Intel released Intel Media SDK 2012 R2, now supporting Blu-ray MVC, stereoscopic (two-view) video. The new SDK also includes an Open CL sample, allowing developers to make the most of resources available on Intel platforms by supporting the newly released Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications 2012 on both Intel processors and Intel HD Graphics.

Providing developers with a simple API to create media applications using Intel Quick Sync Video, the SDK can enable hardware acceleration to significantly speed up media conversion on 3rd generation Intel Core processors. Developers can download a free copy of Intel Media SDK 2012 R2 here.

Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) is supporting the 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor across eight industry-standard form factors -- COM Express, 3U VPX, 6U VPX, 3U CompactPCI, 6U CompactPCI, VME, air-cooled PrPMC/XMC, and conduction-cooled PrPMC/XMC. The XPedite7470 3U VPX Single Board Computer (SBC) and XCalibur4401 6U CompactPCI SBC are the first products available from X-ES to support the 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor.

3rd generation Intel Core i7 processors provide higher performance and lower power compared to 2nd generation Intel Core i7 processors. 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processors also include Intel HD Graphics with DirectX 11, supporting OpenGL 3.1 and OpenCL 1.1.

AMD today announced a collaboration with Adobe Systems Incorporated to optimize a new set of GPU-accelerated features for Adobe products including the newly announced Adobe Photoshop CS6. Implementing GPU acceleration and incorporating OpenCL optimization improves the end-user experience by dramatically speeding up critical imaging features and generating real-time results when editing with key tools in Adobe Creative Suite 6.

"AMD brings its expertise in GPU and APU compute in the latest release of Adobe Creative Suite," said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. "This technology integration allows us to provide creative professionals with exciting new creative options and lightning-fast performance."

As the leading brand in enthusiastic graphics market, Gainward, again, introduces its Phantom series for GeForce GTX 680 - Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom. The Gainward GTX 680 Phantom, continue the elegant design of the first generation, delivers much better performance than the previous design. The most important is the Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom comes with factory over-clocked setting - 1150MHz boost clock (1084MHz base clock) and 3150MHz (DDR6300) memory clock.

It is really a "silent monster", the fastest GTX 680 in the market and extreme cool under gaming environment. Under 3D benchmark, it is 12.6% higher than reference board (3DMark 2011 Xscore). While in gameplay, it is around 10% higher. To compare with the competing GPU in red camp, it performs 27.7% higher in 3DMark 2011 Xscore and exceeds amazingly 32% in hot titles gaming performance.

TechPowerUp released the latest version of GPU-Z, the PC enthusiast community's favorite graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility, which gives you up to date information about your installed graphics hardware, and helps you monitor clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and even exotic readings such as video memory usage and ASIC quality (on supported graphics cards). Version 0.6.0 introduces a host of new features, including refined support for upcoming NVIDIA Kepler architecture GPUs, such as GeForce GTX 680, and GeForce GT 6x0M; and the recently-launched AMD Radeon HD 7800 series.

GPU-Z also embraces an installer, which places shortcuts, and an uninstall entry. GPU-Z can very much also be used as a portable, standalone utility, without needing an installation (just choose not to install, and use it standalone instead). AMD altered a high-level API with its Catalyst 12.2 drivers, which GPU-Z conventionally uses to talk to the hardware. Those updating from older Catalyst versions to 12.2 won't see its effects on older GPU-Z versions, but those with Catalyst 12.2 "clean-installed", might. GPU-Z 0.6.0 addresses this issue, and should now work normally with systems running Catalyst 12.2 clean-installed. A large number of other changes were made with version 0.6.0.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.0, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.0 ASUS ROG-Themed

Some time in 2013, Intel will launch its new processor architecture, codenamed "Haswell", which will go on to succeed "Ivy Bridge". More than an year away from its market entry, Haswell has already been exhaustively documented, but not many got into the details about its embedded graphics processor. That is, until now. A new internal slide sourced by DonanimHaber details the integrated GPU (iGPU), it appears like Intel has solid plans for home users.

To begin with, Haswell's iGPU will be DirectX 11.1 compliant, which means it will take advantage of API optimizations that improve performance, for typical desktop usage scenarios. Apart from support for a new DirectCompute architecture, it will also support OpenCL 1.2, which speeds up certain GPGPU-optimized applications. More importantly, the iGPU will be designed around a new stereoscopic 3D standard called Auto-Stereoscopic 3D (AS3D), which will take the likes of Blu-ray 3D acceleration, stereo 3D photos, etc., to the masses. Currently, it takes at least an entry-level GeForce or Radeon GPU to for acceptable performance with stereo 3D.

Rightware, the leader in 3D user interface (UI) technologies and the provider of world's most widely adopted benchmarking software, today announced public availability of Basemark CL, effective immediately. This OpenCL (Open Computing Language) benchmark product provides diverse performance measurement capabilities for device manufacturers, semiconductor companies and their ecosystem to test and optimize OpenCL implementations. The version launched today features tests targeted for desktop computers. An embedded profile version of the benchmark will be published at a later stage.

OpenCL by Khronos Group is the first open, royalty-free standard for parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and embedded devices. Proper use of OpenCL can greatly improve speed and responsiveness of applications in numerous categories from gaming and entertainment to scientific and medical software. Within these applications, OpenCL makes it possible to leverage the processing power of Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and other processing units for general purpose computation. By utilizing an efficient low-level programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular video subsystem information and diagnostic utility that provides you with accurate information about the graphics hardware installed, and lets you monitor their clock speeds, fan speeds, voltages, VRAM consumption, etc., in real-time. Version 0.5.8 introduces two new features. The first one is a render test that applies sufficient load (not stress) on the GPU to pull it out of PCI-Express link-state power-management, to ensure the Bus information is accurate. If you find the PCI-Express bus link speed or PCIe version displayed incorrectly, simply click on the "?" button next to the field to launch the load test.

The next new feature is ASIC quality, designed for NVIDIA Fermi (GF10x and GF11x GPUs) and AMD Southern Islands (HD 7800 series and above), aimed at advanced users, hardware manufacturers, and the likes. We've found the ways in which AMD and NVIDIA segregate their freshly-made GPU ASICs based on the electrical leakages the chips produce (to increase yield by allotting them in different SKUs and performance bins), and we've found ways in which ASIC quality can be quantified and displayed. Find this feature in the context menu of GPU-Z. We're working on implementing this feature on older AMD Radeon GPUs.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8 ASUS ROG Themed

The full change-log follows.

ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd), today unveiled its ground-breaking 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor optimized for Android. The ZMS-40 combines 96 of ZiiLABS' StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs to deliver stunning multi-tasking application and media processing performance.

By doubling the number of StemCell Media processors compared to the previous ZMS-20, the ZMS-40 delivers twice the peak media performance, while running the larger array at lower clock speeds to achieve the same performance leads to greater energy efficiency and a reduction in power consumption of up to 50 percent. With 2X the performance and 2X the power efficiency, the ZMS-40 delivers ground-breaking media capabilities to handheld devices such as tablets, including ultra-high-resolution H.264 HP decoding of up to 3840x1080 for true 1080p 3D stereo, a rich and interactive desktop browsing experience, 2560x1600 (WQXGA) display resolution support, higher-quality video encoding and immersive OpenGL ES graphics and future support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that AMD Fusion '12 will be held June 11-14, 2012 in Bellevue, Washington. The company's annual developer summit will return to the Meydenbauer Center and the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

This event will build on the success of AMD Fusion '11, where more than 700 leaders from industry, academia, and government converged on the forefront of heterogeneous computing. The summit offers an engaging opportunity to learn more about next-generation software development and AMD Fusion System Architecture (FSA), Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) technology, central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) processor technologies, and programming methods using industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenCL, OpenGL, Microsoft DirectCompute and C++ AMP.

Previous preliminary reports have suggested that the forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs will have single threaded performance on par with the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and will mainly deliver improvements to power consumption and integrated graphics - nothing for PC enthusiasts to get excited about. However, in leaked documents sent to partners, Intel have now revealed official performance figures for IB and they look rather good. They've produced a raft of benchmarks, which reveal improvements such as 56% in ArcSoft Media Expresso, 25% in Excel 2010 and a 199% gain in the 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark. Unfortunately, they haven't released any benchmarks based on high performance 3D games, but it's probably safe to say that they will be similarly improved. Now, on to the benchmarks, which compare their new 3.4 GHz i7-3770 (4 cores + HT) with the current 3.4 GHz i7-2600, also with 4 cores + HT:

The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL 1.2 specification, the latest update to the open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors. Released eighteen months after OpenCL 1.1, this new version provides enhanced performance and functionality for parallel programming in a backwards compatible specification that is the result of cooperation by over thirty industry-leading companies. Khronos has updated and expanded its comprehensive OpenCL conformance test suite to ensure that implementations of the new specification provide a complete and reliable platform for cross-platform application development. The OpenCL 1.2 specifications, online reference pages and reference cards are available here.

"The OpenCL working group is listening carefully to feedback from the developer and middleware community to provide significant and timely functionality for heterogeneous computing in this cross vendor open standard," said Neil Trevett, chair of the OpenCL working group, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA. "The OpenCL working group is also broadening its membership and has growing representation from the mobile and embedded industries and is enabling innovative devices such as FPGAs to be driven through OpenCL."

AMD today launched the AMD FirePro V4900, which delivers unequaled performance for Digital Content Creation (DCC) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) professionals at an entry-level price point. By leveraging AMD's most advanced graphics technology, including AMD Eyefinity technology, the AMD FirePro V4900 significantly improves application performance and drives efficiency in the workplace. In fact, the AMD FirePro V4900 more than doubled the performance of competitive offerings in many CAD and DCC application tests.

"The AMD FirePro V4900 stands in a league of its own and redefines entry-level professional graphics card capabilities," says Sandeep Gupte, general manager of Professional Graphics, AMD. "The AMD FirePro V4900 leverages AMD's most advanced graphics technology, which not only enhances user experience and boosts performance of professional applications, but also features AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology that supports up to six displays, increasing user productivity."

AMD today announced revenue for the third quarter of 2011 of $1.69 billion, net income of $97 million, or $0.13 per share, and operating income of $138 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $110 million, or $0.15 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $146 million.

"Strong adoption of AMD APUs drove a 35 percent sequential revenue increase in our mobile business," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "Despite supply constraints, we saw double digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India as well as overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points. Through disciplined execution and continued innovation we will look to accelerate our growth and refine our focus on lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud."

AMD announced today that it has created drivers to enable support for the upcoming Windows 8 operating system on AMD-based tablets, netbooks, PCs and servers. Continuing a long history of collaboration, AMD is working closely with Microsoft to empower a new generation of innovative PCs and small form factor computing devices.

Currently available Windows 7-based PCs powered by AMD VISION technology deliver multi-core processing for amazing performance, discrete-level graphics for brilliant HD experiences, and AMD AllDay Power for entertainment on the go. Furthermore, AMD VISION Engine Software is uniquely tailored to unlock visual computing with AMD Radeon Cores and video accelerators that enable vivid HD, AMD Steady Video software and accelerated applications like blazing fast Internet browsing.

Eurocom Corporation, a leading mobile technology developer is launching new GPU's for the Modular Embedded and CUDA Developer Markets based on the industry standard MXM 3.0b specification. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M and NVIDIA Quadro 5010M are new cards offered by Eurocom to those looking for high performance graphics processors. The solutions are aimed at embedded systems, SFF (Small Form Factor) PC and CUDA developers that require high performance GPUs.

The industry standard modular MXM 3.0b specification for graphics subsystems allows for improved cooling capability, reduced power and height, enabling engineers to create smaller, more efficient embedded systems, reduce development time and costs and to introduce new designs faster to market. Modular graphics solutions offer additional functionality as well as increased levels of performance compared to integrated graphics for developers of all kinds.

ASUS today announced the launch of their new AMD A75 chipset-based F1A75 Series motherboards. Designed specially to optimize performance for the AMD Llano APUs, the F1A75 Series motherboards have exceptional overclocking capability for the versatile APU with a variety of integrated graphics built directly on the same die. This new series is also equipped with the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features, including the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM for precise power control, a graphical and mouse-controlled UEFI BIOS and the easy-to-use auto tuning for better performance.

Club 3D B.V. introduces the world first HD 6870 Dual GPU video card. The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6870 X2 2GB GDDR5 is the product that a gamer should look for nowadays. Offering on average 19% better performance in comparison to the best single GPU video card and now even more affordable, there is no other product in the market with a better price-performance ratio.

The Club 3D Radeon HD 6870 X2 features the award winning CoolStream thermal solution and is bundled with the latest DirectX 11 Dirt 3. This card will be in the shops worldwide in the first week of July. Recommended enduser price excluding VAT is USD 469.

AMD today announced the next generation in mainstream consumer computing with the availability of the new high-performance AMD Fusion A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). Enabling truly immersive computing experiences in consumer notebooks and desktops, the AMD A-Series APUs enable brilliant HD graphics, supercomputer-like performance and over 10.5 hours of battery life.

In an increasingly digital and visually oriented world, consumers are placing ever-higher priorities on multitasking, vivid graphics, lifelike games, lag-free videos, and ultimate multimedia performance. To meet these needs, the AMD A-Series APUs combine up to four x86 CPU cores with powerful DirectX 11-capable discrete-level graphics and up to 400 Radeon cores along with dedicated HD video processing on a single chip. AMD A-Series APUs also allow for advanced capabilities such as gestural interfaces, multi-monitor support, 3D entertainment and real-time image stabilization.

Today at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2011, AMD introduced the AMD Radeon E6760 embedded discrete graphics processor. Available now, the AMD Radeon E6760 GPU is the first of its kind to offer embedded system designers the combination of OpenCL support along with support for six independent displays.

"The AMD Radeon E6760 GPU provides customers with superior business economics through long lifecycle management and product stability," said Richard Jaenicke, director of Embedded Client Business for AMD. "Embedded system designers faced with power and density constraints now have a solution that delivers the advanced 3D graphics and multimedia features they require in this performance-driven market."

Club 3D B.V. announces the introduction of the Radeon HD 6750 CoolStream Edition video card based on the Juniper LE chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11. Club 3D has built a good reputation on silent cooled video cards with the award winning CoolStream series. This card is no exception, with speeds of 700 Mhz core and 4600 Mhz for the memory with a totally silent heatpipe cooler, it makes one of the fastest silent graphics card available today.

With the latest UVD hardware on board, it considerably reduces the CPU load delivering and decoding stunning Blu-Ray and H.264 content. HDMI has been upgrated to 1.4a for 3D content making it the perfect choice for a HTPC.

Club 3D B.V. announces the introduction of the Radeon HD 6770 video card based on the Juniper XT chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11. The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6770 1 GB GDDR5 video card replaces the very successful HD 5770, the preferred choice by gamers, adding twice the horsepower (28.8 Gpixel/s vs 13.6 Gpixel/s) and incorporating new technologies already found in the 6K series.

The Radeon HD 6770 delivers stunning HD gaming and computing experience. Supporting HD3D which enables 3D gaming and experience Blu-ray 3D, AMD APP to accelerate everyday applications and multi-monitor displays, it makes a this card the ideal upgrade.

MD today announced a new collaboration with Multicoreware, a leader in software solutions and tool development for multi-core and heterogeneous computing environments, to deliver an advanced set of tools for OpenCL optimization. The tools development effort accelerates software developers' ability to create and optimize software that fully exploits the unique processing capability of AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs).

"Accelerated parallel processing represents unprecedented levels of computing capability in mobile form factors, and the tools suite that Multicoreware is developing enables application developers to achieve this performance benefit with less effort," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, AMD Fusion Experience Program. "Our work with Multicoreware marks another milestone toward broad industry adoption of OpenCL as we equip developers with necessary tools to build innovative, next-generation applications ranging from consumer PCs to high-performance computing."

AMD today announced a distinguished line-up of keynote speakers as well as technical session topics for the inaugural AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS), which will be held June 13-16, 2011 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington.

Industry keynote presentations will be delivered by esteemed industry experts from AMD, ARM and Microsoft. In his keynote "Heterogeneous Parallelism at Microsoft" Herb Sutter, Microsoft principal architect of Native Languages, will showcase upcoming innovations to bring access to increasingly heterogeneous compute resources directly into the world's most popular native languages.

PNY Technologies, Inc. ("PNY") is set to introduce the newest addition to their line-up of NVIDIA GTX 500 series GPUs: the XLR8 GTX 550 Ti 1024MB graphics card. PNY's XLR8 (ac-cel-er-ate) GeForce GTX 550 Ti Enthusiast Edition graphics card allows you to enter the incredibly detailed world of DirectX 11 for all the latest games. Driving up to 6x the gaming performance of previous generation graphics cards, GeForce GTX 550 Ti transforms your PC into a next-gen gaming rig.

PC Gamers trust GeForce GTX to supply them with the graphic ammunition they need to rule their competition. From NVIDIA 3D Vision to Surround multi-monitor gaming, PhysX and the unbeatable power of NVIDIA SLI -- with GeForce GTX you know you are well armed. The new GTX 550 Ti graphics card offers tremendous gaming power at a sub-$150 price point, as well as a Lifetime Warranty.