SIGGRAPH ASIA, SINGAPORE \u2013 Dec. 08, 2008 \u2013 AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its intent to rapidly adopt the OpenCL 1.0 programming standard and integrate a compliant compiler and runtime into the free ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK).
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\nOpenCL 1.0 was ratified today by the The Khronos Group, an independent standards body with company-members throughout the computing industry. The OpenCL programming standard and associated technologies are aimed at better enabling developers to write vender-neutral applications that can execute on either the CPU or GPU within a system. This allows developers to easily take advantage of whichever processor is best suited for the task at hand.
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\n\u201cThe potential benefits of having applications run on both the CPU and GPU within a system are enormous,\u201d said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. \u201cUnfortunately, up until now programmers could only choose proprietary programming languages that limited their ability to write vendor-neutral, cross-platform applications. With today\u2019s ratification of OpenCL 1.0, I\u2019m happy to say those days are over. Developers now have a better, truly open choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
AMD is a founding and contributing member of the OpenCL working group in The Khronos Group, and has consistently been one of the most vocal and active proponents of the standard. AMD is committed to getting this valuable new technology into the hands of programmers as quickly as possible, and is rapidly evolving its free ATI Stream SDK to make it happen. AMD is making good progress on its OpenCL-compliant offering and plans to release a developer version of the ATI Stream SDK with support for OpenCL 1.0 for content developers in the first half of 2009. Working from early specifications of OpenCL, AMD\u2019s engineering team has already started running code on its initial implementation.
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\nAMD also continues to improve its Brook+ tools and plans to provide a transition path for those who want to port their Brook+ code to OpenCL. Brook+ is an open source, high-level programming framework provided by AMD as part of the free ATI Stream SDK.
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\nBuilding on the significant enhancements of ATI Stream SDK 1.3, version 1.4 is being designed to add finer grain data type support, graphics API interoperability, multi-GPU support and thread-level data sharing to Brook+. It is also being enhanced to add improved support for the ATI Radeon\u2122 HD 4870 X2 graphics cards and to include support for several ATI FirePro\u2122 3D graphics accelerators.\u00a0 AMD expects to release version 1.4 of the ATI Stream SDK in the first quarter of 2009.
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\n\u201cLack of standards has hamstrung the use of graphics processors to accelerate computing,\u201d said Gordon Haff, Principal IT advisor, Illuminata.\u00a0 \u201cI therefore view the ratification of the OpenCL specification as an important step toward pushing GPU-accelerated software beyond early adopters and into the hands of mainstream businesses and consumers around the world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taking ATI Stream Mainstream About AMD \u00a92008, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, ATI, the ATI logo, Radeon, The Ultimate Visual Experience and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.\u00a0 Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SIGGRAPH ASIA, SINGAPORE \u2013 Dec. 08, 2008 \u2013 AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its intent to rapidly adopt the OpenCL 1.0 programming standard and integrate a compliant compiler and runtime into the free ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK). \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 OpenCL 1.0 was ratified today by the The Khronos Group, an independent standards body with<\/p>\n
\nOn November 13, AMD announced its plans to release the free download of ATI Catalyst\u2122 driver update, version 8.12, which will instantly unlock new ATI Stream acceleration capabilities already built into millions of ATI Radeon\u2122 graphics cards. The driver is available for download on or around December 10. AMD also plans to make available a free downloadable version of its ATI Avivo\u2122 Video Converter utility, which allows users of many ATI Radeon HD graphics cards to immediately experience the benefit of ATI Stream technologies when transcoding video. Once released, both can be downloaded at http:\/\/ati.amd.com\/support\/driver.html<\/a>.
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\nAbout ATI Stream
\nATI Stream is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPU), working in concert with the system\u2019s central processor (CPU), to accelerate applications beyond just graphics. This enables better balanced platforms capable of running demanding computing tasks faster than ever. For more information on ATI Stream and the ATI Stream SDK visit www.amd.com\/stream<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nAdvanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and industry partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit www.amd.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n