AMD’s Latest OpenCL™ APP SDK and Catalyst™ Developer Driver Available for Download

Date: 16/1/2012

The latest versions of AMD’s Catalyst™ developer drivers include many new features, including several capabilities of the recently published OpenCL™ 1.2 specification. According to Nigel Watts, MD of Ismosys, AMD’s sales and marketing representative in Benelux, France, Iberia, Italy and Turkey,  the new features provide developers with significant coding productivity enhancements, making it much easier to write OpenCL using C++ and in addition, deliver run-time performance enhancements”.

At the same time AMD announced enhancements to its APP Software Developers Kit.

“AMD is driving industry support for OpenCL with developers and technology companies around the world, contributing to the establishment of OpenCL as a top tool for developers”, said Watts. “AMD is focusing on OpenCL to enable developers to more easily harness the power of heterogeneous computing in applications that leverage the full processing capabilities of the CPU and GPU. AMD VISION Technology -based notebook, desktop and all-in-one PCs will benefit from faster run-times, longer battery life and smoother playback of software applications.”

Key features supported in AMD’s Catalyst 11.12 driver and SDK 2.6:

• Inclusion of the Khronos C++ Wrapper API
• OpenCL runtime integration into Linux in addition to Windows® Catalyst drivers.
• Multi GPU support on Linux platforms
• Support for AVX extensions for CPUs that support this extension#
• Support for FMA4 extensions in OpenCL built-in function libraries for CPUs that support this extension

Additional preview capabilities provided with the Developer Driver:

• Static C++ kernel language
• OpenCL™ 1.2 preview capabilities:
  o Host access flags for memory objects enables more efficient buffer handling
  o Pattern based GPU buffer and image initialization eliminates need for certain buffer/image transfers
  o Memory objects migration supports transfer of buffer prior to need
  o New generalized image creation API
  o Enhanced image/buffer map operations

Click here  for full details of the AMD Catalyst developer drivers and APP SDK 2.6, and  here to download the latest AMD APP SDK and AMD Catalyst Developer Drivers