Adapteva ships OpenCL compiler for Epiphany

SAN JOSE – Adapteva Inc. (Lexington, Mass.) has released an OpenCL compiler for its Epiphany multicore floating–point processor. The company hopes the open source tool will help expand its addressable market as it begins sampling a 28 nm version of its chip.

To date, DSP programmers have used thread or dataflow techniques to harness the Epiphany cores. The beta release of an OpenCL compiler aims to extend Adapteva’s reach to any engineer working in a Linux environment tackling general-purpose GPU workloads

“A lot of people will be a lot more productive and we will reach a bigger audience” with OpenCL, said Andreas Olofsson, the company's founder and CEO.

The new compiler arrives in tandem with the first samples of the 28 nm version of Epiphany. As promised, the new chip packs 64 cores running at up to 800 MHz at 2W max and 80 milliwatts in standby mode.

Bittware, an early investor in Adapteva, provides the chips on PCI Express cards. Adapteva also licenses its technology.

Production availability of the chip will be based on customer orders. Olofsson would not comment on availability of the 28nm process from its foundry, GlobalFoundries, except to say, “the samples look good.”