Posted on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 22:41 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
EE Times delivers some word about AMD's plans for Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA), an upcoming API that enables merged acccess to graphics, x86 and other cores in SoCs. The chip designer revealed at Hot Chips that the group plans to finish the first HSA draft "within months", and promised it will seed the industry with a compiler. Further details
at EE Times.
The pending API will help AMD deliver SoCs that support fast switching and a common memory pool among graphics and x86 cores. Such features could give it a leg up against archrival Intel which also makes processors with graphics, x86 and other cores.
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With the HSA group, AMD and ARM have formed an open alliance to attack their mutual competitor, Intel. Nvidia also is a rival to AMD, thus not a likely HSA member even though it is a key customer for ARM.
AMD will "seed the industry with a compiler" for the coming API, Papermaster said in an interview with EE Times after his talk, declining to give more details. Separately, AMD is expected to rally partners around its so-called Freedom Fabric based on the technology it acquired with SeaMicro earlier this year.
