In early December the OpenCL specification was unveiled, which is an open framework initially conceived by Apple for extending the power of graphics processors to better handle GPGPU computing in a unified way. Both ATI/AMD and NVIDIA are working on bringing Open Computing Language support to their proprietary Linux drivers, while nothing has yet to be started on the open-source side to integrate the support within Mesa. Though as OpenCL consists of a C99-based language for programming, what's the status on the compiler front?

There has been talk on the GCC mailing list about OpenCL support for the Open Computing Library. Nothing too interesting has been shared in this mailing list thread (though not all messages are being shown in that thread view) yet, but OpenCL is being considered for a future version of the GNU Compiler Collection. Most of the compiler work for OpenCL has up until now been focused on the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Should anything amount within the OpenCL + GCC area, we will be sure to let you know. OpenCL should certainly be an interesting topic this year that will impact Linux users.