Portable Computing Language (PoCL)

PoCL is a conformant implementation (for CPU and Level Zero GPU targets) of the OpenCL 3.0 standard which can be easily adapted for new targets.

Official web page

Full documentation

Building

This section contains instructions for building PoCL in its default configuration and a subset of driver backends. You can find the full build instructions including a list of available options in the install guide.

Requirements

In order to build PoCL, you need the following support libraries and tools:

• Latest released version of LLVM & Clang
• development files for LLVM & Clang + their transitive dependencies (e.g. libclang-dev, libclang-cpp-dev, libllvm-dev, zlib1g-dev, libtinfo-dev...)
• CMake 3.15 or newer
• GNU make or ninja
• Optional: pkg-config
• Optional: hwloc v1.0 or newer (e.g. libhwloc-dev)
• Optional (but enabled by default): python3 (for support of LLVM bitcode with SPIR target)
• Optional: llvm-spirv (version-compatible with LLVM) and spirv-tools (required for SPIR-V support in CPU / CUDA; Vulkan driver supports SPIR-V through clspv)

For more details, consult the install guide.

Building PoCL follows the usual CMake build steps. Note however, that PoCL can be used from the build directory (without installing it system-wide).

Supported environments

CI status:

Support Matrix legend:

🔷 Achieved status of OpenCL conformant implementation

🔶 Tested in CI extensively, including OpenCL-CTS tests

🟢 : Tested in CI

🟡 : Should work, but is untested

❌ : Unsupported

Linux

CPU device	LLVM 17	LLVM 18	LLVM 19	LLVM 20
x86-64	🟢	🟢 🔷	🔶	🔶
ARM64	🟡	🟡	🟢	🟡
i686	🟡	🟡	🟡	🟡
ARM32	🟡	🟡	🟡	🟡
RISC-V	🟡	🟡	🟡	🟡
PowerPC	🟡	🟡	🟡	🟡

GPU device	LLVM 17	LLVM 18	LLVM 19	LLVM 20
CUDA SM5.0	🟡	🟢	🟡	🟢
CUDA SM other than 5.0	🟡	🟡	🟡	🟡
Level Zero	🟡	🟢	🟢	🔶
Vulkan	🟢	❌	❌	❌

Special device	LLVM 17	LLVM 18	LLVM 19	LLVM 20
OpenASIP	🟢	❌	❌	❌
Remote	🟢	🟢	🟢	🟢

Mac OS X

CPU device	LLVM 17	LLVM 18	LLVM 19	LLVM 20
Apple Silicon	🟡	🟢	🟢	🟡
Intel CPU	🟡	🟡	❌	❌

Windows

CPU device	LLVM 18	LLVM 19	LLVM 20
MinGW / x86-64	🟡	🟢	🟡
MSVC / x86-64	🟡	🟢	🟢

Binary packages

Linux distros

PoCL with CPU device support can be found on many linux distribution managers. See

PoCL with CUDA driver

PoCL with CUDA driver support for Linux x86_64, aarch64 and ppc64le can be found on conda-forge distribution and can be installed with

wget "https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Mambaforge-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh"
bash Mambaforge-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh   # install mambaforge

To install pocl with cuda driver

mamba install pocl-cuda

To install all drivers

mamba install pocl

macOS

Homebrew

PoCL with CPU driver support Intel and Apple Silicon chips can be found on homebrew and can be installed with

brew install pocl

Note that this installs an ICD loader from KhronoGroup and the builtin OpenCL implementation will be invisible when your application is linked to this loader.

Conda

PoCL with CPU driver support Intel and Apple Silicon chips can be found on conda-forge distribution and can be installed with

curl -L -O "https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Mambaforge-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh"
bash Mambaforge-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh

To install the CPU driver

mamba install pocl

Note that this installs an ICD loader from KhronosGroup and the builtin OpenCL implementation will be invisible when your application is linked to this loader. To make both pocl and the builtin OpenCL implementaiton visible, do

mamba install pocl ocl_icd_wrapper_apple

License

PoCL is distributed under the terms of the MIT license. Contributions are expected to be made with the same terms.