Unified Acceleration Foundation Forms to Drive Open Accelerated Compute and Cross-Platform Performance

The Unified Acceleration Foundation promotes an Open, Unified Standard Accelerator Programming Model that Delivers Cross-Platform Performance and Productivity.

BILBAO, SPAIN – September 19, 2023 –  Today, the Linux Foundation announced the formation of the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation, a cross-industry group committed to delivering an open standard accelerator programming model that simplifies 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.   

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, marks 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. "By uniting leading technology companies and fostering an open ecosystem of cross-platform development, we will unlock new possibilities in performance and productivity for data-centric solutions.”

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 industry leaders have come together to promote open source collaboration and 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 Ecosystem, Codeplay Software and UXL Foundation Steering Committee Chair.

“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.

The Unified Acceleration Foundation is enabling solutions that are productive, performant, and provide customers with the freedom to choose the hardware that best fits their unique needs. To learn more about the Unified Acceleration Foundation, including how to get involved as a developer or member, visit UXLFoundation.org.

About the Joint Development Foundation

The Joint Development Foundation (JDF), part of the Linux Foundation family of projects, accelerates organizations developing technical specifications, standards, data sets, and source code. JDF provides the corporate and legal infrastructure, experienced support staff, and extensive network necessary to achieve the highest levels of industry and international standardization. For more information, please visit us at jointdevelopment.org.

Media Contact

Noah Lehman

The Linux Foundation

nlehman@linuxfoundation.org

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Supporting Quotes

Linux Foundation

“The Unified Acceleration Foundation exemplifies the power of collaboration and the open-source approach," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation. "By uniting leading technology companies and fostering an ecosystem of cross-platform development, we will unlock new possibilities in performance and productivity for data-centric solutions.”

Fujitsu

"The future of human centric, sustainable digital transformation needs a holistic approach to technology development and open collaboration with the international community," said Hirai Kouichi, Head of Software Development Division under the Advanced Technology Development Unit, Fujitsu. "The Unified Accelerator foundation's innovative strategy of building a unified development ecosystem will play a vital role in advancing the creation of cross-platform software and accelerators."

Google Cloud 

"The growing diversity of accelerators presents a tremendous opportunity for the industry but can also introduce challenges," said George Elissaios, Sr. Director, HPC and ML infrastructure at Google Cloud. "Consistent programming models help developers write code that can run efficiently on any accelerator, fostering innovation and choice."

Imagination Technologies

“The technology that is improving our day-to-day experiences of driving, entertainment, healthcare and more, is increasingly data-intensive and complex," said Shreyas Derashri, Vice President of Compute Product Management at Imagination Technologies. "A new open and collaborative approach to computing is required to provide the necessary acceleration in an efficient and performant manner, whether in the cloud or at the edge. As a founding member of the Unified Acceleration Foundation, Imagination Technologies will help unite the technology ecosystem around the oneAPI spec and encourage its widespread adoption for compute and AI acceleration.”

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

“As a new independent entity, the Unified Acceleration Foundation will help build an open source programming model across a wide range of architectures and vendors,” said Vinesh Sukumar, Senior Director of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “This helps to address a critical need in the industry for flexible and open source alternatives that will enable a broad range of unique needs.”

Samsung

"Samsung is pleased to be part of the Unified Acceleration Foundation, which will help expand the basis and adoption for memory coupled computing technologies, such as PIM and PNM", said Seungwon Lee, Master and lead of computing software team at Samsung Advanced Institute of technology(SAIT). "We expect the open collaboration will also bolster programming models and software stacks to effectively accelerate AI/HPC applications in future datacenter and supercomputing systems."

Argonne 

“Our goal at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is to make our users more productive, and one approach is to support a common code base capable of running across multiple architectures,"  said Michael E. Papka, Director, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. "With oneAPI’s open programming model, future developers can create applications that use the hardware available without needing to hand-tune code. The Unified Acceleration Foundation allows users to have a voice in the future of oneAPI, and this will help us and our user community make high-performance compute codes portable.”