On November 21, 2008, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s latest trademark application for OpenCL under application 77616247. Apple has filed OpenCL under International Class 009 which covers computer software. Specifically, Apple’s trademark documentation is shown to be seeking protection for the following: “Application programming interface computer software and language definition for use in developing applications for execution on central processing units (CPU) or graphic processor units (GPU).” Apple asserts a claim of priority based on their Trinidad and Tobago application number 39851, filed 05/19/2008.

About OpenCL: According to Apple’s website verbiage on OpenCL, “OpenCL (Open Computing Language) makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.” The New York Times recorded Steve Jobs describing OpenCL as follows: “Basically it lets you use graphics processors to do computation. It’s way beyond what Nvidia or anyone else has, and it’s really simple.”

An Open Standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems

The Khronos Group is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard, royalty-free APIs to enable the authoring and accelerated playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. The Khronos Group’s information on OpenCL is rather noteworthy as follows:

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for general-purpose parallel programming of heterogeneous systems. OpenCL provides a uniform programming environment for software developers to write efficient, portable code for high-performance computer servers, desktop computer systems and handheld devices using a diverse mix of multi-core CPUs, GPUs, Cell-type architectures and other parallel processors such as DSPs.

OpenCL supports a wide range of applications, from embedded and consumer software to HPC solutions, through a low-level, high-performance, portable abstraction. By creating an efficient, close-to-the-metal programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.

OpenCL is being created by the Khronos Group with the participation of many industry-leading companies and institutions including 3DLABS, Activision Blizzard, AMD, Apple, ARM, Barco, Broadcom, Codeplay, Electronic Arts, Ericsson, Freescale, HI, IBM, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Kestrel Institute, Motorola, Movidia, Nokia, NVIDIA, QNX, RapidMind, Samsung, Seaweed, Takumi, Texas Instruments and Umea University.

The two slides illustrated below could be found in a Khronos Group slide presentation here.

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Written and researched by Jack Purcher.