Thursday, May 10, 2012

Nvidia contributes CUDA compiler to open source

Nvidia has announced that the LLVM, a popular open source compiler, now supports its GPUs. The company worked with LLVM developers to provide the CUDA compiler source code changes to the LLVM core and parallel thread execution backend. As a result, programmers can develop applications for GPU accelerators using a broader selection of programming languages, the company said.

LLVM is a widely used open source compiler infrastructure, with a modular design that makes it easy to add support for programming languages and processor architectures. The CUDA compiler provides C, C++ and Fortran support for accelerating application using the Nvidia GPUs.

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 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 full compatibility with the hundreds of millions of Nvidia GPUs installed in PCs and servers today," said Ian Buck, general manager, GPU computing software, Nvidia.

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