OpenMP Expanding Its Scope to Embedded Systems and Accelerators

The OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ARB), a global industry alliance dedicated to developing and promoting the OpenMP API, today announced that three new members joined the consortium this year, bringing the total number of member organizations to 22. This allows OpenMP to expand its scope from the traditional SMP systems to embedded systems and accelerators.

Over the last three years seven members joined: three vendors, three research laboratories and one academic institution. These collaborate with existing OpenMP ARB members to develop the methods for programming next-generation parallel computing systems, which will include accelerators and embedded systems.

The most recent members are:

• NVIDIA – United States
• Texas Instruments – United States
• CAPS Enterprise – France
• Argonne National Laboratory – United States
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory – United States
• Los Alamos National Laboratory – United States
• Texas Advanced Computing Centre – United States

This is in addition to the existing members consisting of AMD, Cray, EPCC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, LLNL, Microsoft, NASA, NEC, Oracle, RWTH Aachen, STMicroelectronics, and cOMPunity.

"These seven organizations bring a varied set of approaches and ideas that will help advance our goal of expanding parallel computing as we know it today," said Michael Wong, CEO of OpenMP and Senior Engineer at IBM. "Their energy and enthusiasm will add tremendous value to many projects already under way within the consortium."

Leader in thread-based standards expanding to embedded space

“OpenMP is the leader in establishing the standard in scientific thread-based programming. TACC is excited to join this collaborative effort that will continue the OpenMP success story into the new era of accelerated computing,” said Kent Milfeld, member of HPC group at TACC.

“OpenMP has the potential to increase programmer productivity at all levels of computing, from embedded systems to supercomputers,” said Andy Fritsch of Texas Instruments, “Our C66x DSPs support the OpenMP API and we welcome this opportunity to further expand our OpenMP efforts in the embedded space.”

“In our commitment to provide a many-core programming standard,” says François Bodin, CAPS CTO, "CAPS is very happy to contribute to such a dynamic consortium and in particular to the OpenMP accelerator effort."

About OpenMP

The OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) is a multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming model for the C, C++ and Fortran programming languages. Jointly defined by a group of major computer hardware and software vendors and the user community, OpenMP is a portable, scalable model that gives shared-memory parallel programmers a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications for platforms ranging from multicore systems and SMPs, to embedded systems. OpenMP is supported on all architectures including UNIX and Microsoft Windows platforms. OpenMP is the most popular shared-memory parallel programming model in use today and is a cornerstone technology in high performance and technical computing.

About the OpenMP Architecture Review Board

Incorporated in 1999, The OpenMP ARB is the non-profit corporation that owns the OpenMP brand, oversees the OpenMP specification and produces and approves new versions of the specification. The OpenMP ARB helps to organize and fund workshops and other related events, and promotes OpenMP. The OpenMP ARB's mission is to standardize shared memory multiprocessing APIs. Further information can be found at http://www.openmp.org/.

OpenMP is a registered trademark of the OpenMP Architectural Review Board.