While general purpose processors are still the backbone of the world’s computing infrastructure, accelerators are becoming more mainstream because they provide distinct advantages for certain classes of workloads. But this growth in usage often comes attached to a fully proprietary software stack that locks applications into a single vendor solution and requires significant effort to port to each additional system. To democratize accelerator programming, the industry needs a standards-based solution that allows for both portability and close-to-the-metal programming interface for peak performance.