AMD plans GPGPU SDK updates including DirectX 11 support

AMD has announced that they planning new updates to its SDK to further increase the ease and efficiently of software development using future versions of the Stream SDK. The improvements will reduce time and effort needed to produce GPU accelerated applications running on multiple platforms using industry standard API's and enhanced support for C/C++

Through a series of upgrades over the next 18 months AMD will add full support for DirectX 11. DirectX 11 is expected to build upon the already outstanding performance of DirectX 10.1 for 3-D graphics rendering and gaming control.

It is also being designed to introduce a host of new technologies aimed at making it easier for programmers to create general purpose graphics processing (GPGPU) accelerated applications that can run on any Windows Vista powered platform.

"Just as it ushered in the era of advanced 3-D gaming for the masses, DirectX is poised to be at the vanguard of the GPGPU revolution," said Anantha Kancherla, manager of Windows desktop and graphics technologies, Microsoft. "DirectX 11 gives developers the power to more easily harness the astonishing capabilities of AMD GPUs for general purpose computation, and gives consumers an effortless way to experience all that AMD Stream has to offer, on the hundreds of millions of Microsoft Windows powered systems worldwide."

As previously announced AMD is also supporting efforts to develop OpenCL as an open standard and plans to evolve the Stream SDK to be OpenCL compliant. Through equal support for both DirectX 11 and OpenCL, and by continuing to give developers the option of creating and using their own programming languages and high level tools, AMD is executing on a strategy designed to give programmers maximum choice and flexibility.

"Industry standards are essential to unlocking the compute potential of GPUs and driving broad adoption of this capability in mainstream applications," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "GPGPU is now moving past the era of closed and fully proprietary development chains. With the advent of DirectX 11 and OpenCL, C/C++ programmers worldwide will have standardized and easier ways of leveraging the GPU's computational capabilities."