1.5. The OpenCL standard and extensions

If you look through the OpenCL website at www.khronos.org/opencl, you’ll find an important file called opencl-1.1.pdf. This contains the OpenCL 1.1 specification, which provides a wealth of information about the language. It defines not only OpenCL’s functions and data structures, but also the capabilities required by a vendor’s development tools. In addition, it sets the criteria that all devices must meet to be considered compliant.

But compliant software and hardware can provide capabilities beyond those defined in the standard. These additional features are made available to OpenCL applications through extensions. There are two main types of extensions: those that relate to a vendor’s software package (called a platform) and those that relate to specific devices. Chapter 2 explains how to check for platform extensions and device extensions in code.