SYCL™ is an open standard developed by the Khronos™ Group that enables developers to write code for heterogeneous systems using standard C++. Developers are looking at how they can accelerate their applications without having to write optimized processor specific code. SYCL is the industry standard for C++ acceleration, giving developers a platform to write high-performance code in standard C++, unlocking the performance of accelerators and specialized processors from companies such as AMD™, Intel™, Renesas™, and Arm®.

Codeplay Software, developers of ComputeCpp, the world's first SYCL v1.2.1 conformant implementation, has today announced the release of a set of SYCL educational materials as part of an open source initiative. The project, named SYCL Academy, makes the same materials used for professional training courses at CppCon and IWOCL available for free use.

Adoption of the SYCL standard is increasing rapidly, with a growing number of companies using the standard with their latest processors including Intel's oneAPI project and Imagination's PowerVR, and many software developers are already using SYCL to accelerate their applications with multi core processors such as GPUs. In turn, this growing interest in using SYCL to accelerate all types of software requires developers who understand how to develop applications that can offload work to multi-core processors. While there are already a broad range of guides, articles, and documentation available, the SYCL Academy materials make it possible for anyone to teach a set of modules. In particular, schools and universities can teach students how to program parallel hardware using standard C++ code and an open standard with transferable skills and techniques.

There is an article explaining all about the open source project on the Codeplay blog.

Rod Burns, Developer Relations Manager at Codeplay Software, says, "These materials make it possible to teach SYCL at schools, universities, and even within businesses, it reduces the barrier to entry for developers wanting to adopt parallel programming in C++. This is just the beginning for this project, we plan to continue to expand it with the help of the rest of the SYCL community."

Michael Wong, SYCL Working Group Chair at Khronos , says, “We’re very proud to be able to share an open source set of learning materials for SYCL. The standard has been experiencing dramatic growth, and we believe that the best way to continue helping developers to write high-performance code in standard C++ is to give them a platform to facilitate education and knowledge-sharing.”

About Codeplay

Founded in 2002, Codeplay Software has established itself as a leader in software tool development and supporting technologies for multi-core processor systems. Building on its proven expertise in games and mobile phones, Codeplay has developed new products that address the pain points of deploying Artificial Intelligence applications into mass-produced devices, with an initial focus on the automotive sector, specifically Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles. Codeplay is based in Edinburgh, UK, and is significantly growing to embrace the automotive sector with its proven technologies.

About The Khronos Group

The Khronos Group is an open industry consortium of over 140 leading hardware and software companies creating advanced, royalty-free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, vision and machine learning. Khronos standards include Vulkan ® , OpenGL ® , OpenGL ® ES, OpenGL ® SC, WebGL™, SPIR-V™, OpenCL™, SYCL™, OpenVX™, NNEF™, COLLADA™, OpenXR™, 3D Commerce™ and glTF™. Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge accelerated platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.

SYCL and Khronos are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewhere. All rights reserved. AMD is a registered trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.