OpenMP, the de facto standard for parallel programming on shared memory systems, continues to extend its reach beyond pure HPC to include embedded systems, real time systems, and accelerators.

Release Candidate 1 of the OpenMP 4.0 API specifications currently under development is now available for public discussion.  This update includes thread affinity, initial support for Fortran 2003, SIMD constructs to vectorize both serial and parallelized loops, TASKGROUP, user-defined reductions, and sequentially consistent atomics.

The OpenMP ARB plans to integrate the Technical Report on directives for attached accelerators, as well as more new features, in a final Release Candidate 2, to appear sometime in the first Quarter of 2013, followed by the finalized full 4.0 API specifications soon thereafter.

The 4.0 Release Candidate API specifications (4.0RC1) and the Technical Report (TR1) PDFs can be downloaded from the »OpenMP Specifications page.

A new public »discussion forum has also been created to discuss the 4.0RC1 and the TR1.