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https://github.com/ispc/ispc

Intel® Implicit SPMD Program Compiler
https://github.com/ispc/ispc

compiler intel ispc programming-language simd spmd

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Intel® Implicit SPMD Program Compiler

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# Intel® Implicit SPMD Program Compiler (Intel® ISPC)



`ispc` is a compiler for a variant of the C programming language, with

extensions for [single program, multiple

data](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPMD) programming.  Under the SPMD model,

the programmer writes a program that generally appears to be a regular serial

program, though the execution model is actually that a number of *program

instances* execute in parallel on the hardware.



## Overview



`ispc` compiles a C-based SPMD programming language to run on the SIMD units of

CPUs and GPUs; it frequently provides a 3x or more speedup on architectures

with 4-wide vector SSE units and 5x-6x on architectures with 8-wide AVX vector

units, without any of the difficulty of writing intrinsics code.

Parallelization across multiple cores is also supported by `ispc`, making it

possible to write programs that achieve performance improvement that scales by

both number of cores and vector unit size.



There are a few key principles in the design of `ispc`:



  * To build a small set of extensions to the C language that would deliver

    excellent performance to performance-oriented programmers who want to run

    SPMD programs on the CPU and GPU.



  * To provide a thin abstraction layer between the programmer and the

    hardware--in particular, to have an execution and data model where the

    programmer can cleanly reason about the mapping of their source program to

    compiled assembly language and the underlying hardware.



  * To make it possible to harness the computational power of SIMD vector units

    without the extremely low-programmer-productivity activity of directly

    writing intrinsics.



  * To explore opportunities from close coupling between C/C++ application code

    and SPMD `ispc` code running on the same processor--to have lightweight

    function calls between the two languages and to share data directly via

    pointers without copying or reformatting.



`ispc` is an open source compiler with the BSD license.  It uses the remarkable

[LLVM Compiler Infrastructure](http://llvm.org) for back-end code generation

and optimization and is [hosted on github](http://github.com/ispc/ispc). It

supports Windows, macOS, and Linux as a host operating system and also capable

to target Android, iOS, and PS4/PS5.  It currently supports multiple flavours

of x86 (SSE2, SSE4, AVX, AVX2, and AVX512), ARM (NEON), and Intel® GPU

architectures (Gen9 and Xe family).



## Features



`ispc` provides a number of key features to developers:



  * Familiarity as an extension of the C programming language: `ispc` supports

    familiar C syntax and programming idioms, while adding the ability to write

    SPMD programs.



  * High-quality SIMD code generation: the performance of code generated by

    `ispc` is often close to that of hand-written intrinsics code.



  * Ease of adoption with existing software systems: functions written in

    `ispc` directly interoperate with application functions written in C/C++

    and with application data structures.

            

  * Portability across over a decade of CPU generations: `ispc` has targets for

    x86 SSE2, SSE4, AVX, AVX2, and AVX512, as well as ARM NEON and recent

    Intel® GPUs.



  * Portability across operating systems: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, and

    FreeBSD are all supported by `ispc`.



  * Debugging with standard tools: `ispc` programs can be debugged with

    standard debuggers.



## Installation

### Official Release Binaries



You can download the official release binaries from [the latest release

page](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/releases/latest). Choose the appropriate version

for your operating system and architecture.



### Linux (Snap Store)



Linux users can install `ispc` using the Snap Store:



```bash

snap install ispc

```



### Intel® oneAPI Distribution



`ispc` is distributed as part of the Intel® oneAPI. You can install it from the

corresponding repositories for DEB-based and RPM-based Linux distributions.

Follow the instructions below:



DEB-based Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.)

First, download the key to the system keyring:



```bash

wget -O- https://apt.repos.intel.com/intel-gpg-keys/GPG-PUB-KEY-INTEL-SW-PRODUCTS.PUB | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/oneapi-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null

```



Next, add the signed entry to apt sources and configure the APT client to use

the Intel repository:



```bash

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oneapi-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.repos.intel.com/oneapi all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oneAPI.list

```



Update the package list and install `ispc`:



```bash

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install intel-oneapi-ispc

```



The installation location is inside the `/opt/intel/` directory. To use `ispc`,

either use the full path `/opt/intel/oneapi/ispc/latest/bin/ispc` or add the

`bin`  directory to your `PATH`:



```bash

source /opt/intel/oneapi/ispc/latest/env/vars.sh

```



### Other Package Managers



Thanks to community support, `ispc` is also available through a variety of

package managers on multiple operating systems.



### Windows



To install `ispc` on Windows, you can download the latest release as `zip`

archive from

[the latest release page](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/releases/latest).

Then you need to unpack that to some directory. It is user's responsibility to

set-up permissions for this directory according to the principle of least

privilege.



Moreover, `ispc` depends on run-time components of Visual C++ (DLLs). These

libraries can be installed with Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package.

Instruction to install them can be found

[here](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist).



## Additional Resources



Latest `ispc` binaries corresponding to `main` branch can be downloaded from

Appveyor for

[Linux](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/ispc/ispc/artifacts/build%2Fispc-trunk-linux.tar.gz?job=Environment%3A%20APPVEYOR_BUILD_WORKER_IMAGE%3DUbuntu1804%2C%20LLVM_VERSION%3Dlatest)

and

[Windows](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/ispc/ispc/artifacts/build%2Fispc-trunk-windows.zip?job=Environment%3A%20APPVEYOR_BUILD_WORKER_IMAGE%3DVisual%20Studio%202019%2C%20LLVM_VERSION%3Dlatest)

See also additional [documentation](https://ispc.github.io/documentation.html)

and additional [performance information](https://ispc.github.io/perf.html).  If

you have a bug report and have a question, you are welcome to open an

[issue](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/issues) or start a

[discussion](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/discussions) on GitHub.