As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I want to spend some time discussing OpenCL because being able to work with OpenCL is going to be an increasingly important skill for programmable logic solutions.

So, let’s first start by defining OpenCL. OpenCL is an open-source framework managed by the Khronos group which allows us to work with heterogeneous systems. For devices like the Zynq-7000 SoC, Zynq MPSoC, Alveo accelerator card, and ACAPs, OpenCL allows us to define parallel computing applications.

The goal of OpenCL is to enable portability of design across multiple different systems comprised of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, and FGPAs. Of course, while the design is portable, performance of the design is not.