The AMD FirePro team is at the 2012 SIMULIA Customer Conference in booth #14 running May 15 - 17, 2012. AMD FirePro graphics are certified for Abaqus technology in SIMULIA on 64-bit Windows and Linux platforms.
The photo below from the conference demonstrates OpenCL on FirePro graphics doubling performance of both routine and sophisticated engineering simulation in Abaqus/Standard and the single card, mutliple display advantage of Eyefinity.
Most everyone that I have talked to in the DCC or CAD is excited about the announcement of OpenCL acceleration for Adobe PhotoShop CS6 (and Premier Pro CS6).
AMD posted a blog and I just read an FAQ from Adobe on exactly what is accelerated in PhotoShop as well a which cards are tested and certified.
Below are some excerpts from the Adobe FAQ that are particularly relevant and interesting.
"The Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) represents features that use video card, or GPU, acceleration. In Photoshop CS6, this new engine delivers near-instant results when editing with key tools such as Liquify, Warp, Lighting Effects and the Oil Paint filter. The new MGE delivers unprecedented responsiveness for a fluid feel as you work."
"MGE is new to Photoshop CS6, and uses both the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks. It does not use the proprietary CUDA framework from nVidia."
"In order to use MGE, you must have a supported video card and updated driver. If you do not have a supported card, performance will be degraded.
Adobe tested the following cards: AMD FirePro 3800, 4800, 5800, 7800, 8800, 9800, 3900, 4900, 5900, 7900"
GPU features added in Photoshop CS6:
Adaptive Wide Angle Filter
Liquify
Oil Paint
Warp and Puppet Warp
Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt/Shift (accelerated by compatible video
card supporting OpenCL)
The primary demos will focus on Eyefinity multi-display technology and the open source Bullet Physics Library plug-in for Maya. The Bullet physics engine is OpenCL-accelerated and used in hyper-realistic video games and feature film visual effects. It offers 3D collision detection, soft and rigid body dynamics, and more. Autodesk and AMD partnered to optimize development and performance of the Bullet plug-in in Maya. It is included with the Maya 2012 subscription update, no extra downloads or 3rd party software required.
Vegas Pro 11 is designed to take advantage of GPU acceleration for video FX, transitions, compositing, pan/crop, track motion and encoding. The series of test discussed below used an AMD FX 8150 8-core processor, 3.6 GHz, 8GB RAM, running Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit. The benchmarks evaluated preview and rendering with OpenCL GPU acceleration enabled on the AMD FirePro v4900, V5900 and V7900 and compared to the comparably priced NVIDIA Quadro 600, 2000 and 4000.
The Vegas Pro project consisted of seven segments in the timeline of varying complexity and length. Measurements were made of Final Render times, as well Preview performance at using “Best/Full” preview settings and the average “free run” frame rate.
It is a wothwhile introduction to what OpenCL and general-purpose computing across both CPUs and GPUs. In addition to the technology, it discusses why use an open standards / non-proprietary approach and the rapid growth rate of OpenCL.
Finally it describes some of the applications that will take immediate advantage of OpenCL including numerical computation and high-end visualization in CAD/CAM/CAE or real-time visualization/presentation, real-time video processing, and physics simulations in DCC/ Media & Entertainment.
This white paper from AMD and featured on DesignWorld, is a great introduction for anyone who is in CAD / CAE, DCC, Scientific Visualization, or Medical Imaging but doesn’t really completely understand all of the buzzwords or specs-and-feed language typically espoused by the 3D graphic card vendors. It’s basically a from top to bottom explanation of how 3D graphics work, what makes up a graphics card, what OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX do, and how to combine GPUs to do even more. It then goes on to give real examples of how various industries benefit from GPU acceleration. Finally it described some of the FirePro advantages (notably ability to handle huge datasets, Eyefinity, reliability, and support).
The AMD Fusion12 Developer Summit runs June 11-14, 2012 in Bellevue, Washington. At the summit you'll learn how to better leverage heterogeneous computing to advance your projects, see the latest advancements in OpenCL, C++ AMP, and Heterogeneous System Architectures.
Top 10 Reasons to Attend the Summit.
10Ten tracks reflecting the topic areas you care about. Tracks include heterogeneous computing, cloud computing, gaming and consumer graphics, and more.
9Keynotes packed with insights and never-before-seen demonstrations. Witness senior leaders from across the industry share what's next, now.
8OpenCL tips and information from some of the industry's best. Learn how to leverage OpenCL to help unleash the full potential of your developments faster and more efficiently than ever.
7Training you'll put into practice the day you return to work. More than 90 sessions packed with deep, content-rich data. Plus, pre-conference tutorials and hands-on labs.
6Unmatched access to AMD technologists. AMD technologists present keynotes, teach training sessions and are ready to talk technology at the social events. Working at AMD would be the only other way to get this level of access.
5Learn what the industry is doing. Come see the major players at AFDS. They present keynotes and lead technical sessions. Attending AFDS helps you better understand the marketplace and where the ecosystem is putting their resources so you stay competitive.
4Your next partnership could start here. With more than 1,200 technologists expected to attend, there's no shortage of opportunities for you to strengthen current partnerships, refresh old ones, and start collaborating with future partners.
3First to know. First to market. Attending AFDS gives you details on AMD's product roadmap. Your chance to lead the market begins here.
2Venture capitalists will be participating. If you've got the next big thing, AFDS is your chance to meet some of the venture capitalists that help start-ups start, and keep small companies growing.
1This is the center of the heterogeneous computing universe. If you're ready to use heterogeneous computing to redefine what your projects can do, to reset what you think technology will be like a decade from now, and reshape what consumers expect in every device they own, the technology and technologists you seek are at AFDS.
The slides and webinar recording of ‘OpenCL & the Future of Desktop High Performance Computing in CAD’ is now available on-demand. DesignWorld and AMD hosted this heavily attended event. It examines the details of CPUs and GPUs, explore their differences and similarities, and highlight the computing power they can provide. It will also look specifically at OpenCL, what it is, what it does, and how this new computing interface will change the way software developers create software and help end users fully realize the compute power contained within today’s modern desktop computers.
This waterfall demo video from SC11 is running on the recently announced Tyan blade server with a FirePro V8800 graphics card. It shows OpenGL 3D rendering and OpenCL compute simultaneous driving a 3D simulation of particles flow and a 2D simulation of the water surface.
The other pics below are also from SC11: The specs for the Tyan 2U server; two closeup shots of the 2U blade server with FirePro graphics; and MotionDSP’s Ikena OpenCL-accelerated imaging software.
The Khronos Group today announced the public release of OpenCL 1.2. The new release adds many new features including the ability to partition a device (i.e. a GPU) into sub-devices to allocate resources to high priority/latency-sensitive tasks, or effectively use shared hardware resources such as a cache. It also adds integration with specialized or non-programmable hardware and associated firmware, such as video encoder/decoders and digital signal processor.
AMD has been the leader driving OpenCL as a cross-vendor, non-proprietary solution for accelerating applications on CPU, GPUs and APUs. Congratulations on the release of v1.2 which will offer better performance and more flexibility for heterogeneous computing and multi-core architectures.
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