AMD announced that their Open Physics Initiative now offers game developers the 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:
The first production release of ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL 1.0 support is out for Windows XP, Vista, 7 as well as openSuse 11.0 and Ubuntu 9.04. The ATI implementation of OpenCL lets developers use combined CPU and GPU power for accelerating applications. This release supports all FirePro workstation cards, as well as the consumer Radeon HD 4XXX, HD 5XXX, and Mobility HD 4XXX .
What's new in ATI Stream SDK 2.0?
First production release of ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL 1.0 support.
New: Support for OpenCL ICD (Installable Client Driver).
New: Support for atomic functions for 32-bit integers.
New: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008-integrated ATI Stream Profiler performance analysis tool.
Preview: Support for OpenCL / OpenGL interoperability.
Preview: Support for OpenCL / Microsoft DirectX 10 interoperability.
Preview: Support for double-precision floating point basic arithmetic in OpenCL C kernels.
Updated OpenCL runtime to conditionally load ATI CAL runtime libraries to allow execution on compatible CPUs without ATI Catalyst installed.
Updated OpenCL runtime to allow simultaneous use of OpenCL and ATI CAL APIs in a single user application.
Updated cl.hpp from the Khronos OpenCL working group release.
Various OpenCL compiler and runtime fixes and enhancements
SmallptGPU is a small and simple Path Tracer demo written in OpenCL in order to test the performance of this new standard. Path tracing is essentially a form of ray tracing whereby each ray is recursively traced along a path until it reaches a light emitting source where the light contribution along the path is calculated. This recursive tracing helps for solving the lighting equation more accurately than conventional ray tracing (definition courtesy of Wikipedia).
SmallptGPU was originally written for Linux using the ATI OpenCL SDK beta4. But there are now Windows 32 & 64 bit builds in this thread 4th post from top. Since it is OpenCL, the code should work on any platform/implementation.
The following video shows the demo running on a Radeon 4870. You see the progressive rendering raytracing technique in action.
Keep in mind that a Radeon 5970 should be at least 4 times faster. Moreover an OpenCL renderer should scale across as many cards as you can cram onto a board.
The ATI Stream Quarterly Newsletter is now online. With the recent release of the OpenCL GPU Beta as part of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 Beta Program, this quarterly is packed full of OpenCL information and resources.
Here is a summary of what you will find:
OpenCL CPU+GPU Beta Release
Introductory Tutorial to OpenCL with Benedict Gaster
AMD Developer Inside Track: Introduction to OpenCL with Michael Houston
Image Convolution Using OpenCL – A Step-by-Step Tutorial
OpenCL Tutorial – N-Body Simulation
Spotlight Application: Distributed RC5 Encryption with ATI Stream
AMD and SiSoftware Collaborate on OpenCL Industry Benchmark Suite
Tips and Tricks: Porting CUDA Applications to OpenCL
Coming Soon! OpenCL Technical Overview Video Series
Coming in December! CAPS to release AMD CAL/IL Backend for HMPP
Available Now! ATI Stream Development Platforms from Colfax and Exxact
Developer Training Program: OpenCL Course from VizExperts
Related GPGPU benchmarking suite released: The new Sandra 2010 benchmark suite for GPGPU computing enables testing of ATI Stream, Cuda, OpenCL and DX11 Compute Shaders. SiSoft published some initial benchmarks and the showstopper was the performance of the new Radeon 5870 running OpenCL. Quote from the test results page: “Pummels everything into dust with fantastic performance, power and cost efficiency. The very best!”
The new ATI Stream SDK v2.0 - beta 4 adds OpenCL GPU support as well as CPU support. This is a big milestone.
OpenCL is about accelerating applications on heterogeneous systems - ALL the processors in your system. With AMD’s beta 4 OpenCL implementation, you will be able to take one source code base and re-target it to your CPUs or GPUs - it will run on both - and take advantage of your entire platform. This means better balanced platforms capable of running demanding graphics, physics and general computing tasks faster and more scalably.
What is OpenCL?
OpenCL is the first truly open and royalty-free programming standard for general-purpose computations on heterogeneous systems. The AMD implementation allows programmers to easily target both multi-core CPUs and modern GPUs for acceleration.
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”
The beta 3 of the ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL 1.0 support is out. The OpenCL support for x86 CPUs is now certified conformant by the Khronos Group and 64-bit atomic built-ins are now recognized. According to the FAQ, the GPU version of OpenCL for the ATI Stream SDK is scheduled to be available later in Q3 of 2009. And the first production release of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 with OpenCL 1.0 CPU and GPU support is scheduled to be available in Q4 of 2009.
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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.
AMD and 
