AMD announced the release of the ATI Stream v2.2 SDK with full OpenCL 1.1 support using both CPU and GPU. The new SDK release also delivers expanded support for operating systems, compilers, and additional hardware.
The interesting non-technical parts from the official press release: “Availability of the ATI Stream SDK v2.2 with OpenCL 1.1 support is a great example of how CPU and GPU technology continues to mature and usher in next-generation computing experiences, where voice, touch, gesture and facial recognition capabilities are common, everyday features,” said Patricia Harrell, director of Stream Computing, AMD. “The enhancements in the ATI Stream SDK v2.2 are especially important due to the support for OpenCL 1.1, which is integral to the forthcoming AMD Fusion family of APUs. These tools allow the developer community to take advantage of heterogeneous computing architectures both today and tomorrow.”
ATI FirePro V7800, V5800 and 4800 professional graphics cards are immediately available with the Dell Precision R5400, T1500, T3500, T5500 and T7500 Workstations for design engineers and digital content creation professionals. These cards all support ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology so a single graphics card can drive up to three independent 30’ displays. They of course, also provide full support for DirectX11, OpenGL 4.0 and OpenCL. These cards are rigorously and exactingly certified for over 90 of the leading CAD and DCC applications.
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.
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).
Ever since the Radeon 5XXX series I've been eagerly waiting for the FirePro professional cards that are based on the Cypress architecture. The , announced today does not disappoint. It clearly takes the crown as the most powerful workstation graphics card on the market. Here's the gist:
1600 stream processors for more than double the computational power of the V8750
2GB of ultra high speed GDDR5 memory
Full 30-bit display pipeline (essential for medical imaging, pro video and photo editing)
Four DisplayPort outputs driven by ATI Eyefinity technology giving the option of a multi-monitor desktop of over 10,000 pixels wide; driving a 4K projector; delivering combinations of portrait and landscape orientations; driving virtual prototyping and curved "surround view" video walls.
Native CrossFire Pro multi-card support
OpenCL support!
Hardware tessellation
Stereo3D support
Windows and Linux drivers
Certified for leading CAD and DCC apps (i.e. guaranteed reliability)
Check out the FirePro V8800 web page and data sheet for complete specs.
One last note: At $1499 ($300 less than the FirePro v8750!) I want to point out that this is a really competitive price for high-end workstation graphics.
I haven't yet seen any actual performance specs, but I really want to see how this performs for Autodesk products, CATIA, and MachStudio Pro, in particular with the recently released v8.702 or better drivers. If anyone has any test results, please drop a comment.
Update: 04/07/10 - Performance reviews are already coming in from HotHardware and most notably 3DProfessor. General consensus is: performance at a completely new level.
Also worth noting are two PDF case studies for the V8800 used in Broadcast 3D CG and CAD visualization
AMD announced that their Open Physics Initiative now offers game developers the open source, free Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system combined with Pixelux’s DMM2 ( Digital Molecular Matter) material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties.
The Free PC version of DMM2 has no license fee for development or production deployment and includes all the features of the premium version including GPU acceleration. Free PC DMM2 is expected to be made available shortly to interested developers. All of the Bullet Physics implementations described above can be run on any OpenCL- or DirectCompute-capable platform
I typically try to avoid propagating rumors of unannounced/unconfirmed products but since I have an iMac here on my desk, in need of a replacement, I was excited to read a rumor on BSN that Apple will be incorporating ATI Radeon HD 5750’s into an upcoming iMac refresh (the current Core i5/i7 iMacs use ATI Radeon HD 4850s).
What makes this particularly interesting: screaming OpenGL 3.2 support, screaming DirectX 11 support when running as a PC (or under virtualization?), and a great engine for OpenCL which is an integral part of the Mac OS.
I have written quite a bit about OpenCL, and have started assuming everyone just knows what it is. So it was good to come across this article in Develop3D on What is OpenCL.
Quick summary: OpenCL allows the GPU to help the CPU do the computing or data crunching, to enable faster and more efficient processing. By allowing the CPU and the GPU to work together, OpenCL allows more computing to be done in a shorter amount of time than a single processor could ever achieve on its own. Arguably, the most important element of OpenCL is that it is open; it is based on standards created by a group of companies, and therefore all vendors involved in this project have a vested interest in making it work. (contrast this to Nvidia-controlled CUDA and MS-controlled DirectCompute).
AMD Developer Centeral has posted the ATI Stream OpenCL Technical Overview Video Series. The series of 5 videos provides ATI Stream developers an overview of the OpenCL API and OpenCL C programming language.
Here is a summary of the videos by AMD’s Justin Hensley:
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