Dr. Dobb's | Rogue Wave, AMD Team Up; More Processing Power for Financial Applications

Rogue Wave, AMD Team Up; More Processing Power for Financial Applications

Goal is to advance parallel computing efforts in financial services

June 11, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/rogue-wave-amd-team-up-more-processing-p/208403452

Rogue Wave Software and AMD have announced that they're working together to improve the processing power of specialized applications in the financial services industry.

According to the companies, developers in the financial services industry are looking to increase computing performance to support higher business volumes, run faster, support more users, and process more transactions. In addition to the promise of multi-core CPU hardware, recent advances in graphical processing unit (GPU) chipsets lets developers harness compute power of specialized modern graphics processors to deliver significant performance increases in high performance compute environments such as financial algorithmic applications. With C++ applications continuing to serve a key role in financial trading, the companies' efforts will focus on tapping the potential of multi-core processors as well as GPUs to increase the performance potential of legacy applications.

However, writing code in this field can be difficult and time-consuming, and using proprietary APIs means code written for one brand of GPU cannot be easily ported to another GPU or to multi-core CPUs. Since most existing code is not designed to take advantage of the high performance potential of GPUs, it can present significant challenges for developers trying to accelerate their applications with GPUs.

"The future of parallel computing depends on two key elements. First, can your new and existing applications tap performance improvements without rewriting the code? Second, can they do it across multi-core CPUs, GPUs and other future specialized hardware? If enterprises cannot do both, parallel computing efforts won't deliver on their promise," said Tom Gaunt, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Rogue Wave. "This collaboration is an important step in not just researching, but delivering solutions that address these challenges and further the cause of parallel computing."

"AMD recognizes that offering users ways to develop applications that migrate easily between multi-core CPUs, GPUs and future architectures is essential in enabling the productivity of our customers and the longevity of their applications," said Patricia Harrell, Director of AMD Stream Computing. "We are pleased that our relationship with Rogue Wave will enable us to work towards providing an important cross-platform programming solution, while at the same time, growing our valuable technology partner ecosystem."