AMD just announced that their AMD Performance Library is now available to the open-source community. The APL is a set of common routines used in popular software. When implemented, the APL is designed to hasten application development, debugging, and optimization for x86 CPUs.  AMD is dropping the proprietary library in favor of the new open-source offshoot called Framewave.

Framewave is a SourceForge project opened December 2007. It currently has 17 developers signed on already. The project has some new features such as MPEG1 and MPEG2 decode support. In addition to the normal Linux, Solaris, Vista, win2k, and WinXP compatibility, the project is adding Mac OS X support. Licensing is handled by the Apache 2.0 license agreement, which is compatible with GPLv3. FSF considers Apache v2 a free software license.

With the open source community behind their "OSPL", they could make some serious headway. Since the announcement today, the SourceForge site is being hit with significantly more traffic than normal. The increased attention should help get the ball rolling. AMD is encouraging everyone to start participating. It will be interesting to see what develops.

Framewave Features:

• API compatible with the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP)
• Mac OS support
• MPEG1 and MPEG2 Decode support
• Open source - Developers are no longer beholden to a proprietary code base
• Self-supporting community of contributors and enthusiasts
• Apache licensing model - create derivative and even proprietary works or gain personal fame by contributing to the Framewave project
• ISVs can implement just those functions and routines needed to ensure optimal performance benefits
• Increased application performance on x86 class processors
• Compressed development time and time-to-market

From Framewave:

"Framewave revolutionizes the way silicon manufacturers deliver performance and optimization tools into the hands of software developers. Sponsored by AMD, the Framewave project offers developers unparalleled, code-level access to a vast array of signal and image functions and routines designed with "code faster, faster code" in mind."

"Although sponsored by AMD, the Framewave project is very much an open-source venture. While AMD will continue to participate in and contribute to the project, third-party developers are welcome and encouraged to implement all or part of the code base and/or to create derivative works."

Press Release:

AMD Accelerates Application Development with Inaugural Release of Open Source Performance Library

- Partners, customers and open source software developer community encouraged to download new "Framewave" code and start contributing to the project immediately -

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- February 20, 2008 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that it has open sourced it's AMD Performance Library (APL). Now referred to as "Framewave version 1.0," the goal of this new open source project is to further enable the performance-optimized APL and expand its functionality beyond the existing core media capabilities, ensuring developers have an accelerated conduit to high performance application development. Contributions by partners, customers and the broader open-source software development community will accelerate library optimizations and feature enhancements in-line with their respective needs while AMD software engineers will continue to be dedicated contributors to the Framewave project.

With functionality today that spans from simple arithmetic routines to rich domains such as image and signal processing, Framewave provides a quick path to high performance development. It also offers aggressive internal threading features which manage sophisticated threading models to exploit multi-core and multiprocessor systems. With thousands of routines dedicated to image and signal processing, Framewave helps enable faster development of projects such as media players, codecs, image editors, audio applications and media streaming.

"As a long time supporter of open innovation and collaboration, AMD's release of its APL code to the Framewave open source project represents another milestone contribution to the open source community. We believe that Framewave will quickly become a significant resource for developers, helping them to build faster, highly optimized and multi-threaded applications more efficiently," said Earl Stahl, vice president of Software Development, AMD. "Developer collaboration is one of the cornerstones of AMD's software vision, so we are excited to see what innovations the community will develop leveraging Framewave."

Evolution from APL to Framewave

The result of nearly three years of effort by over a dozen developers, Framewave is currently comprised of over 3200 high performance software routines that enable developers to more easily create highly optimized multi-threaded applications for x86-class processor platforms. Improved and expanded beyond APL, Framewave enables developers to write applications that better utilize the computing prowess of today's advanced hardware solutions. Framewave is also application programming interface (API) compatible with the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives, simplifying the software development experience through the use of a common interface.

Addressing Industry Need

Developing applications that can fully exploit multi-core processor technology is challenging for software developers because of the demands of parallel programming. Leveraging the optimized software routines, developers are enabled to reduce a project's software development complexity and ultimately help reduce its time-to-market. "We applaud AMD's decision to open source the Framewave library as we think it will only help accelerate the development of new multimedia applications that fully take advantage of multi-core x86 processors," said Ed Leonard, CTO at Dreamworks Animation. "Dreamworks Animation continues to produce some of the world's most creative and successful CGI films in part, because of the state-of-the-art technology we leverage every day. As an innovator and adopter of new technology, we commend AMD's efforts with Framewave."

Framewave has already experienced traction since it was uploaded for initial testing on SourceForge.net in December 2007. The APL library was previously available for download on AMD's Developer Central, a resource portal for the developer community that delivers information, tools, and expert guidance about optimizing software development for AMD-based hardware.

AMD invites the developer community to download Framewave and begin contributing today at http://framewave.sourceforge.net/. For more information about AMD's Developer Central, please visit http://developer.amd.com. Framewave is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0 which is compatible with version 3.0 of the GPL.