Cross-architecture unification: Linux Foundation forms Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation
As part of the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit 2023, the foundation has announced the formation of the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation.
This is a cross-industry group committed to delivering an open standard accelerator programming model that simplifies the development of performant, cross-platform applications.
Hosted by the Linux Foundation’s Joint Development Foundation (JDF), the Unified Acceleration Foundation brings together ecosystem participants to establish an open standard for developing applications that deliver performance across a wide range of architectures.
How did it form?
The Unified Acceleration Foundation is an evolution of the oneAPI initiative, which has witnessed significant growth as an open programming model that spans different architectures such as CPU, GPU, FPGA and accelerators.
With many open source projects and community contributions, the formation of the UXL Foundation, guided by a dedicated steering committee, is hoped to mark the next critical step in driving innovation and implementing the oneAPI specification across the industry.
“The Unified Acceleration Foundation exemplifies the power of collaboration and the open source approach,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation.
Zemlin suggests that by uniting technology companies and fostering an open ecosystem of cross-platform development, the industry at large will unlock new possibilities in performance and productivity for data-centric solutions.
Founding members
The Unified Acceleration Foundation boasts a distinguished list of participating organizations and partners, including Arm, Fujitsu, Google Cloud, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Samsung.
These firms have come together to promote open source collaboration and the development of a cross-architecture unified programming model.
“The foundation members aspire to build the largest open ecosystem for accelerated computing. The initial contributions to the foundation will bring an existing open standards-based platform with open governance. Our ultimate aim is to foster a multi-architecture and multi-vendor programming platform for all accelerators,” said Rod Burns, VP of ecosystem, Codeplay Software and UXL Foundation steering committee chair.
The Unified Acceleration Foundation says it is enabling solutions that are productive, performant and are able to provide customers with the freedom to choose the hardware that best fits their needs.
“Linux and GNU transformed the CPU software stack through open source and standards, encompassing everything from embedded to cloud computing. As a founding member of the Unified Acceleration Foundation, I believe that open source and standards are essential for creating a cross platform software stack for GPU’s and other accelerators that will serve as the foundation for the next generation of computationally and data-intensive applications,” said Robert Cohn, Intel Corporation, oneAPI Specification Editor.
To learn more about the Unified Acceleration Foundation, including how to get involved as a developer or member visit UXLFoundation.org
