computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...

, Close To Metal ("CTM" in short, originally called ''Close-to-the-Metal'') is the name of a

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of a low-level

programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

developed by

ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...

, now the

AMD Graphics Product Group Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

, aimed at enabling

GPGPU General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...

computing. CTM was short-lived, and the first production version of AMD's GPGPU technology is now called

AMD Stream SDK AMD FireStream was AMD's brand name for their Radeon-based product line targeting stream processing and/or GPGPU in supercomputers. Originally developed by ATI Technologies around the Radeon X1900 XTX in 2006, the product line was previously b ...

, or rather the current

AMD APP SDK AMD APP SDK is a software development kit by AMD for "Accelerated Parallel Processing" (APP). AMD APP SDK also targets Heterogeneous System Architecture (not only GPU). AMD APP SDK was available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows ...

for Windows and Linux 32-bit and 64-bit. APP stands for "Accelerated Parallel Processing" and also targets

Heterogeneous System Architecture Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) is a cross-vendor set of specifications that allow for the integration of central processing units and graphics processors on the same bus, with shared memory and tasks. The HSA is being developed by the HSA ...

Overview

Close To Metal, originally called THIN (Thin Hardware INterface) and Data Parallel Virtual Machine, gave developers direct access to the native instruction set and memory of the massively parallel computational elements in modern AMD video cards. CTM bypassed the graphics-centric DirectX and OpenGL APIs for the GPGPU programmer to expose previously unavailable low-level functionality, including direct control of the stream processors/ALUs and the memory controllers. R580 (ATI X1900) and later generations of AMD's GPU microarchitecture supported the CTM interface. CTM's commercial successor, AMD Stream SDK, was released under AMD

EULA An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user, generally made available to the customer via a retailer acting as an intermediary. A EULA specifies in detail the rights and restr ...

in December 2007 after the software stack was rewritten. Stream SDK provides high-level in addition to low-level tools for general-purpose access to AMD graphics hardware. Using GPUs to perform computations holds a lot of potential for some applications because of the fundamental differences of GPU microarchitectures compared to CPUs. GPUs achieve much greater throughput (calculations per second) by executing many programs in parallel and restricting flow control (the ability of one program to execute instructions independently of another). Modern GPUs also have addressable on-die memory and extremely high performance multi-channel external memory. AMD subsequently switched from CTM to

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-progra ...

Open-source

Some components of CTM and the Stream SDK are open source, such as the Brook+ C-like language and compiler.

References

;Notes
AMD “Close to Metal” Technology Unleashes the Power of Stream Computing
AMD Press Release, November 14, 2006.
AnandTech report
ATI's Stream Processing & Folding@Home, September 30, 2006.
Universität Dortmund, Fachbereich Mathematik research
Accelerating Double precision on GPUs (Proceedings of ASIM 2005), Dominik Goddeke, Robert Strzodka, and Stefan Turek. 18th Symposium on Simulation Technique, 2005.
TGDaily report
Nvidia activates a supercomputer in your PC, February 16, 2007.

External links

ATI official site
* * *
AMD Close-to-the-Metal (CTM) open source project site
{{AMD graphics ATI Technologies AMD software GPGPU libraries

Overview

Open-source

See also

References

External links