Recent news

OpenCL 1.2 fully supported in AMD OpenCL APP SDK 2.7 and Catalyst 12.4 drivers

May 29, 2012 by Tony DeYoung

With AMD OpenCL APP SDK 2.7, OpenCL 1.2 support and improved C++ support for both host side and kernel side coding are now fully supported in the SDK and fully integrated into the run-time support delivered via the AMD Catalyst software drivers.

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

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