What is One API?
This has been a common question since Intel announced One API vision during Intel Architecture Day back in December 2018. The aim of this is to deliver uniform software experience with optimal performance across broad range of Intel hardware. There has been some press releases and high level presentations depicting how One API is going to solve programming challenge for scalar processors (CPUs), vector processors (GPUs), matrix processors (AI accelerators) as well as spatial processing elements (FPGAs). For people waiting for Intel Xe as Xeon Phi successor, this is exciting. But for application developers current situation is somewhat confusing as it is difficult to answer simple questions:
- How One API programming model will look like?
- Will this be Intel’s proprietary solution?
- Will this be fully compatible with AMD or NVIDIA GPUs?
- Should I port my application to CUDA/HIP/OpenACC/OpenMP or wait for One API?
What Intel has announced?
There has been few press releases from Intel about One API (see list below). Intel announced One API during Intel Architecture Day (December 11th, 2018). There were not much details provided but it was clear that Intel want to provide a unified programming model to simplify application development across diverse computing architectures.
Read more on how you can get ready for Intel’s oneAPI here.
Categories: Application Lifecyle, Vendor Updates