Kokkos Release Briefing 5.1 – April 2026

The Kokkos Team is inviting you to the Kokkos 5.1 release briefing.
The briefing will be held online on the 14th of April, at 11 AM ET / 9 AM MT / 5 PM CEST and cover updates on changes since Kokkos 5.1.

The full changelogs can be found at https://github.com/kokkos/kokkos/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md#510 and https://github.com/kokkos/kokkos-kernels/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md#510 respectively.

Kokkos Core Key Changes:

• GPU Performance: Overhauled MDRangePolicy implementations and re-tuned default tiles to improve performance on GPU backends.
• C++20 Concepts: Initial introduction of C++20 Concepts for ExecutionSpace, MemorySpace, ExecutionPolicy, TeamHandle, and Reducer.
• HIP Reduced Precision: Added support for “brain floating-point” (bhalf_t) and implemented true reduced-precision math functions (replacing previous casts to float).
• Expanded Math Support: Completed the implementation of all remaining math functions and increased half-type support.

Kokkos Kernels Key Changes

• New Sliced ELLPACK (Sell) matrix format and matrix-vector multiplication with that format. Both are currently experimental until more user feedback is gathered.
• Support for Apple Accelerate library in BLAS and LAPACK now available. This brings higher quality of life for Apple developers especially with the ability to enable and test vendor BLAS and LAPACK natively on ARM without requiring FORTRAN dependency.
• Performance improvement of the matrix radix sorting algorithm and new shell sorting support on host.