AMD is approaching the open source community with the GPUOpen site, which is geared toward helping developers provide the best experiences for users on consoles and PCs.
GPUOpen will help developers get the most out of the GPU with open source resources and tools. AMD is giving software developers the code and specs they need to squeeze the most out of its GPU chips by programming directly to its APIs rather than graphics hardware abstraction layers such as DirectX or OpenGL, which don't offer the same level of control over specific processor features.
The website includes a Games & CGI section for game graphics and content creation, and Professional Compute for high-performance GPU computing in professional applications.
AMD wants to provide code and documentation allowing PC developers to gain more control on the GPU. Current and upcoming GCN architectures include many features not exposed today in PC graphics APIs, and GPUOpen aims to empower developers with ways to leverage some of those features. It will also enable easier porting from current-generation consoles to the PC platform.
By offering source of tools, libraries and effects, AMD hopes that
the game and graphics development community will modify, optimize, fix, and eventually develop new graphics techniques and optimizations in PC games.
GPUOpen software is hosted on public source code repositories such as GitHub as a way to enable sharing and collaboration.
Opening the GPUOpen website for business on Tuesday, AMD's senior manager of worldwide gaming engineering Nicolas Thibieroz wrote that the first goal is "to provide code and documentation allowing PC developers to exert more control on the GPU," including "many features not exposed today in PC graphics APIs."