AMD launches APP SDK 2.4 with Fusion support

Getting ready for its huge Fusion Developer Conference in Bellvue, Washington from 13th to 16th June, AMD is launching Fusion-supporting tools faster than ever. KitGuru has a quick look at an early set of event notes to see what's brewing.

In the 21st century, having hardware is probably less than half the battle. With architectures varying so substantially – every chipmaker needs to think carefully, and invest heavily, in system development kits and the associated libraries and methodologies that will allow their individual products to shine.

If the main thrust of AMD's desktop offer was an Intel look-a-like CPU and nothing else, then the value of a developer conference would be marginal. But that's not where the company's thinking is right now. Right now, its all about Fusion and the integration of multiple CPU and GPU cores into a single chip [Is that what the young folks are calling heterogeneous? – Ed].

So, what does the key note line-up look like for AMD's conference?   Alongside AMD's CTO, Eric Demers, we find Herb Sutter – who is Microsoft's Principal Architect for Native Languages and ARM VP Jem Davies. Pretty substantial bunch. No Intel then?

OK, enough about the conference itself, except to say that you can grab the important articles and whitepapers from here.

Back to the headline. AMD claims that with OpenCL and the ATI Stream SDK, developers are able to unlock the potential of today’s diverse and powerful parallel hardware. The point seems to be that hardware vendors should focus on enabling a single codebase that enables exploitation of a broad range of parallel hardware in general and the heterogeneous of Fusion products in particular.

Notable is the number of references to how easy it will be for developers to move from proprietary CUDA code to open standard OpenCL.

So there you have it, if you are programming for Fusion (or planning to do so), then you'd be advised to click on this link and download a copy of AMD's latest SDK, today.

If you go that far, then you'd be daft not to also download the latest CodeAnalyst Performance Analyser from here. If you're going to write code, you should at least have a look to see if it will perform well.

In true KitGuru style, let's end on a smile.

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KitGuru says: The move from proprietary to open standards seems to be gathering force. Seeing ARM take the stage with AMD must be Intel's wet dream.

Comments below or in the KitGuru forum.

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