HSA: sys arch, prog ref manual, sys runtime specs 1.0 available now

HSA Foundation announced availability of its System Architecture Specification 1.0, Programmer’s Reference Manual and Runtime Programmer’s Reference Manual for public review. A sample runtime, compiler, and driver are also made available for system designers for review of the specs. HSA Platform System Architecture Specification covers specifications related to virtual memory, platform coherency, signaling, queuing mechanics and packet formats, context switching, and the HSA memory model. HSA Programmer’s Reference Manual has HSAIL Virtual ISA and Programming Model, Compiler Writer’s Guide, and BRIG (the “HSAIL” compiler intermediate language) object format . HSA Runtime Programmer’s Reference Manual defines the APIs in the HSA Runtime used for tasks cuh as initialization and device discovery, queue creation, and memory management. All those trees specifications are available from the HSA Foundation web site: http://www.hsafoundation.com/standards/ The processor chip maker AMD is supplying early implementation to test out capabilities of HSA. AMD's processor “Kaveri” is the pre-HSA compatible semiconductor device which can be used for evaluation. Linux kernel and associated kernel-level drivers, the HSA runtime, and the HSAIL finalizer are part of the implementation. The project includes a reference LLVM-based compiler which generates HSAIL and can ext...