Open source compiler LLVM now supports NVIDIA graphic processing units (GPUs). According to the graphics innovator NVIDIA, the announcement means good things for channels looking to “take advantage of the benefits of GPU acceleration.”
LLVM is a widely used open source compiler infrastructure, with a modular design for add-on support of programming languages and processor architectures. The CUDA compiler provides C, C?, and Fortran support for accelerating application using parallel NVIDIA GPUs.
“NVIDIA has worked with LLVM developers to provide the CUDA compiler source code changes to the LLVM core and parallel thread execution backend,” states NVIDIA in a press release submitted to Channel Pro-SMB. “As a result, programmers can develop applications for GPU accelerators using a broader selection of programming languages.”
LLVM supports a wide range of programming languages and front ends, including C/C?, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Haskell, Java bytecode, Python, Ruby, ActionScript, GLSL, and Rust. It is also the compiler infrastructure NVIDIA uses for its CUDA C/C? architecture, and it has been widely adopted by leading companies such as Apple, AMD and Adobe.
“The code we provided to LLVM is based on proven, mainstream CUDA products, giving programmers the assurance of reliability and compatibility with NVIDIA GPUs,” says Ian Buck, NVIDIA’s general manager of GPU computing software. “This is truly a game-changing milestone for GPU computing, giving researchers and programmers an incredible amount of flexibility and choice in programming languages and hardware architectures for their next-generation applications.”
