News: 0001600159

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Intel ISPC 1.29 Drops Gen9 GPU Targets, Add New Optimizations & Experimental RISC-V

([Intel] 4 Hours Ago Intel ISPC 1.29)


Intel ISPC 1.29 released on Wednesday as the newest feature update to this Implicit SPMD Program Compiler as a C variant able to target Intel hardware from their CPUs to GPUs for SIMD programming.

Intel ISPC 1.29 adds support for enabling Stack Smash Protection for ISPC functions, a new flag to enable sample-based profile guided optimizations (PGO), and Intel's gen9-x8 and gen9-x16 targets have been removed for the old Intel Skylake era graphics and its derivatives. Intel has been working to end the Gen9 era graphics support across their software portfolio sans the open-source upstream OpenGL/Vulkan graphics support continuing on Linux.

New targets include avx512gnr-x4, avx512gnr-x8, avx512gnr-x16, avx512gnr-x32, and avx512gnr-x64 for Granite Rapids processors with AVX-512 and AMX-FP16. The AVX10.2 target has also been renamed to "avx10.2dmr" for Diamond Rapids alignment.

ISPC 1.29 also adds an optimized popcnt implementation for Ice Lake and newer AVX-512 CPUs for up to a 3.5x speed-up. There is also significant speed-ups for AVX512-x16 and AVX10.2-x16 targets by around 10% faster on a geo mean basis.

ISPC 1.29 also adds initial support for RISC-V 64-bit with the RISC-V Vector Extension ISA.

Downloads and more details on the Intel ISPC 1.29 release via [1]GitHub .



[1] https://github.com/ispc/ispc/releases/tag/v1.29.0


Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs
and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and
resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature
said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall
let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will
die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time,
as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the
bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See
a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come
to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more
Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
-- Richard Bach