SHARED STREAM MEMORY ON MULTIPLE PROCESSORS

A method and an apparatus that allocate a stream memory and/or a local memory for a variable in an executable loaded from a host processor to the compute processor according to whether a compute processor supports a storage capability are described. The compute processor may be a graphics processing unit (GPU) or a central processing unit (CPU). Alternatively, an application running in a host processor configures storage capabilities in a compute processor, such as CPU or GPU, to determine a memory location for accessing a variable in an executable executed by a plurality of threads in the compute processor. The configuration and allocation are based on API calls in the host processor.