This release introduces AVX10.2 support, extended standard library coverage for small integer types, full support for element-wise functions on short vectors in the standard library, and numerous bug fixes. It is based on a patched LLVM 20.1.4.

New targets

New targets have been added for platforms supporting Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 10.2: avx10.2-x4, avx10.2-x8, avx10.2-x16, avx10.2-x32, and avx10.2-x64.

Standard library

• Cross-lane operations - broadcast, rotate, shift, and shuffle - are now supported for unsigned types.
• Reduction functions now support signed and unsigned int8 and int16 types.
• Support for packed_load and packed_store has been extended to include: int8, int16 (signed and unsigned), float16, float, and double.
• The cube root function cbrt has been added to the standard library for float and double types.
• Dot product functionality has been enhanced with mixed signedness support for 16-bit integers. The following input combinations are now supported: u16 x u16 (unsigned x unsigned), i16 x i16 (signed x signed), u16 x i16 (mixed signedness). For consistency with other naming conventions, the function dot2add_i16_packed has been renamed to dot2add_i16i16_packed.
• The support for short vector types has been added for the following element wise functions: min, max, abs, round, floor, ceil, trunc, rcp, rcp_fast, sqrt, rsqrt, sin, asin, cos, acos, tan, atan, exp, log, atan2, pow, and cbrt.

Language changes

• The aligned(N) attribute is now available to specify the alignment of variables and struct types.
• A bug was fixed where unsigned array indices or pointer arithmetic with unsigned offsets could result in overflow due to sign extension when promoting to pointer size. This issue is now resolved, and the compiler correctly handles unsigned integer indexing and pointer arithmetic.

Compiler Switches Behavior

• The -dD and -dM flags are now supported, aiding in debugging the preprocessor and inspecting defined macros.

Template support bug fixes

• Fixed instantiation of template functions when assigned to function pointers.
• Improved implicit template argument deduction.
• Fixed a crash occurring when a nested template function did not use a templated argument.

Performance improvements

• Improved the performance of masked loads and stores for AVX-512 x32 and x64 targets by an order of magnitude (approximately ~10x on microbenchmarks).
• packed_store_active2 on AVX2 has been improved: ~65% speedup for int32, ~45% speedup for int64

Other bug fixes

• Fixed a crash during integer division by ensuring it occurs only on active lanes, improving stability and performance.
• Resolved crashes related to:
  • Incomplete struct types
  • Use of enum fields in structs
  • Pointer declarations to function types
  • Unsupported binary operations on pointer types
  • Casting to unsized arrays in malformed code
  • Accessing array elements through pointers
  • Structure member access within pointer arithmetic
• Improved compiler warnings for incomplete types.
• Corrected address calculations involving unsigned indices in array accesses and pointer arithmetic.

Ecosystem improvements

• ISPC is now supported by GitHub's Linguist, enabling proper syntax highlighting for .ispc files on GitHub.
• ISPC syntax support has been added to the following editors, thanks to community contributions:
  • CudaText - Alexey-T/CudaText#5944
  • ECoder - SpartanJ/ecode#436
• If you are integrating ISPC with Python, we recommend using nanobind. Examples are available, and we plan to generate nanobind-compatible headers in a future release.

Recommended versions of Runtime Dependencies when targeting GPU

Linux:

• Intel(R) Graphics Compute Runtime
  https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/25.13.33276.16
• Level Zero Loader
  https://github.com/oneapi-src/level-zero/releases/tag/v1.20.2
• Threading Building Blocks (TBB)

Alternatively, you can use a validated gfx driver stack supporting Intel® Arc™
available at https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/installation.html

Windows:

• Intel(R) Graphics Windows(R) DCH Drivers 32.0.101.6083
  https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/785597/intel-arc-iris-xe-graphics-windows.html
• Level Zero Loader
  https://github.com/oneapi-src/level-zero/releases/tag/v1.20.2
• OpenCL™ Offline Compiler (OCLOC)
  https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/tool/oneapi-standalone-components.html
  (this is needed for AoT compilation on Windows only)
• Supported GPU platforms: Intel(R) Arc Graphics, 11th-13th Gen Intel(R) Core
  processor graphics

Components revisions used in GPU-enabled build:

• KhronosGroup/SPIRV-LLVM-Translator@6dd8f2a1
• intel/vc-intrinsics@b980474c
• oneapi-src/level-zero@d7a44e0 (v1.20.2)
• llvm/llvm-project@ec28b8f (llvmorg-20.1.4) + patches from llvm_patches folder