To allow software developers to easily program new high performance processors such as multi-core CPUs and graphics processor units (GPUs) directly on their desktops, Redwood City, Calif.-based high-performance computing (HPC) software platform supplier PeakStream Inc. today released its PeakStream Platform in beta for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The company also has a Linux-based tool that was launched in September 2006. Both tools are meant to allow the development of technical and scientific applications faster, running at higher performance, using existing tools and programming languages.

David Blythe, architect in the desktop and graphics technologies group at Microsoft noted in a statement, “The tremendous amounts of compute power locked inside graphics and multi-core processors hold great potential for expanding the opportunities within engineering, medical research, exploration and other critical human endeavors."

"Microsoft is making such technology more mainstream by combining the strengths of the Windows platform and technologies from partners like PeakStream and bringing them to departments and divisions in commercial industry and the public sector," he said.

PeakStream Workstation for Microsoft Windows combines a set of math libraries in C/C++ with an optimizing runtime and a set of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tool extensions to allow rapid development of applications for multi-core CPUs and GPUs.

PeakStream believes this is the first commercial grade software application platform available for Microsoft Windows that offers a high-level API that insulates code from low-level hardware details and ensures portability to future hardware platforms without recoding.

Alternative approaches ask developers to lock their applications into specific hardware implementations or master hardware-level interfaces, while PeakStream allows programmers to develop applications that will easily scale across the rapidly changing and emerging world of multi-core processors and highly parallel systems, the company explained.

Marty Seyer, senior VP for commercial segment and advanced solutions at AMD said, “We see Accelerated Computing as the next wave. Torrenza is an example of Accelerated Computing that will use different types of compute engines, such as AMD Stream processors, to enable applications to reach speeds previously thought impossible. New software platforms are key to enabling the full advantage of these Accelerated Computing architectures. It’s great that Windows-based developers can now take advantage of the PeakStream Platform on AMD stream processors without having to become experts in graphics languages or multi-threaded programming.”

Finally, Matthew Papakipos, founder and CTO of PeakStream noted, “The computing power that multi-core processors provide is the key to technical advances in so many industries, from the defense sector to financial services. Organizations, however, are understandably reluctant to invest time and money in developing applications tied to hardware architectures that will be obsolete within a few years. We believe that software capabilities to enable multi-core processors are pivotal to technical breakthroughs in key industries and we are excited to introduce a development platform that will allow the numerous programmers working on Windows to develop applications that can keep up with the rapidly evolving space.”

News Source: EDN

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