The OpenMP® Architecture Review Board (ARB) has released Technical Report 13, the final public comment draft of version 6.0 of the OpenMP API. Version 6.0 of the OpenMP API will be released in November 2024. Implementers and users are encouraged to provide public comment on the proposed API.

“The final public comment draft includes several new features that significantly expand the ability to exploit available parallelism by refining the ability to specify OpenMP task dependences and through significant extensions to OpenMP device offload support. Further, we have made many changes to support improved navigation of the specification document that simplify understanding of the details of the language’s features,” said Bronis R. de Supinski, Chair of the OpenMP Language Committee.

New Features included in the Public Comment Draft

The key features that are added in Technical Report 13 include:

  • Improved tasking support:
    • Support for free-agent threads that extend the set of threads that may execute tasks.
    • Enabling the recording of task graphs for efficient replay.
    • The addition of transparent tasks that expand the tasks between which dependences may be specified.
    • Support for dependences and affinity for tasks generated by the taskloop construct.
  • Workdistribute directive: Support for Fortran array expressions in the teams constructs.
  • Extended loop transformations: Addition of loop transformations that ensure the use of loop fusion, reversal and interchange are applied.
  • Support for induction: Support to parallelize basic arithmetic operations and user-defined operations in loops that follow well-defined patterns.
  • Enhanced device support:
    • Enhanced control of memory allocations and accessibility.
    • Expanded support for default data environment attributes.
    • Addition of structured asynchronous data mapping regions.
  • Improved support for C & C++:
    • Full support for C23, including C attribute syntax, and C++23.
    • The introduction of new C/C++ attributes.

Technical Report 13 is an important milestone on the path to OpenMP 6.0. Users and implementers are encouraged to provide public comment on the proposed API. Public comment can be sent to info@openmp.org.

About OpenMP

The mission of the OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ARB) is to standardize high-level, directive-based, multi-language parallelism that is performant, productive and portable. Jointly defined by a group of major computer hardware and software vendors and users, the OpenMP API is a portable, scalable model that gives parallel programmers a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications for platforms ranging from embedded systems and accelerator devices to multicore systems and shared-memory systems. The OpenMP ARB owns the OpenMP brand, oversees the OpenMP specification and produces and approves new versions of the specification. Further information can be found at https://www.openmp.org.

OpenMP® is a registered trademark of the OpenMP Architectural Review Board.

For more information, press only: Matthijs van Waveren, info@openmp.org, +33 6 32 53 57 94

For more information on the OpenMP ARB and the OpenMP API: https://www.openmp.org/