AMD Refines Stream Computing Approach

Tech Report has talked to AMD about their Stream computing efforts.

Initially we came out with Close-to-Metal, which was a very low level interface. You had to know a fair bit about the GPU to use it, [but] you could get very good performance out of it. What we've done in the two years since we came out with CTM, is come out with higher-level tools. So, last November we launched Brook+, and what that is a C-level interface that is quite similar to [Nvidia's] CUDA and the OpenCL standard that's been proposed by the Khronos working group. So, it's kind of the same level, and the effort of Khronos is to try a standard API so that people don't get locked into one hardware platform or another based on initial software investment.