Graphic Remedy is proud to announce the release of gDEBugger Version 3.0. This new major version supports OpenGL V2.1 standards and contains ATI Hardware Performance Counters (Percentage Hardware busy, Transform Clip Lighting unit busy, etc.) integration. These counters are displayed in the Performance Graph and Performance Dashboard Views. V3.0 also adds the option for Floating Licenses with a dedicated License Server. The new version can be downloaded from http://www.gremedy.com/download.php.

PeakStream, Inc., a leading software application platform provider for the high performance computing (HPC) market, today unveiled the PeakStream Platform. Available immediately, the PeakStream Platform makes it possible to easily program new high performance processors such as multi-core CPUs, graphics processing units (GPUs) and Cell processors, converting them into radically powerful computing engines for exponentially increased application performance and decreased time-to-solution at reduced cost. The company also announced the completion of equity financing totaling $17 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital. (www.peakstreaminc.com)

The OpenGL ARB and Graphic Remedy have crafted an Academic Program to make the full featured gDEBugger OpenGL debug toolkit available for use in your daily work and research – free of charge! gDEBugger is a powerful OpenGL and OpenGL ES debugger and profiler delivering one of the most intuitive OpenGL development toolkits available for graphics application developers. The ARB.Graphic Remedy Academic Program will run for one year during which time any OpenGL developer who is able to confirm they are in academia will receive an Academic gDEBugger License from Graphic Remedy at no cost. This license will be valid for one year and will include all gDEBugger software updates as they become available. Academic licensees may also optionally decide to purchase an annual support contract for the software at a reduced rate. For further information, visit:
http://academic.gremedy.com and
http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol001_3/”.

EM Photonics, Inc., a leading provider of accelerated hardware technologies, released FastFDTD, a free 2D and 3D accelerated FDTD solver based on GPU technology. The FastFDTD toolkit contains all files and documentation necessary to accelerate FDTD computations using a simple input file format. The 2D and 3D solvers include a variety of sources and materials, and more are being added. When asked why EM Photonics was providing this toolkit for free, Eric Kelmelis, Vice President, said

We decided to release our GPU-based FDTD accelerator free of charge to demonstrate the power of application acceleration with alternative computational platforms. This solver shows a single graphics card running 20-30 times faster than an optimized software implementation. Our focus will remain on pushing the boundaries of this technology and accelerating other applications with commodity hardware devices such as graphics cards and FPGAs.

For more information, including specific feature sets, compatible graphics cards, and detailed license information, please visit the FastFDTD webpage at http://www.emphotonics.com/fastfdtd.html

At SIGGRAPH in Boston, Derek Gerstmann of ATI presented a sketch titled, “A Performance-Oriented Data Parallel Virtual Machine for GPGPU Applications.” The system exposes GPU functionality at a low-level (including the fragment processors’ native instruction set), giving the programmer direct control over program compilation and loading, GPU memory management, and GPU/CPU synchronization. A write-up is available at www.ati.com/developer. If you are interested in obtaining the system for evaluation, please contact researcher@ati.com.

NVIDIA recently released an updated version of FX Composer with support for Shader Model 3.0 and tons of new sample shaders. The latest version also includes many developer-requested UI improvements, support for NV4x GPU performance analysis, and a beta SDK that allows developer to write their own automation scripts, importers/exporters, etc. The best way to view all the sample shaders is by downloading the latest NVIDIA SDK and looking at the “Effects” tab where you will find descriptions and screenshots of 250+ effects. (FX Composer Homepage)

Jahshaka is an open-source, real-time editing, effects and image processing application that works in 3D space. The 1.9a8 release of jahshaka, available today, is supports GPU-accelerated image processing. The Jahshaka developers’ research in real-time image processing using the GPU is described in a white paper.

ATI’s Ashli version 1.4.0 has been released and is available for download from: Ashli Home. Ashli is a toolkit intended to assist developers exploring programmable shading on GPUs. It supports a reasonable subset of OpenGL (GLSL), Microsoft’s DirectX (HLSL) and RenderMan shading languages. Ashli’s significant contribution is in hardware resource virtualization, segmenting a complex shader program into GPU realizable streams. The posted Ashli viewer application demonstrates the use of shader partitions in a multi-pass rendering context. Ashli outputs both metadata and code, orthogonal to any of the languages supported. Targets include OpenGL ARB_vertex_program and ARB_fragment_program, and DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader versions 2.0 and 2.X API’s. Optionally, Ashli emits a unified Microsoft FX file format, embedding progressive techniques of state and code sections. (Ashli 1.4.0)

TyphoonLabs has released version 1.3 of the OpenGL Shader Designer, an integrated development environment for GPU fragment and vertex shaders in GLSL (the OpenGL shading language). Key features include plugins for vertex attributes (tangents, binormals, etc.), textures (noise, volumes, etc.), real-time preview with multiple light sources, full syntax highlighting and “intellisense” for GLSL, and much more! (OpenGL Shader Designer 1.3)