The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL 2.0 provisional specification. OpenCL 2.0 is a significant evolution of the open, royalty-free standard that is designed to further simplify cross-platform, parallel programming while enabling a significantly richer range of algorithms and programming patterns to be easily accelerated. As the foundation for these increased capabilities, OpenCL 2.0 defines an enhanced execution model and a subset of the C11 and C++11 memory model, synchronization and atomic operations. The release of the specification in provisional form is to enable developers and implementers to provide feedback before specification finalization, which is expected within 6 months. The OpenCL 2.0 provisional specification and reference cards are available here.

"The OpenCL working group has combined developer feedback with emerging hardware capabilities to create a state-of-the-art parallel programming platform - OpenCL 2.0," said Neil Trevett, chair of the OpenCL working group, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA. "OpenCL continues to gather momentum on both desktop and mobile devices. In addition to enabling application developers it is providing foundational, portable acceleration for middleware libraries, engines and higher-level programming languages that need to take advantage of heterogeneous compute resources including CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and FPGAs."

After a successful collaboration with AMD over the past two years to leverage open standards to drive amazing quality, scalability, and performance for our customers - Adobe has just released Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Now users can get the production releases of these flagship products which have been optimized to the massive compute power of AMD APUs, AMD Radeon HD graphics and AMD FirePro professional graphics to enable GPU-accelerated performance across a broad range of form factors through the OpenGL and OpenCL open standards. As highlighted in recent blogs, these optimizations are significant because, not only do they result in faster final render times, but more importantly, they enable users to apply effects and preview their edits in real-time, enabling greater productivity. This is great news for end-users everywhere, who now have unprecedented choice in using the hardware that best suits their needs. AMD-based systems coupled with Adobe's shift to the affordable and innovative Adobe Creative Cloud model for managing licenses and software updates can now put these latest Adobe creative tools in the hands of more users than ever.

The HSA Foundation has released Version 0.95 of its Programmer's Reference Manual. The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to developing architecture specifications that unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in most modern devices. This is the first output from the HSA Foundation, who have been collaborating on this project since its founding in June 2012. It represents an important step in the development of the HSA Foundation's ecosystem because it enables software partners to develop libraries, tools and middleware and to code high performance kernels.

The Programmer's Reference Manual provides a standardized method of accessing all available computing resources in HSA-compliant systems. This enables a wide range of system resources to cooperate on parallelizable tasks. It has been specifically designed to perform in the most energy efficient way without compromising on performance. The goal is to enable a heterogeneous architecture that is easy to program, opens up new and rich user experiences and improves performance and quality of service, whilst reducing energy consumption.

Intel has announced the production release of the Intel SDK for Open CL Applications XE 2013 that launched as a beta program in December. The new SDK broadens options for developers on Intel architecture and includes tools, optimization guides and training.

The SDK helps OpenCL developers improve performance and efficiency on Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and Intel Xeon processors as well as create highly parallel applications for high performance computing workstations, data analytics and other uses. Download the Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications XE 2013 here.

AMD today announced at Adobe MAX new and improved accelerated features for Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC. The introduction of the all-new Smart Sharpen feature and recently updated Blur Gallery and Liquify effects reinforces the collaboration between Adobe and AMD to provide high-quality, impressive performance to creative professionals everywhere by fully tapping into AMD compute and graphics processing leadership through cross-platform open standards like OpenCL and OpenGL.

"AMD and Adobe are working together to help provide powerful solutions that enable creative professionals to speed workflows and increase throughput, boost productivity and creativity, and fully realize their creative vision," says Neal Robison, senior director, Software Alliances at AMD. "AMD APUs and graphics coupled with Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC push the boundaries of what's possible and help artists of virtually all talents and disciplines make the imagined real."

Club 3D unveils today the heir of our first Radeon HD 7990. This card already crushed the competition in terms of sheer power, performance and awesomeness. But now we present its successor, the even faster Club 3D Radeon HD 7990. As the world's fastest and most advanced graphics card, it descends from generations of AMD Radeon Graphics cards that wore the same crown. And with a heritage like that, you know what you're getting: an unparalleled experience wherein gaming is everything… but not the only thing. All hail the new king.

Compared to the previous Club 3D Radeon HD 7990, which was already a stellar performer and has a track record for being the fastest graphics card in the world for some months in 2012 and 2013, the new Club 3D Radeon HD 7990 offers even better performance while being quieter, cooler and more energy efficient. It's almost impossible to imagine but even that top of range product left room for the improvement shown in this iteration. It's clear that these improvements enable better performance than any other graphics card available in the market today and at the same time operates with less noise and using less power.

ACROSSER launches a new All-in-One Gaming Board, the AMB-A55EG1. AMB-A55EG1 features AMD Embedded G-Series T56N 1.65GHz dual-core APU, two DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM, which provides great computing and graphic performance is suitable for casino gaming and amusement applications. It is designed to comply with the most gaming regulations including GLI, BMM, and Comma 6A. AMB-A55EG1 is specifically designed to be a cost competitive solution for the entry-level gaming market.

AMB-A55EG1 utilizes the functions of an X86 platform, 72-pin Gaming I/O interface, intrusion detection and also various security options, and a complete line of Application Programming Interfaces to create smoother gaming development.

Get to the next level with the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition. This card delivers truly game-changing performance that taps into the powerful new GeForce architecture to redefine smooth, seamless, lifelike gaming. It offers brand new, never before seen features that will redefine the way you think about performance graphics cards. Expect more from your graphics card than just state-of-the-art features and technology; get faster, smoother and a richer gaming experience with the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition.

Inno3D is thrilled to unveil the much anticipated Inno3D GeForce Titan, the world's fastest single GPU graphics card ever built that boasts ground breaking power efficiency. The sleek exterior of cast aluminum and trivalent chromium plating of the Titan has a custom vapor chamber cooler. The Inno3D GeForce Titan powerhouse delivers high-end performance with style. Get all the premium GTX gaming technologies such as NVIDIA 3D Vision , PhysX, and Quad SLI for the ultimate PC gaming experience, plus NVIDIA surround sound with up to four monitors.

TechPowerUp released version 0.6.7 of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility. The new release brings some feature-additions, support for more graphics processors, and stability improvements. To begin with, we made room in the GPU-Z window to display TMU (texture memory unit) count. Support for a large number of recently-launched GPUs, including Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE," mobile GeForce 600 series MX, and from Quadro family, were added.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7 also brings a few UI enhancements. To begin with, GPU-Z remembers window position from its previous session, cutting you time for positioning it right for screenshots. Next up, when minimized, its tray icon does more than just show you the app is running. Its tooltip (visible when hovered), displays some important sensor data. A new "-tab" command line parameter allows proverclockers to script-launch GPU-Z showing a specific tab. Among the bugs fixed are one related to a crash occurring on CrossFire setups (a Catalyst-related bug), another crash occurring on NVIDIA setups when updating sensor data (GeForce driver-related bug), temperature reading on AMD "Llano" APUs is improved.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7 ASUS ROG Themed

The change-log follows.

MSC Embedded Inc., manufacturer of highly integrated standard board level products and customer-specific boards and systems, today introduced a powerful, new COM Express Type 6 module family. This family, called MSC C6C-A7, is based on the AMD embedded R-Series processors also known as accelerated processing units (APUs). MSC C6C-A7 members are compact form factor computer-on-modules characterized by very powerful graphics and high parallel computing performance with low power dissipation.

The MSC C6C-A7 module family integrates AMD R-460L 2.0 GHz (2.8 GHz Turbo) or AMD R-452L 1.6 GHz (2.4 GHz Turbo) quad-core processors. The thermal design power (TDP) levels are 25 W and 19 W, respectively. The two dual-core versions are populated with the AMD R-260H 2.1 GHz (2.6 GHz Turbo) processor or the AMD R-252F 1.7 GHz (2.3 GHz Turbo) processor -- each featuring 17 W TDP. The processors support the AMD64 technology and the AMD-V virtualization technology. The AMD Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) A75 chipset was also selected. The main memory can be expanded to 16 GB DDR3-1600 dual-channel SDRAM via two SO DIMM sockets.

Kontron launched today the feature-packed, yet highly cost-efficient, embedded Flex-ATX motherboard KTA75/Flex based on the new AMD Embedded R-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) and the AMD A75 controller hub. It is designed for graphics intensive and highly parallel embedded computing applications and provides outstanding, long-term stability and reliability due to its sophisticated board layout with long-term stable solid capacitors and a high-quality selection of components.

With its integrated discrete-class AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series Graphics it delivers leading edge 3D/HD graphics and accelerated processing capabilities together with the ability to drive up to four displays simultaneously, either as independent displays, or as a single large surface. This makes the long-term available Kontron KTA75M/Flex an ideal solution for applications requiring high graphics and/or parallel computing performance in markets such as industrial automation, medical, and POS/POI, digital signage as well as gaming.

The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of an update to the OpenCL 1.2 specification, the open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors. This backwards compatible version updates the core OpenCL 1.2 specification with bug fixes and clarifications and defines additional optional extensions for enhanced performance, functionality and robustness for parallel programming on a wide variety of platforms.

Optional extensions are not required to be supported by a conformant OpenCL implementation, but are expected to be widely available; they define functionality that is likely to move into the required feature set in a future revision of the OpenCL specification. The updated OpenCL 1.2 specifications, together with online reference pages and reference cards, are available at www.khronos.org/opencl.

Club 3D offers a wide range of graphic cards. But which one will you choose ? Perhaps the games which you will get when purchasing your graphic card will help you decide. This page summarizes the games that are available with Club 3D's graphic card line. The page is divided into three sections. The first section,"The games", will lead you through the available games, and will point to the graphic cards that have this game included in the bundle. The second section, "the graphic cards and the bundles", starts with the graphic cards and will point out which game or even multiple games that are included, and the third section identifies the software that is included with which graphic cards.

Club 3D presents today its latest addition to the Radeon HD 7000 series, the Radeon HD 7750 4GB DDR3 and 1GB DDR3 graphic cards. The Radeon HD 7750 4GB DDR3 offers an incredible amount of frame buffer for those budget minded gamers.

Both cards utilize a custom cooler design with a single slot 50mm fan that ensures the card to remain cool at 57 ⁰C on average when gaming, extending the lifespan of the card and operate stable at high speed. The HD 7750 4GB also consumes 3W less power under load and is fully powered through the PCI Express interface, meaning it does not require an external power connector, offering more compatibility with older generation power supplies. Run games at full HD by upgrading from your old onboard graphic card and boost performance by up to 7x compared to previous generation Radeon graphic cards. Add more and faster memory and enhance your internet experience, watching online video's, photo and video editing has never been this smooth and fast, experience true speed with the Club 3D Radeon HD 7750 4GB DDR3.

Ahead of Microsoft Windows 8 general availability, Intel has updated two toolkits for application developers - Intel Media SDK 2012 R3 and Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications 2013 Beta. In addition to Windows 8, Intel Media SDK also supports DirectX 11 with optimized access to hardware accelerated video encoding, decoding and transcoding for applications on 3rd Generation Intel Core processors.

The Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications Beta now supports OpenCL 1.2 API previews on CPU and other features such as a new kernel builder and GNU project debugger, which ease the creation of parallel and visual computing apps. Both kits support the new Intel HD Graphics Driver for Windows 8 and are available now as free downloads.

Club 3D takes a giant leap and destroys the competition with the release of the most quiet, cool and brutally fast Club 3D Radeon HD 7970 royalAce graphic card, the latest addition to the PokerSeries family.

Get the best of the best with Club 3D's PokerSeries, the Radeon HD 7970 royalAce offers great performance by breaking the GHz barrier on the GPU, clocking at 1050MHz, making it amazingly fast, up to 7% faster in games when compared to the reference HD 7970 GHz Edition. The Radeon HD 7970 royalAce is a quiet card, achieving 31.5 dB on idle, 38 dB at load, making it the ideal choice for gaming and multimedia. By utilizing a custom cooler design with a dual fan and four high performance heatpipes it ensures the card to remain cool at 71 °C on average when gaming. A Dual BIOS toggle switch offers overclocking potential for the most demanding gamer and overclocking enthusiast.

Eurocom Corporation (www.eurocom.com), a developer of long lifespan, high performance, fully upgradable Notebooks and Mobile Workstations has been testing and benchmarking and is now launching the NVIDIA Quadro K5000M GPU with 1344 CUDA cores and 4GB GDDR5 graphics memory in its Panther 3.0 Mobile Workstation.

NVIDIA Quadro K5000M graphics are manufactured on the newest 28nm kepler based GPU architecture from NVIDIA. Featuring a long list of technologies such as PhysX, CUDA, DirectX 11 and OpenCL, the NVIDIA Quadro K5000M will offer next generation graphics performance for the EUROCOM Panther 3.0 Mobile Workstation.

NVIDIA released the GeForce 304.48 Beta software suite, which include game-specific performance improvements, and fixes for bugs related to recently launched hardware. To begin with, GeForce 304.48 Beta claims performance improvements as high as 18%. The improvements are tested on GeForce GTX 680 and GeForce GTX 560, and are specific to game titles such as Batman Arkham City, Dragon Age 2, Lost Planet 2, STALKER: Call of Pripyat; SLI profiles were improved for games such as Battlefield 3 and The Witcher 2. The exact performance improvement numbers claimed by NVIDIA are charted below.

In addition to performance improvements, NVIDIA released fixes for outstanding issues, such as micro-stutter noted by some GeForce GTX 600 "Kepler" users in games with v-sync enabled; under-clocking of factory-overclocked graphics cards by certain manufacturers; and a performance issue with Total War: Shogun 2, with its latest patch enabled. NVIDIA also added and improved SLI profiles for a large selection of games.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 304.48 Beta

The complete change-log follows.

AMD today announced its continued leadership in high performance computing (HPC) with 24 of the top 100 supercomputers in the 39th TOP500 list, announced today, while making significant strides in maturing its HPC ecosystem through the addition of several key components that enable end users to continue to benefit from best-in-class price/performance for today's demanding applications.

AMD has continued to work closely with its technology partners to significantly mature its HPC ecosystem, resulting in several new developments including LS-DYNA simulation software optimized for the AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors from Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC), the addition of programming options for AMD graphics processor unit (GPU) technology from CAPS, and the announcement by Mellanox Technologies of its Connect-IB products that will deliver FDR 56 Gb/s InfiniBand speeds to AMD's solution portfolios.

Today at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS), global technology leaders came together to announce the formation of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation. The HSA Foundation is a non-profit consortium established to define and promote an open, standards-based approach to heterogeneous computing that will provide a common hardware specification and broad support ecosystem to make it easier for software developers to deliver innovative applications that can take greater advantage of today's modern processors.

AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., and Texas Instruments (TI) are the initial founding members of the HSA Foundation. The companies will work together to drive a single architecture specification and simplify the programming model to help software developers take greater advantage of the capabilities found in modern central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), and unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in heterogeneous processors.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, releases its next generation, ultra low power, compact form factor embedded server platform (5017P-TLN4F) based on their new Mini-ITX (6.7" x 6.7") motherboard (X9SPV-F/LN4F). Compared to the previous generation architecture, this solution delivers 15% more processing performance, up to 50% more 3D graphics performance supporting the latest graphic APIs - DirectX 11, OpenCL 1.1 and OpenGL 3.1 and new features such as Intel Smart Response Technology enabling increased storage I/O performance with SSD caching.

AMD today announced continued leadership in driving OpenCL adoption with availability of the AMD APP SDK 2.7, featuring the first conformant implementation of OpenCL 1.2 and comprehensive support for C++. The new SDK expands the OpenCL application ecosystem by providing developers a powerful, cross-platform solution to unlock the performance of AMD GPUs, APUs, and multi-core CPUs with the added C++ wrapper API and AMD's C++ kernel language for greater efficiency, improved productivity and application robustness.

"AMD continues leading the OpenCL movement, as demonstrated with the release of our latest SDK featuring the industry's first fully-conformant OpenCL 1.2 implementation," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions, AMD. "Our latest development tools empower developers to more easily harness the power of heterogeneous computing to help improve the user experience by making it easy to write applications that can take greater advantage of the compute capabilities of AMD's leading CPUs, GPUs and APUs."

As a world-renowned market leader, Gainward officially introduces Gainward GeForce GT 600 series graphics accelerators for the mainstream discrete VGA market -- Gainward GeForce GT 630, GeForce GT 620 & GeForce GT 610. The new GeForce GT 600 series offer better productivity and efficiency, provides smooth graphics in your games and multimedia contents while staying cool and power efficient. It is with the full support of latest DirectX 11 multimedia gaming standard and is supplied with Gainward components for greatest stability. Gainward GeForce GT 600 series are the ideal solution for price-performance conscience users with high demands.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable notebooks, Mobile Workstations and Mobile Servers is shipping the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M in its line of Mobile Workstations and High Performance Notebooks.

The addition of the NVIDIA GeFore GTX 660M, currently the highest performing Kepler mobile solution from NVIDIA, gives Eurocom customers a more complete choice of video processor options to configure into their new Eurocom system or upgrade into their existing system. The addition of the NVIDIA GeForce 660M GPUs in single and SLI offers users another choice of video processor options to Eurocom customers to choose nearly any preference or performance level.