AMD Radeon HD 7970 introduces 28nm GCN Architecture, Eyefinity 2

AMD today announced the AMD Radeon HD 7970. Why this is particularly interesting to the professional CAD/DCC community is because of the new SIMD-based Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture first detailed at the 2011 Fusion Developer Summit.  Basically GCN enables the card to act both as a a graphics workhorse and a computing (e.g. OpenCL, C++ AMP, DirectCompute) workhorse for the processing of non-3D workloads such as video rendering, photo editing, code cracking,  physics FX and scientific calculations.

The 28nm process means the new cards are faster than their 32 nanometer predecessor equivalents, without consuming significantly more power, or generating more heat (even though the number of stream processors increased from 1536 to 2048 and clock speed increased from 880MHz to 925MHz).

Also of note is Eyefinity 2.0 which adds support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation, brand new display configurations and an expanded and more immersive field of view. This allows users with 2560x1600 monitors in an AMD Eyefinity 5x1 landscape configuration to achieve a horizontal resolution of 12,800 pixels, driving more than 20 million pixels of screen real estate.

Take aways from my perspective:  GPGPU computing is now mainstream. High-performance with low power consumption is mainstream. 3+ display Eyefinity and stereo 3D are mainstream. And lastly, this makes me excited about the next generations of FirePro graphics cards.

AMD FirePro V7800P : performance graphics + massive compute power for servers

The new AMD FirePro V7800P is specially designed for use in rackmount servers, blade servers and PCIe expansion chassis. The passively cooled, half-length, full height card card requires 10 cubic feet / minute of airflow to keep it cool (servers normally deliver three times that rate in a peripheral slot). It can be plugged into a server proper or can be hosted in an external PCI-Express 2.0 chassis. It draws a maximum of 138 watts.

The card supports OpenCL 1.1 and DirectCompute 11 for massively parallel number crunching, as well as OpenGL 4.1 and DirectX 11 for high performance graphics processing. With all 1,440 cores working simultaneously, the FirePro V7800P can deliver 2 teraflops of single-precision and 400 gigaflops of double-precision floating point performance.

In addition to supporting traditional workstation graphics in a client/server model, AMD FirePro V7800P professional graphics also enable GPU compute, remote graphics and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments.

OpenCL and 6-display Eyefinity support for embedded systems

At the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2011 last week, AMD announced the new Radeon E6760 embedded discrete graphics processor. The E6760 GPU offers embedded system designers OpenCL support as well as support for six independent displays using Eyefinity technology, HDMI 1.4 stereoscopic video, and DisplayPort 1.2 for higher link speeds.

AMD Fusion ‘11 Summit attracts ARM, Microsoft - heterogeneous computing & OpenCL

BSN interviewed John Taylor, Director of Client Product and Software Marketing at AMD, regarding the upcoming Fusion Developer Summit to be held June 13-16, 2011 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington.

Both Microsoft and Arm will be giving keynotes at the event.  ARM is going to reiterate their commitment to OpenCL with their own Mali series GPU, tying nicely to AMD’s Fusion APUs, i.e. Ontario (9W) and Zacate (18W) and upcoming Llano APUs (up to 95W). 

Also noteworthy from the interview:

With Fusion architecture, CPU (ok, APU) is getting a driver update each and every month for the first time in history of the silicon. The company insists on a vision that by making a continuous Catalyst driver updates for the Ontario/Zacate/Llano APUs, the CPU and GPU parts will be constantly updated with application profiles and API updates. As a result, users of AMD APUs should experience smoother application performance as the time passes by.

Do note that with the Fusion strategy, AMD is no longer just following computing standards, but rather setting them in silicon with smart adjustments. A good example for that is the upcoming C-60 APU that gives you up to 33% higher performance in typical CPU tasks or a massive 43% performance boost in DirectX / OpenGL / OpenCL - all while staying in the same power envelope (9W).

Check John Taylor’s blog for more details on who is speaking.

OpenCL University Kit: AMD offers materials to teach a full semester course in OpenCL programming

So how do you move open standards along faster? In a word: education.

The OpenCL University Kit introduced by AMD is an easy tool to enable educators to quickly introduce OpenCL learning into their curriculum.

Included in the University Kit is a 13 lecture series, equipped with instructor and speaker notes, as well as code examples where necessary. An advanced understanding of OpenCL is not needed to understand the course materials; students only require a basic knowledge of C/C++ programming. A C/C++ compiler and an OpenCL implementation (such as the AMD APP SDK) are needed to complete the exercises.

Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK v2.3 adds Fusion APU support & faster OpenCL performance

Formally know as the ATI Stream SDK, the latest v2.3 release of the GPU + CPU acceleration software development kit is now known as the AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK.  This new version adds support for the new line of Fusions APUs and the Radeon HD 6900 series.  It also adds improved OpenCL 1.1 runtime performance to accelerate application performance using both the CPU and GPU.

AMD FireStream 9350 and 9370 GPU compute co-processors double performance

The industry-leading Cypress GPUs (in the Radeon 5870 and new FirePro line) have made their way into AMD’s FireStream GPU co-processors. These “compute accelerators” are intended for highly parallel, compute-intensive workloads in scientific, financial and academic arenas.  Unlike the discrete FirePro/Radeon graphics cards, the FireStream compute accelerators use a passive heat sink so they can slide into rack mounted HPC servers and expansion systems for x64 systems.

From the press release: The AMD FireStream 9350 delivers 2.0 TFLOPS of single precision performance and 400 GFLOPS of double precision floating point performance in a single-slot, 150W solution with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, enabling breakthrough compute density (almost double the previous generation). The AMD FireStream 9370 delivers up to 2.64 TFLOPS of single precision performance and 528 GFLOPS of double-precision performance, and includes 4GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory, at a maximum board power of 225 watts. In addition, the AMD FireStream 9350 and 9370 both support leading industry standard application interfaces, including OpenCL, DirectX 11 and OpenGL.

The FireStream boards are AMD’s higher performance answer to Nvidia’s Tesla Fermi-based co-processors.  The higher floating-point performance aside, with the FireStream, AMD is also focused on delivering a solution based on open standards like OpenCL rather than the proprietary solutions like Cuda.

ATI Stream v2.1 SDK with OpenCL / OpenGL interoperability

AMD announced the ATI Stream v2.1 SDK (AMD's OpenCL computing implementation to accelerate application performance using both the CPU and GPU resources in a systems).

New features include:

• Support for OpenCL / OpenGL interoperability, to reduce the overhead of passing data for display purposes, enabling a richer and more responsive visual experience for the user.
• Support for OpenCL images, providing developers with access to hardware-accelerated texture features on AMD GPUs.
• OpenCL extension support for AMD media operations in OpenCL, giving developers a set of OpenCL kernel operations commonly used in multimedia applications.
• Support for OpenCL byte addressable stores allowing more natural and efficient code for applications, such as image processing, that depend on the ability to update data at smaller than 32-bit granularities.
• OpenCL extension support for device fission in OpenCL, enabling developers to sub-divide an OpenCL device and allowing multiple work kernels to be assigned to that device.
• Integration of Stream KernelAnalyzer 1.5 installer, which helps developers to statically analyze OpenCL kernel performance on AMD graphics processors.
• Support for next-generation ATI FirePro professional graphics card family, including the ATI FirePro V8800, and the latest ATI Radeon and ATI Mobility Radeon graphics cards from AMD (List of supported hardware).

FirePro Maya Tessellator Plugin

AMD’s newly released Maya Tessellator Plug-in allows users of Autodesk’s Maya to take advantage of FirePro Graphics GPU tessellation hardware. The readme.doc file in the package describes how to install and use the plug-in. Binaries are included for Windows XP 32 and Windows XP 64 operating systems Unfortunately you must create a free AMD developer account to download the plug-in.

AMD announces open physics initiative built around OpenCL or DirectCompute and Bullet Physics

AMD and announced a joint development agreement as part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine using OpenCL and/or DirectCompute in DirectX 11.

A great quote from the release: “Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs”