What is the difference between the AMD APP SDK and AMD ATI Stream Technology?

Question

I am working on a project that will use AMD GPU to process data. I noticed that AMD has two different SDKs available on their website for GPU use: ATI Stream Technology and OpenCL ™ and AMD APP SDKs . Both seem to support OpenCL, but I did not find anything on the site, clearly indicating why one of them should use one over the other. What is the difference between the two?

Answer 1

The AMD APP SDK is here: http://developer.amd.com/sdks/AMDAPPSDK/Pages/default.aspx

The website should also answer your question about the difference between Stream and APP:

AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK (formerly ATI Stream)

It used to be called the AMD Stream SDK, probably it renamed it after adding hardware support without Firestream (namely OpenCL)

Answer 2

stream is a higher-level amd project (hardware and software) that includes opencl as its current software implementation. the stream originally used the brook language, but switched to opencl in 2011 . opencl has since become more popular (because it is a cross-platform standard that is especially well supported by Apple), and these days there seems to be no mention of a thread. you can see this in the link, for example http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/stream-technology/opencl/pages/opencl.aspx , where opencl is the "child" stream (or the menu to the left of this pages where a higher-level group is a stream, other children are connected to equipment).

In short, you want opencl. and despite the confusing mess that is the amd site, their opencl implementation is pretty solid.

Mmm. When re-reading your question, you seem to be saying that there are two separate sdks. Are you really moving to two different packages? I understand that opencl is an sdk stream. if you find two different sdks (which are current), can you reference them?