Back in May OpenCL 3.1 was announced with a focus on AI and HPC workloads . Just over two months later, this incremental update over OpenCL 3.0 now has its first listed conformant OpenCL 3.1 implementation for passing the OpenCL 3.1 conformance test suite cases. It's Apple Silicon M1/M2 graphics running on Asahi Linux with the Mesa Rusticl driver.

In a rather peculiar twist, the first listed conformant implementation of OpenCL 3.1 is Apple Silicon running on Asahi Linux with Mesa's Rusticl driver. Apple, of course, not supporting Linux but up to the reverse engineering crew with Asahi Linux and other open-source contributors. Rusticl being the generic OpenCL implementation targeting Mesa Gallium3D drivers.

Karol Herbst of Red Hat who leads the Mesa Rusticl driver development remarked on Mastodon :

"Oh yeah.. as of yesterday, rusticl is the first OpenCL 3.1 conformant implementation.

It's officially conformant on Apple hardware running Linux, meaning Asahi Linux.

I probably want to finish up my other 3.1 submissions, I've got AMD/radeonsi and zink in the pipeline, but still need to fix annoying issues."

So as a rather odd twist, Apple Silicon M1/M2 graphics on Asahi Linux with the latest Mesa Rusticl code happens to be the first listed implementation on Khronos.org for OpenCL 3.1.

For those that have been around the Linux desktop scene a long will likely recall how more than a decade ago the open-source Linux graphics stack was consistently behind the major hardware vendors in supporting newer OpenGL and OpenCL versions.