Codeplay are pleased to announce that Medhi Goli - University of West of Scotland, Codeplay Software Ltd. & Rod Burns - Developer Relations Manager will be attending the 7th annual Wigner GPU Day on the 22nd - 23rd June at the Wigner Datacenter, Budapest. Whilst at the event Mehdi will be giving a talk, an abstract of the talk can be found below. We are always delighted to speak with anyone attending the event who is interested in what we are doing, so if you are attending, please come and say “hello”. If you are interested and would like to arrange a meeting with us at the event, please use our contact form or follow us on @codeplaysoft and make contact!

Accelerating Eigen Tensor Libraries using SYCL

'Eigen is a high-level C++ library of template headers for linear algebra, matrix and vector operations, geometrical transformations, numerical solvers and related algorithms. The ecosystem of unsupported modules provides many specialized features such as tensor modules, matrix functions, a polynomial solver, FFT, and much more. We have implemented the tensor module back-end for SYCL™. SYCL is a royalty-free, cross-platform C++ abstraction layer that builds on the underlying concepts, portability and efficiency of OpenCL™, while adding the ease-of-use and flexibility of modern C++11/14. For example, SYCL enables single source development where C++ template functions are compiled for both host and device to construct complex algorithms that use OpenCL acceleration, and then re-use them throughout their source code on different types of data.

Implemented with ComputeCpp using the SYCL open standard, it is now possible to use the Eigen library with OpenCL devices, taking advantage of their ability to run operations in parallel using the expression templates meta-programming technique. Instead of rewriting each single operation for SYCL, we generate a compile-time DSL/EDSL that converts the existing Eigen expression to a SYCL based expression whenever it is possible. One of the advantages of using this non-intrusive approach is that both the Eigen SYCL backend and the CUDA backend use the same interface for the tensor module. This can be useful for higher-level existing applications like TensorFlow which automatically generates the Eigen expression for different back-ends. This approach eliminates the need for an extra expression generator in these applications for each back-end. Therefore, by templating the device it is possible to use the same expression generator approach for different back-end architectures'. 

'Just like the previous years, the Wigner GPU Lab again organizes the annual conference on massively parallel technologies and their applications in different fields, where researchers and developers can share experiences, ideas and results'. More information can be found here - Wigner GPU Day