Intel announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Edinburgh-based Codeplay Software, which it called “a global leader in cross-architecture open standards-based developer technologies.”
Subject to the closing of the transaction, Codeplay will operate as a subsidiary business as part of Intel’s Software and Advanced Technology Group (SATG).
Intel said that through its subsidiary structure it plans to “foster Codeplay’s unique entrepreneurial spirit and open ecosystem approach for which it is known and respected in the industry.”
Intel said that led by CEO Andrew Richards and CTO Ruyman Reyes, Codeplay “is globally recognized for its expertise and leadership in SYCL, the Khronos open standard programming models used in oneAPI, and its significant contributions to the industry ranging from open ecosystem activities like SYCL and OpenCL to RISC-V, automotive software safety, and medical imaging.”
It said Codeplay has “extensively delivered products supporting diverse hardware platforms globally, embracing the mission of bringing oneAPI to the masses.”
Intel added: “This acquisition bolsters both companies’ commitment to open collaboration and standards – particularly driving the adoption of SYCL and the oneAPI ecosystem.
“Intel and Codeplay have worked together to define and extend open standard programming models that work across multiple platforms and devices.
“Codeplay is highly active on Khronos standards committees and has been a long-time proponent of the SYCL standard.
“In fact, Codeplay developers currently chair the Khronos SYCL Working Group and some ISO C++ standards, act as the OpenCL Spec editor, and significantly contribute to numerous other standards.
“Codeplay has a proven record of ecosystem leadership within the developer community, while developing and maintaining compilers and runtimes for CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and many other advanced processor architectures to achieve high processing performance for AI and HPC.
“In the last two years, Codeplay was selected by leading open science computing sites, including NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as a collaboration of the Argonne National Laboratory with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to provide oneAPI SYCL compilers for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.
“Bolstered by the strength of Intel, Codeplay will be able to extend the delivery of SYCL solutions into cross-architecture and multi-vendor products, based on open standards and the open source ecosystems upon which they are built.”
Codeplay CEO Andrew Richards wrote on his firm’s website: “Today Intel announced, pending final approvals, that it would acquire Codeplay Software.
“This is an exciting moment for the industry and will help enable the team to fulfill our vision of bringing open standards programming to all.
“Codeplay will continue to work in partnership with organizations across the industry to enable open standard software on the latest cutting edge processors.
“Being a catalyst for industry innovation is what Codeplay was created to do, and it is what gets us excited to come to work.
“Over the past 20 years we have grown to be a leader in developing solutions for the latest processors.
“During this time, we have enabled more than 20 processors to use open standards programming models, and this close relationship with Intel will allow us to accelerate this work further.
“Intel is focused on open standards, and Codeplay has led and contributed to multiple open standards including SYCL, a royalty free open standards programming model developed by the Khronos Group.
“In fact, our engineers have worked closely with engineers from Intel alongside other key organizations to bring the SYCL standard to the level of maturity it now has.
“Intel has chosen SYCL to be at the heart of the oneAPI initiative, a cross-industry, standards-based way to develop for heterogeneous architectures.
“The strength of oneAPI and SYCL scales from supercomputers with exascale (over 10^18 calculations per second) capability to edge compute devices and automotive ADAS.
“The end developer typically has thousands or millions of lines of code with software creation increasing each year.
“This code needs to be ported quickly and achieve highest performance benefiting from a well-supported ecosystem – this is what oneAPI and SYCL provides.
“This puts Codeplay in a strong position to work across the industry to bring SYCL and other open standards to both processor vendors and teams of software developers supporting the stated strategy of both parties.
“Codeplay is therefore at the heart of Intel’s strategy to democratize oneAPI and SYCL, ensuring that all processors support open standards.
“Intel’s support will enable Codeplay’s continued strength in the community and ecosystem.
“Codeplay will operate as a subsidiary business of Intel and will continue to support the multi-architecture, multi-vendor accelerator market.
“It is important for the industry to adopt open standards and open-specification solutions to minimize time-to-market for the industry and time to value for developers and customers.
“This acquisition strengthens developer and industry trust that open software will be available now and in the years to come …
“The combination brings excitement and energy to oneAPI and SYCL ensuring the industry aligns and works together for the gain of all.
“This is just the next step in our vision to bring open standards programming to all.”