For a recent talk at DKRZ in the scope of the natESM project, I created a table summarizing the current state of using a certain programming model on a GPU of a certain vendor, for C++ and Fortran. Since it lead to quite a discussion in the session, I made a standalone version of it with some updates and elaborations here and there.

I present, the GPU Vendor/Programming Model Compatibility Table!

Update available (Jun 2024): Dedicated paper and page with updated content!

Compatibility Table

Read below for some caveats and technical background! There is also a PDF and an SVG version available.

Full vendor support
Indirect, but comprehensive support, by vendor
Vendor support, but not (yet) entirely comprehensive
Comprehensive support, but not by vendor
Limited, probably indirect support -- but at least some
No direct support available, but of course one could ISO-C-bind your way through it or directly link the libraries
C
C++ (sometimes also C)
F
Fortran
CUDA HIP SYCL OpenACC OpenMP Standard Kokkos ALPAKA etc
C F C F C F C F C F C F C F C F Python
NVIDIA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
AMD 18 19 20 4 21 6 22 23 24 24 25 26 27 14 28 16 29
Intel 30 31 32 33 34 6 35 35 36 36 37 38 39 14 40 16 41
  • 1: CUDA C/C++ is supported on NVIDIA GPUs through the CUDA Toolkit↺
  • 2: CUDA Fortran, a proprietary Fortran extension, is supported on NVIDIA GPUs via the NVIDIA HPC SDK↺
  • 3: HIP programs can directly use NVIDIA GPUs via a CUDA backend; HIP is maintained by AMD↺
  • 4: No such thing like HIP for Fortran, but AMD offers Fortran interfaces to HIP and ROCm libraries in hipfort↺
  • 5: SYCL can be used on NVIDIA GPUs with experimental support either in SYCL directly or in DPC++, or via hipSYCL↺
  • 6: No such thing like SYCL for Fortran↺
  • 7: OpenACC C/C++ supported on NVIDIA GPUs directly (and best) through NVIDIA HPC SDK; additional, somewhat limited support by GCC C compiler and in LLVM through Clacc↺
  • 8: OpenACC Fortran supported on NVIDIA GPUs directly (and best) through NVIDIA HPC SDK; additional, somewhat limited support by GCC Fortran compiler and Flacc↺
  • 9: OpenMP in C++ supported on NVIDIA GPUs through NVIDIA HPC SDK (albeit with a few limits), by GCC, and Clang; see OpenMP ECP BoF on status in 2022.↺
  • 10: OpenMP in Fortran supported on NVIDIA GPUs through NVIDIA HPC SDK (but not full OpenMP feature set available), by GCC, and Flang↺
  • 11: pSTL features supported on NVIDIA GPUs through NVIDIA HPC SDK↺
  • 12: Standard Language parallel features supported on NVIDIA GPUs through NVIDIA HPC SDK↺
  • 13: Kokkos supports NVIDIA GPUs by calling CUDA as part of the compilation process↺
  • 14: Kokkos is a C++ model, but an official compatibility layer (Fortran Language Compatibility Layer, FLCL) is available.↺
  • 15: Alpaka supports NVIDIA GPUs by calling CUDA as part of the compilation process; also, an OpenMP backend can be used↺
  • 16: Alpaka is a C++ model↺
  • 17: There is a vast community of offloading Python code to NVIDIA GPUs, like CuPy, Numba, cuNumeric, and many others; NVIDIA actively supports a lot of them, but has no direct product like CUDA for Python; so, the status is somewhere in between↺
  • 18: hipify by AMD can translate CUDA calls to HIP calls which runs natively on AMD GPUs↺
  • 19: AMD offers a Source-to-Source translator to convert some CUDA Fortran functionality to OpenMP for AMD GPUs (gpufort); in addition, there are ROCm library bindings for Fortran in hipfort OpenACC/CUDA Fortran Source-to-Source translator↺
  • 20: HIP is the preferred native programming model for AMD GPUs↺
  • 21: SYCL can use AMD GPUs, for example with hipSYCL or DPC++ for HIP AMD↺
  • 22: OpenACC C/C++ can be used on AMD GPUs via GCC or Clacc; also, Intel's OpenACC to OpenMP Source-to-Source translator can be used to generate OpenMP directives from OpenACC directives↺
  • 23: OpenACC Fortran can be used on AMD GPUs via GCC; also, AMD's gpufort Source-to-Source translator can move OpenACC Fortran code to OpenMP Fortran code, and also Intel's translator can work↺
  • 24: AMD offers a dedicated, Clang-based compiler for using OpenMP on AMD GPUs: AOMP; it supports both C/C++ (Clang) and Fortran (Flang, example)↺
  • 25: Intel's DPC++ (oneAPI) can be compiled with an experimental HIP AMD backend, allowing to launch STL algorithms to AMD GPUs; caveats from Intel's STL support apply↺
  • 26: Currently, no (known) way to launch Standard-based parallel algorithms on AMD GPUs↺
  • 27: Kokkos supports AMD GPUs through HIP↺
  • 28: Alpaka supports AMD GPUs through HIP or through an OpenMP backend↺
  • 29: AMD does not officially support GPU programming with Python (also not semi-officially like NVIDIA), but third-party support is available, for example through Numba (currently inactive) or a HIP version of CuPy↺
  • 30: SYCLomatic translates CUDA code to SYCL code, allowing it to run on Intel GPUs; also, Intel's DPC++ Compatibility Tool can transform CUDA to SYCL↺
  • 31: No direct support, only via ISO C bindings, but at least an example can be found on GitHub; it's pretty scarce and not by Intel itself, though↺
  • 32: CHIP-SPV supports mapping CUDA and HIP to OpenCL and Intel's Level Zero, making it run on Intel GPUs↺
  • 33: No such thing like HIP for Fortran↺
  • 34: SYCL is the prime programming model for Intel GPUs; actually, SYCL is only a standard, while Intel's implementation of it is called DPC++ (Data Parallel C++), which extends the SYCL standard in various places; actually actually, Intel namespaces everything oneAPI these days, so the full proper name is Intel oneAPI DPC++ (which incorporates a C++ compiler and also a library)↺
  • 35: OpenACC can be used on Intel GPUs by translating the code to OpenMP with Intel's Source-to-Source translator↺
  • 36: Intel has extensive support for OpenMP through their latest compilers↺
  • 37: Intel supports pSTL algorithms through their DPC++ Library (oneDPL; GitHub). It's heavily namespaced and not yet on the same level as NVIDIA↺
  • 38: With Intel oneAPI 2022.3, Intel supports DO CONCURRENT with GPU offloading↺
  • 39: Kokkos supports Intel GPUs through SYCL↺
  • 40: Alpaka v0.9.0 introduces experimental SYCL support; also, Alpaka can use OpenMP backends↺
  • 41: Not a lot of support available at the moment, but notably DPNP, a SYCL-based drop-in replacement for Numpy, and numba-dpex, an extension of Numba for DPC++.↺

Caveats

Although the table and its descriptions does a decent job in summarizing the state-of-the-art (I think), there are some caveats going along with it.

  • This is the state as of Nov 2022; things are moving along quickly and might be outdated when you read this
  • This is (partly) opinionated by my practical experience with things, chat me up if you a disagree with my assessment
  • Most importantly: It does not say anything about performance; adding performance to the mix (which is, like, a very important metric in HPC) would make this two-dimensional table three-dimensional, and would be really hard to judge

Technical Background

As the origin of the table is in slides (which I, of course, create with LaTeX), but I also want to present it here (in HTML form), I looked for a way to generate one from the other. Nothing really worked perfectly – LaTeXML looks great, but is still a little complicated. So, I did what any reasonable programmer would do and spend way too much time to script my way out of things.

I recreated the table as a machine-readable YAML file which is transformed to TeX and HTML by using respective templates with Jinja. Jinja is really amazing and I’m a huge fan. All the data, all files, and all scripts are in a GitHub repository: https://github.com/AndiH/gpu-lang-compat. Feel free to remix, it’s MIT!

Changelog