What’s New in SYCL for Safety Critical Systems

In April 2022, Codeplay and CoreAVI initiated the SYCL SC Exploratory Forum within Khronos to evaluate industry interest in a new Khronos API based on SYCL and targeted at safety-critical industries[1]. A year later, we take stock of the progress the Exploratory Forum has made on defining SYCL for Safety-Critical Systems, and we share some of the insights we have gained. Safety-critical industries, like avionics, automotive, nuclear, and rail, require their software to be compliant to safety standards such as ISO 26262, ISO 21448/SOTIF, DO-178C, and UL4600, as well as to adhere to guidelines such as those defined by AUTOSAR and MISRA. While safety-critical industries have traditionally been cautious about adopting new or unproven technologies, interest by these industries in C++ and heterogeneous programming has increased significantly in recent years. This is driven, in large part, by the need for AI technologies to implement advanced features, such as autonomous behavior. Compute-heavy workloads like AI require high-level programming frameworks as well as considerable computing power, which can only be achieved by a heterogeneous system design. SYCL’s single-source C++ programming model has already become popular in the HPC industry. The proposed SYCL for Safety-Critical Systems API aims to open up high-level heterogeneous compute to safety-critical industries by introducing modifications and extensions to SYCL to make both SYCL applications and SYCL implementations easier to certify to industry safety standards. In this talk, we will give an overview of what certification to a safety standard implies for a compiler and runtime based on SYCL. Khronos Exploratory Forums are designed to be open to companies and individuals who are not yet Khronos participants. A key aim of the SYCL SC Exploratory Forum was to hear from “end-user” companies in safety-critical domains, and to evaluate the market for a safety-critical API based on SYCL. The talk will give an overview of the companies that participated and their general feedback. In the initial phase, the SYCL SC Exploratory Forum heard presentations from its participants and collated a “wish list” of features for a high-level heterogeneous compute API. The talk will give an overview of features that were requested and a discussion of some of the more interesting points. In the second stage, the members of the Forum analyzed these “wishes” according to their relevance to a safety-critical standard specifically based on SYCL. A list of core requirements for the SYCL for Safety-Critical Systems API was distilled from the wish list and will act as a guide during the definition of the new standard. The talk will include an overview of the requirements, background on the finer technical points, and some of the technical discussions that were had around these topics. The presentation will also describe some of the open questions that are still to be answered during the design of the SYCL for Safety-Critical Systems API. The presentation will close with a call to join the discussions and help define the details of this new standard, which promises to open up the SYCL programming model to safety-critical industries.