AMD has unveiled the first development tools for its OpenCL platform as part of its Stream SDK 2.0 beta package. The company has also submitted the platform for approval by the Khronos Group.

The new tools will allow developers to implement OpenCL on x86 processors and graphics cards.

OpenCL is being pursued as a possible platform for general processing over GPU chips (GPGPU). The system uses the parallel processing abilities of graphics chips to shoulder some of the processing load from the CPU.

AMD, which purchased graphics card vendor ATI in 2006, has been a noted proponent of the system, both in its efforts with OpenCL and its own Stream platform.

"By supporting multi-core CPUs and GPUs with our OpenCL environment, AMD gives developers easy access to both processing resources, so they can efficiently write cross-platform applications for heterogeneous architectures with a single programming interface," said Rick Bergman, AMD senior vice president and products group general manager.

"AMD is supporting OpenCL with our ATI Stream SDK as an enabler of wider GPGPU adoption among developers and users."