Intel Continues Working On Their SYCL Compiler For Upstreaming To LLVM

Back in January Intel made available their new open-source, LLVM-based SYCL compiler that they are looking to contribute to upstream LLVM. Their SYCL compiler will be used for single-source programming to target the company's growing diverse range of devices and is part of their new "oneAPI" initiative. The SYCL support isn't yet in upstream LLVM, but they are making progress while continuing to evolve the code.

Intel compiler developer Andrew Savonichev presented at the EuroLLVM conference earlier this month in Brussels where he talked of their SYCL work. For those wondering about the compilation flow, how SYCL code can be executed on drivers/hardware supporting SPIR-V, and other details, the slide deck can be viewed here (PDF).

Upstreaming the work to LLVM remains their "primary goal" while in their own LLVM repository is where they continue to stage that code and work on other features. That still evolving code can be found here.

As for the upstreaming, their milestones are outlined via this issue tracker and the steps involved in getting SYCL applications building, running over OpenCL on CPUs, integrating the SYCL compilation into Clang, and ultimately supporting multi-source applications.

They don't have a firm timeline yet for getting the code upstream as part of that also depends upon the review process, but we certainly hope the initial support could make it in time for this autumn's LLVM 9.0 release.