What do I do if I want to cast an accessor to different data types?

[CaoZhongZ]

I defined an accessor to local memory as int, but then I want to use uint8 accessor to manipulate the same location. Is it possible?

[al42and]

I used sycl::buffer::reinterpret to solve similar problem. But it requires creating a new accessor to a reinterpreted buffer. It can not reinterpret accessors.

[CaoZhongZ]

Ah, there is no sycl::local::reinterpret or something.

[alexbatashev]

@CaoZhongZ there's cl::sycl::multi_ptr, which is a address-space-attributed wrapper around raw pointers. It can be created from an accessor and casted to any other type. See page 140 of SYCL Spec for more details on the interfaces. Unfortunately, there's no way to make an accessor from multi_ptr. SYCL 2020 would change these interfaces a bit, but there's still no direct way to cast accessors. Would this work for you at least as a workaround?
Otherwise, it makes sense to talk to @jbrodman, @mkinsner, @rolandschulz, @Pennycook, @iburyl, @rarutyun.

[CaoZhongZ]

Yes, I managed to find this part of spec and trekked over the reinterpret_cast like behavior. Finally the code would be like

sycl::local_ptr<uint8_t> ptr { sycl::local_ptr<void>(b_accessor) };

or keep the array info.

sycl::local_ptr<std::remove_pointer<uint8(*)[32]>::type> ptr { sycl::local_ptr<void>(b_accessor) };

Then compiler complaint nothing.

Of course, more expressive and succinct construct of language would be appreciated 😄