Graphics core licensor Imagination Technologies Group PLC (Kings Langley, England) is preparing compilers that will be able to assign tasks across both graphics and general-purpose processing units. Imagination has had its own 32-bit Meta processor core on its books for most of this decade but it best known as a licensor of application-specific digital audio broadcast, graphics and video cores. However, this familiarity with digital signal processing and parallelism could now stand the company in good stead as the techniques become more broadly relevant.
“OpenCL is definitely an important development,” said Hossein Yassaie, chief executive of Imagination Technologies, speaking of a standard in development by the Khronos Group for handling parallel programming on multicore CPUs and graphics processors. It was originally developed with help from Apple Inc. Yassie was speaking to an audience of chip industry executives at a meeting organized by Silicon SouthWest regional support network held in Bath, England.
