OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors. OpenCL includes a language (based on C99) for writing kernels (functions that execute on OpenCL devices), plus APIs that are used to define and then control the platforms. OpenCL provides parallel computing using task-based and data-based parallelism. It has been adopted by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM.

OpenCL gives any application access to the graphics processing unit for non-graphical computing. Thus, OpenCL extends the power of the Graphics Processing Unit beyond graphics (general-purpose computing on graphics processing units). Academic researchers have investigated automatically compiling OpenCL programs into application-specific processors running on FPGAs,[1] and commercial FPGA vendors are developing tools to translate OpenCL to run on their FPGA devices.[