this by running code using an Intel CPU and a custom FPGA simulating a RISC-V accelerator.

The oneAPI Construction Kit is open source and includes a framework to make code transitions easier. It can be downloaded for free here. Codeplay has also created documentation to support and guide you through setup and usage, which you can access here. To find out more about how to use the oneAPI Construction Kit, read this blog from Principal Software Engineer, Colin Davidson.

To inquire about support options, contact Codeplay Software.

oneAPI is a unified, open, cross-industry, multiarchitecture/multi-vendor programming model based on standards that delivers a common developer experience across CPUs and accelerator architectures – for faster application performance, more productivity, and greater innovation.

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