AMD Makes Heterogeneous Computing Pitch to Developers

by Jeffrey Burt

At the center of AMD’s three-day Developer Summit was its heterogeneous computing strategy, which not only consists of integrating the CPU and GPU onto the same silicon, but also workloads to move easily between the two.

Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s global business units, announces that the company’s Kaveri PC APU will start shipping to OEMs this year, with systems powered by the chip hitting the market in early 2014.

AMD is scheduled to launch its “Berlin” APU—for low-power servers in dense environments—in the first half of 2014. At the Developer Summit, AMD Corporate Fellow Phil Rogers announces software development tools aimed at encouraging programmers to write code for heterogeneous computing platforms.

Gary Campbell, infrastructure technology strategy CTO for HP, shows off a Moonshot server module powered by AMD chips that will begin shipping next year. HP’s first energy-efficient dense server cartridges were armed with Intel Atom chips, but AMD- and ARM-based systems will start appearing in 2014.

ARM CTO Mike Muller says there is a lot of excitement and innovation around the heterogeneous computing, and that will all continue with the growing interest in trends from wearable devices to cloud servers to the Internet of things.

According to HP’s Campbell, HP’s Moonshot servers are a tenth the cost of traditional rack servers, and use about one-tenth the power, cooling and space of the rack systems.

AMD bought SeaMicro and its microserver business last year for $334 million to help it gain greater traction in cloud computing environments and hyperscale data centers. Verizon announced in October that SeaMicro’s SM15000 server and Freedom Fabric are the foundation for its new public cloud.

Fabric Engine officials demonstrate software simulating raindrops falling on water running on a system powered by AMD’s Kaveri APU.

To show off the power of heterogeneous computing, AMD demonstrates a computer model of a molecule running on a Kaveri-powered PC, leveraging the improved graphics capabilities.

Oculus VR lets event attendees try out its immersive virtual reality technology. The company earlier this year released a development kit and sometime next year will launch its high-definition product. The company is working with AMD, Intel and others to improve the latency capabilities in their platforms.

Dell demonstrates its Precision Performance Manager software, which runs on a range of its workstations.