Vulkan, the new-generation cross-platform 3D graphics API governed by the people behind OpenGL, the Khronos Group, is gaining in relevance, with Google making it the primary 3D graphics API for Android. AMD said that it's actively promoting the API. Responding to a question by TechPowerUp in its recent Radeon Technology Group (RTG) first anniversary presser, its chief Raja Koduri agreed that the company is actively working with developers to add Vulkan to their productions, and optimize them for Radeon GPUs. This, we believe, could be due to one of many strategic reasons.

First, Vulkan works inherently better on AMD Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture because it's been largely derived from Mantle, a now defunct 3D graphics API by AMD that brings a lot of "close-to-metal" API features that make game consoles more performance-efficient, over to the PC ecosystem. The proof of this pudding is the AAA title and 2016 reboot of the iconic first-person shooter "Doom," in which Radeon GPUs get significant performance boosts switching from the default OpenGL renderer to Vulkan. These boosts aren't as pronounced on NVIDIA GPUs.

AMD is developing a new GPU-accelerated audio pipeline to rival NVIDIA VRWorks Audio, the TrueAudio Next. The company will take this technology to the developers through its GPUOpen initiative. TrueAudio Next will bolster AMD's VR technologies portfolio, with a hardware-accelerated real-time "audio ray-tracing" pipeline that adds realism to sound in a 3D scene by computing how sound waves interact with the various objects in it. This is essentially what NVIDIA's VRWorks Audio does.

At the silicon level, processing the interaction between sound and surfaces in a 3D scene takes significant amount of compute power. On AMD "Polaris" architecture GPUs, such as the Radeon RX 480, TrueAudio Next will take advantage of Compute Unit Reservation, a feature which allows apps to temporarily reserve a portion of the GPU's CUs. Real-time positional audio DSPs such as TrueAudio Next and VRWorks Audio are expected to gain prominence with VR games, as CPU-based procedural audio-pipelines can't keep up with the faster inputs of a VR HMD to changing the 3D scene, than conventional input devices. Accelerated audio pipelines are needed to ensure that the audio output is fluidly in-sync with the video output, to avoid affecting realism.

AMD today announced that its powerful physically-based rendering engine is becoming open source, giving developers access to the source code. As part of GPUOpen, Radeon ProRender (formerly previewed as AMD FireRender) enables creators to bring ideas to life through high-performance applications and workflows enhanced by photorealistic rendering. Alongside Radeon ProRender, developers also have access to Radeon Rays on GPUOpen.com, a high-efficiency, high-performance, heterogeneous ray tracing intersection library for GPU, CPU or APU on virtually any platform. GPUOpen is an AMD initiative designed to assist developers in creating ground-breaking games, professional graphics applications and GPU computing applications with superior performance and lifelike experiences, using no-cost open development tools and software.

Radeon ProRender plugins are available today for many popular 3D content creation applications, including Autodesk 3ds Max, SOLIDWORKS by Dassault Systèmes and Rhino, with Autodesk Maya coming soon. Radeon ProRender works across Windows, OS X and Linux, and supports AMD GPUs, CPUs and APUs as well as those of other vendors.

AMD posted resources that help game developers take advantage of the AMD CrossFire multi-GPU technology, through its GPUOpen initiative. In a detailed blog post on its GPUOpen website, AMD detailed that since its Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers, the company has been offering CrossFire API as an extension of DirectX 11. While it posted a detailed CrossFire Guide with developer resources, in its GPUOpen blog post, AMD also posted the basics of the simplest way to take advantage of a multi-GPU setup - alternate frame rendering (AFR), in which GPUs render alternating frames of a 3D scene, theoretically multiplying frame-rates.

CodeXL is now part of the GPUOpen initiative. You can find all of CodeXL's source code (barring a few parts that are IP-confidential) on the CodeXL GitHub project. Version 2.0 is also available in pre-built binary form, like previous versions. We believe that by adopting the open-source model and sharing the CodeXL source base with the world we can help developers make better use of CodeXL and make CodeXL a better tool.

To encourage 3rd party contribution and adoption, CodeXL is no longer branded as an AMD product. AMD will still continue development of this tool and upload new CodeXL versions and features to GPUOpen.

AMD today announced that researchers at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) will harness the AMD FirePro S9300 x2 Server GPU, the world's fastest single-precision GPU accelerator, to analyze extraordinary amounts of data to help create a new, very detailed 3D map of the largest volume of the Universe ever observed. Rather than using traditional dish-shaped telescopes, CHIME consists of four 100-metre-long cylindrical reflectors which cover an area larger than five professional hockey rinks and gathers signals for the critical computational analyses supplied by the AMD FirePro S9300 x2 GPU cluster.

The CHIME project was created to investigate the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up rather than slowing down. Using consumer technologies similar to those found in common radio receivers, the telescope collects radio waves that have travelled through space for up to 11 billion years and feeds them into a massive supercomputer powered by a series of AMD FirePro S9300 x2 GPUs. The intense number crunching required to map the Universe's expansion in this way was previously cost-prohibitive, but is now being enabled by AMD FirePro GPUs. The anticipated results will help create a highly-detailed map showing the intensity of the hydrogen radiation from billions of galaxies, which will help scientists understand the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

AMD today once again took the pole position in the DirectX 12 era with an impressive roster of state-of-the-art DirectX 12 games and engines, each with extensive tuning for the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture at the heart of modern Radeon GPUs.

"DirectX 12 is poised to transform the world of PC gaming, and Radeon GPUs are central to the experience of developing and enjoying great content," said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, Content and Alliances, AMD. "With a definitive range of industry partnerships for exhilarating content, plus an indisputable record of winning framerates, Radeon GPUs are an end-to-end solution for consumers who deserve the latest and greatest in DirectX 12 gaming."

AMD announced today at the 2016 Game Developer Conference that the company will underscore its dominance of the global virtual reality systems market. It revealed new advances in hardware and software to further the reach of VR, and unveiled its new GPU certified program that simplifies adoption of VR technology for consumers and content creators.

"AMD continues to be a driving force in virtual reality," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "We're bringing the technology to more people around the world through our efforts to expand the VR ecosystem with VR i-Cafés in China, new Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, and a wide variety of content partners in gaming, entertainment, education, science, medicine, journalism and several other exciting fields."

AMD is also making VR more easily accessible to consumers and content creators with its GPU certified program featuring the new "Radeon VR Ready Premium" and "Radeon VR Ready Creator" tiers. Its forthcoming Polaris GPUs and award-winning AMD LiquidVR technology will simultaneously advance groundbreaking VR-optimized graphics.

AMD today announced it is helping colleges and universities create dedicated virtual reality (VR) labs as Crytek's exclusive technology partner in their VR First initiative. The VR First initiative provides colleges and universities a ready-made VR solution for developers, students and researchers. AMD will equip the labs with its new Radeon Pro Duo graphics cards featuring LiquidVR SDK, the world's fastest and most powerful VR creator platform, capable of both creating and consuming VR content. AMD will provide its LiquidVR Software Developer Kit (SDK) as part of the GPUOpen initiative.

Virtual reality has the potential to revolutionize how people experience the digital world with implications for gaming, entertainment, education, medicine, journalism and numerous other fields. The ultimate goal is to equip a new generation of developers who will create amazing and compelling experiences for users worldwide. AMD and Crytek share a commitment to seeding grassroots VR development.

"We're on the cusp of an immersive computing era enabled by GPUs and game engines," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "We need a new generation of developers whose educational foundation includes mastery of game engines and GPU programming. We're dedicated to nurturing that future, and see the collaboration with Crytek and the VR First initiative as a key step in realizing the goal of expanding immersive experiences outlined in our VR Ready Programs."

AMD today announced that CGG, a pioneering global geophysical services and equipment company, has deployed AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs to accelerate its geoscience oil and gas research efforts, harnessing more than 1 PetaFLOPS of GPU processing power. Employing AMD's HPC GPU Computing software tools available on GPUOpen.com, CGG rapidly converted its in-house NVIDIA CUDA code to OpenCL for seismic data processing running on an AMD FirePro S9150 GPU production cluster, enabling fast, cost-effective GPU-powered research.

"The installation of the large AMD GPU production cluster at CGG is a great example of how AMD's technology prowess in both HPC GPU hardware and in open source software tools combined to deliver incredible results," said Brian Reeves, senior director, product management, AMD Professional Graphics. "Energy research is a demanding and time-intensive task that stands to realize significant benefits from the use of GPU computation. GPUOpen software tools coupled with AMD FirePro S-series hardware enables an efficient and cost-effective solution for rapid data processing that can drive tremendous competitive advantage."

In this episode of TechPowerUp News: the return of overclocking on budget Intel CPUs by playing with base-clock (BClk); and AMD GPUOpen, the company's ambitious counter to NVIDIA GameWorks that harnesses the power of open-source.