A fines del año pasado AMD puso a disponibilidad su primer ICD (Installable Client Driver) OpenCL 1.2: Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK 2.6, el cual brindaba soporte preliminar al API de cómputo paralelo acelerado por GPU OpenCL 1.2. Hoy AMD anuncia la disponibilidad de su nuevo APP 2.7.
El nuevo ICD APP SDK 2.7 ofrece soporte completo al API OpenCL 1.2 y es compatible con los sistemas operativos Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, y Linux; los usuarios con sistemas operativos como Windows XP y anteriores deberán continuar usando el APP SDK 2.6. El ICD puede ser usado en combinación con los controladores AMD Catalyst 12.4 WHQL y superiores, y vendrá integrado en el conjunto de controladores AMD Catalyst 12.5 WHQL y superiores (la versión para Windows XP continuará viniendo con el ICD APP SDK 2.6).
A continuación la lista de novedades del nuevo APP SDK 2.7 de AMD:
The OpenCL™ 1.2 adds the following key capabilities
- Host access flags for memory objects enable more efficient buffer handling and provide added protection. For example, a buffer that is created as “write only” cannot be read from the host.
- Pattern based GPU buffer and image initialization can help eliminate need for certain buffer/image transfers
- Memory objects migration supports transfer of buffers prior to need
- New generalized image creation API
- Enhanced image/buffer map operations
- OpenCL 1.2 CPU device partition including partition of a CPU after addition to a context
- Generalized 1D and 2D images, image arrays, and image<-> buffer interop
- Libraries support including the separation of compile and link phases and the ability to compile
The C++ Wrapper API provide the following new capabilities
- Defaults for platform, queue, device, … helping to significantly reduce the amount of boilerplate code required.
- Improved simplified constructors for cl::Buffer and addition of cl::copy functions
- Additional support for events to functors
Notable C++ features that are supported by the OpenCL™ Static C++ Kernel language
- Kernel and function overloading
- Inheritance
- Strict inheritance
- Friend classes
- Multiple inheritance
- Templates:
- Kernel templates
- Member templates
- Template default argument
- Limited class templates (the “virtual” keyword is not exposed)
- Partial template specialization
- Namespaces
- References
- ‘this’ operator
- with external symbols
- Kernel reflection, the ability to query a kernel’s arguments
- Support for printf as a built in function
Additional features supported in SDK 2.7 and the Catalyst 12.4 drivers include:
- Support for Asynchronous PCI transfers
- Video encode using VCE Encode (Win7)
- Open Encode update (12.4)
- Cl_khr_fp64 is now supported on AMD Radeon HD™ 7900 series devices (“Cayman”)
- Added OpenGL™ interoperability under Linux for AMD Radeon HD™ 7000 series devices
- Stability Improvements
- Performance improvements
- Support for AMD Radeon HD™ 7000 series devices (“Southern Islands”) NPI
- Support for AMD’s Second Generation APUs (“Trinity”)
- Kernel Analyzer v1.12
- APP Profiler v2.5
Pare terminar aquí la lista de GPUs soportados:
Fuente: AMD
