AMD serves OpenCL software development platform for x86 CPUs

AMD has announced it is now offering a free OpenCL for CPU beta download as part of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 Beta Program. The beta is designed to help programmers more easily develop parallel software programs and take further advantage of multi-core x86 CPUs to accelerate software and deliver a better computing experience. AMD has submitted conformance logs from its Microsoft Windows and Linux CPU beta releases to the Khronos Working Group for certification.

OpenCL is the industry standard that was quickly created and ratified by all the major players in the hardware space. It provides an open standard application performing interface for heterogeneous architectures, for both the CPU and GPU. As GPU architecture evolved several years ago from being special purpose circuitry to being more programmable, they have increasingly been used for computation, and been deployed for other kinds of algorithms. Interest has thus broadened into mainstream applications for dealing with bottlenecks and accelerating computations, as well as graphics.

"This beta lets people begin development on the CPUs," said Patricia Harrell, director of Stream Computing, AMD. " A single API lets you, for the first time, develop code for heterogeneous architectures, multicore CPUs and GPUs, using the same API." 

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