Slides are available at https://dconf.org/2017/talks/wilson.html.

Following John Colvin’s 2016 DConf talk about easing the pain of using OpenCL, I thought: we have a compiler that targets LLVM (LDC) and LLVM targets SPIR-V & (while I’m at it) NVPTX, how hard can it be?

The results are modifications to LDC to allow code generation for use with the OpenCL and CUDA compute APIs, and a set of libraries (under development) to provide a D wrapping for more convenient writing and invocation of kernels written in D, opening up exciting new frontiers for D.

This talk will cover: the modifications made to LDC to support SPIR-V and NVPTX code generation; a guide for using these modifications and libraries, and; why D is uniquely positioned to bring its pillars of “Convenience, Modelling power and Efficiency” to the world of heterogeneous computing and their unwieldy APIs, through it’s powerful template system and introspective capabilities.

From watching this talk I expect attendees to know how to go about writing and…