"HSA benefits OpenCL by removing memory copies, bringing low-latency dispatch, and helping improve memory model and pointers shared between the CPU and GPU," Hughes said.

Software is usually written specific to a device, and the HSA Foundation is an effort to abstract the hardware layer so software can work across the multiple devices and cores, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

For example, smartphones have customized versions of Android, but a standardized specification could provide the groundwork to abstract the hardware, which could enable Android builds to work across different devices.

"It looks to me like they are laying down some of the infrastructure to enable some portability," McCarron said. "If you established what amounts to a standard API for cores, that interaction can be abstracted."

ARM and x86 CPUs differ in the way they interact with media, security or graphics cores, McCarron said. HSA Foundation's specification could release the worry about software design and potentially help chip makers sell more cores, McCarron said.