UXL and Khronos Collaborate on Portable Safety Critical SYCL

The UXL Foundation has partnered with the Khronos Group to work on developing SYCL and C++ libraries tailored for safety critical applications, as well as for heterogeneous AI and high-performance computing applications. This collaboration aims to leverage the strengths of both organizations, particularly focusing on evolving SYCL to meet the needs of developers in safety critical applications. Additionally, the partnership aims to support and complement the UXL Foundation's OneAPI libraries and open-source projects.

One of the primary goals of this collaboration is to assist developers in creating performance portable heterogeneous applications from a single C++ code base. The SYCL specification has now become well-established for use across various multi-vendor HPC and AI acceleration platforms. Khronos is also actively working on SYCL SC (Safety Critical), a specialized derivative of SYCL designed to simplify safety certification processes in industries such as automotive, avionics, industrial, and medical markets.

The SYCL standard, defined by members of the Khronos Group, was introduced to enable the development of code for heterogeneous and offload processors using modern C++. It also contributes to discussions on future ISO C++ releases. The SYCL SC Working Group and UXL Foundation Safety Critical Special Interest Group are collaborating to expedite the integration of SYCL and libraries into systems that can meet safety standards like ISO 26262 or DO-178C.

The UXL Foundation plays a crucial role in defining the OneAPI specification, which encompasses APIs for driving high-performance libraries for various C++ parallel routines, math operations, data analytics, AI, and more. Open-source projects implementing the OneAPI specification utilize the SYCL standard to deliver acceleration to diverse targets, including AMD, ARM, Intel, and Nvidia chips.

Khronos is responsible for defining the specification and its extensions under its IP framework, along with associated conformance tests. Meanwhile, UXL focuses on continuously developing the OneAPI libraries and gathering feedback on use cases and high-level requirements to further enhance the specification. The collaboration between the two organizations aims to expand the SYCL ecosystem by enabling optimized libraries for domains such as BLAS, FFT, and neural networks.