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, Sept. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 www.UXLFoundation.org.

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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
[email protected]

SOURCE The Linux Foundation