vectorDataTypes.adoc

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Vector Data Types

Built-in vector data types.

Description

The char, unsigned char, short, unsigned short, integer, unsigned integer, long, unsigned long, and float vector data types are supported. The vector data type is defined with the type name i.e. char, uchar, short, ushort, int, uint, float, long, or ulong followed by a literal value n that defines the number of elements in the vector. Supported values of n are 2, 3, 4, 8, and 16 for all vector data types.

The built-in vector data types are also declared as appropriate types in the OpenCL API (and header files) that can be used by an application. The following table describes the built-in vector data type in the OpenCL C programming language and the corresponding data type available to the application:

Type in OpenCL Language	Description	API type for application
charn	A vector of n 8-bit signed two’s complement integer values.	cl_charn
ucharn	A vector of n 8-bit unsigned integer values.	cl_ucharn
shortn	A vector of n 16-bit signed two’s complement integer values.	cl_shortn
ushortn	A vector of n 16-bit unsigned integer values.	cl_ushortn
intn	A vector of n 32-bit signed two’s complement integer values.	cl_intn
uintn	A vector of n 32-bit unsigned integer values.	cl_uintn
longn	A vector of n 64-bit signed two’s complement integer values.	cl_longn
ulongn	A vector of n 64-bit unsigned integer values.	cl_ulongn
floatn	A vector of n 32-bit floating-point values.	cl_floatn
doublen	A vector of n 64-bit floating-point values.	cl_doublen

Notes

Built-in vector data types are supported by the OpenCL implementation even if the underlying compute device does not support any or all of the vector data types. These are to be converted by the device compiler to appropriate instructions that use underlying built-in types supported natively by the compute device.

The double vector type is an optional type that is supported if CL_DEVICE_DOUBLE_FP_CONFIG for a device is not zero. See clGetDeviceInfo.

Optional Half Floating Point

The half floating-point is supported as an optional extension. An application that wants to use half and halfn will need to include the #pragma OPENCL EXTENSION cl_khr_fp16 : enable directive. This will extended the list of built-in vector and scalar data types to include the following:

Type in OpenCL Language	Description	API type for application
half2	A 2-component half-precision floating-point vector.	cl_half2
half3	A 3-component half-precision floating-point vector.	cl_half3
half4	A 4-component half-precision floating-point vector.	cl_half4
half8	An 8-component half-precision floating-point vector.	cl_half8
half16	A 16-component half-precision floating-point vector.	cl_half16

The relational, equality, logical and logical unary operators can be used with half scalar and halfn vector types and shall produce a scalar int and vector shortn result respectively.

The OpenCL compiler accepts an h and H suffix on floating point literals, indicating the literal is typed as a half.

Also see

Scalar Data Types, Reserved Data Types, Other Data Types, Abstract Data Types, Enumerated Data Types, cl_khr_fp16, cl_khr_fp64

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