Apple has filed for a trademark on OpenCL technology, documents from the US Patent and Trademark Office show. The standard is intended to better distribute processing power on a computer, by using the normally segregated processing on a video card to help with tasks unrelated to graphics. Video cards can be extremely powerful, Apple notes, but only tend to maximize their use in certain applications, such as games.

A trademark is being sought under International Class 009, which revolves around computer software.

OpenCL is similar in concept to the CUDA technology developed by NVIDIA, but should be independent of any particular card or platform. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has in fact described OpenCL as "way beyond" code by NVIDIA or any other company. It is being overseen not just by Apple, however, but by the Khronos Group, which specializes in creating such APIs. Other companies participating in development of OpenCL include game publishers like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, numerous phone and computer hardware makers, and NVIDIA itself. Apple's implementation should first see public exposure in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.