AMD “Close to Metal”™ Technology Unleashes the Power of Stream Computing

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that software developers can put the ‘pedal to the metal’ for emerging stream computing applications, making use of a new thin hardware interface known as CTM™ (for “Close To Metal”) to increase processing application performance by as much as eightfold more than traditional 3D application programming interfaces (APIs)1. CTM gives developers unfettered access to the native instruction set and memory of the massively parallel computational elements in AMD Stream Processors™. Using CTM, stream processors effectively become powerful, programmable open architectures like today’s central processing units (CPUs). By opening up the architecture, CTM provides developers with the low-level, deterministic, and repeatable access to hardware that is necessary to develop essential tools such as compilers, debuggers, math libraries, and application platforms.

Through CTM, AMD intends to foster strong growth in the software industry for stream computing by enabling development of the best tools possible, unfettered from performance barriers, coding hurdles, and esoteric dependencies on drivers. Today more than 60 companies and research institutions are taking part in CTM trial programs. These organizations are bringing best-of-breed software to market that enable application developers to have a broader choice in how they develop and deploy their applications. This approach serves a wide range of markets, including high-performance computing and consumer software – two segments with significantly different development needs.

RapidMind Inc. is working to let developers easily take advantage of the parallel architecture of AMD stream processors for a variety of professional and consumer users.

“CTM effectively unlocks the hardware for the RapidMind Development Platform, giving us open access to the massive computational power of stream processors, in turn allowing software developers to create their own stream applications quickly and effectively,” said Ray DePaul, president and CEO of RapidMind Inc.

“Using CTM today, AMD is working with a number of companies to deliver the tools ecosystem for stream computing,” said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Computational Product Group, AMD. “As part of our Torrenza initiative and CTM, AMD is enabling companies to work with best-of-breed vendors that understand how to optimize their software across all processor architectures, whether in stream processors or high-performance CPUs. For these organizations, the development of highly capable, and efficient software is their business, not a sideline. Allowing open innovation to flourish will ultimately enable better software, with more features to come to market faster than any proprietary approach.”

CTM is available to developers to license today at no cost. For more information, developers should contact AMD developer relations or visit http://ati.amd.com/companyinfo/researcher/resources.html Today AMD also announced its first stream processor offering. For more information on this announcement, please see the relevant press release.


1. Based on tests using AMD ATI Radeon X1900 XTX comparing GPUBench OpenGL-based MatMult results to CTM-based MatMult results. The OpenGL-based MatMult performance is ~12 GFlops vs. the CTM-based MatMult performance of ~96 GFlops.