Imagination Getting Behind Open-Source SYCL Libraries For TensorFlow

The SYCL train continues rolling: besides this single-source high-level C++ target for OpenCL playing a big role at Intel with their forthcoming oneAPI and as part of that also working on SYCL LLVM support for upstream, new SYCL learning courses, and other industry adoption around this Khronos standard, Imagination Technologies is getting behind it in at least one way.

Imagination announced on Wednesday that they are going to be offering "native" support for TensorFlow on PowerVR GPUs. That TensorFlow support for their GPUs is coming via open-source SYCL libraries. With SYCL open-source libraries they are said to be opening up in November, there will be support for TensorFlow-on-SYCL to in turn run on PowerVR hardware with their OpenCL drivers.

Their exact "open-source libraries" remain to be seen. Codeplay has already worked on Tensorflow over SYCL to run on OpenCL accelerators. That Codeplay effort has been out since mid-2016 and is open-source.

It does appear that Imagination's TensorFlow SYCL is based upon that CodePlay code considering in Wednesday's press release, the company does get mentioned and their GitHub projects. They also cite Codeplay's existing SYCL-DNN and SYCL-BLAS projects (plus Eigen) for which it appears they are simply making PowerVR optimizations and that code will be out next month.