AMD launches Indian Universities’ first ever Faculty Development Program for OpenCL

BANGALORE, INDIA: AMD India recently launched the first Faculty Development Program for OpenCL available in India. The three-day workshop was organized in partnership with Coimbatore Institute of Technology (CIT), Coimbatore, India and was the first of its kind to be organized in the country.

This workshop was attended by faculty members from various Engineering and Technology universities and colleges including CIT, SSN, Bharathiar University, Bharathidasan University-Technology Park, Amrita University, Avinashilingam University, SRM University, Anna University (CEG) - Chennai, PSG College of Technology, The American College, Karpagam University, Lady Dock College, Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College of Engineering and RV College of Engineering.

The program is targeted towards the OpenCL (Open Computing Language) standard, which is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and other processors. Faculty members were trained in the subject using AMD’s University Kit, a set of materials that can be leveraged by any Indian university to assist them in teaching a semester course in OpenCL programming.

Included in the University Kit is a 13 lecture series, equipped with instructor and speaker notes, as well as code examples where necessary and can be downloaded from this link - OpenCL University Kit. The training methodology was interactive, using tools like case studies, live examples and free flowing discussions.

This effort underscores AMD’s commitment to the educational community, which currently includes a number of research initiatives, created to equip the next generation of software developers and programmers with the knowledge needed to lead the era of heterogeneous computing. OpenCL, the only non-proprietary, royalty-free industry standard available today for true heterogeneous computing, helps developers to harness the full compute power of both the CPU and GPU to create innovative applications for vivid computing experiences.

“With the launch of the AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit, or APU, where AMD combined the GPU and CPU capabilities into a single die design, enabling outstanding graphics performance, improved energy efficiencies and exceptional compute capabilities, we have laid the foundation for heterogeneous computing,” said Jay Hiremath, director, AMD Platform and Software Engineering,

“AMD is committed to India through its investment in this market. We have a significant number of programmers and developers working at our R&D facilities in Hyderabad and Bangalore. With the advent of parallel computing, there is a need for creating a rich ecosystem of developers and programmers in the country, prepared for a changing global marketplace. This Faculty Development Program will facilitate exactly that, where large scale adoption of OpenCL will help leverage all the compute power at our disposal, be it in the CPU, GPU or APU.”

Dr. S.R.K.Prasad, correspondent, CIT added: “CIT is on the road to working in many frontier technologies in various fields of engineering. OpenCL will be the future platform to depict and understand complex real life engineering applications, especially in the field of computer simulation which would help in understanding and solving many problems even in medicine, science and management. I think engineering and technology universities, across the country should incorporate OpenCL into their curriculum right from the undergraduate level up to the doctoral level. We, at CIT would like to take the lead on this, as it will give our students an edge to compete globally.”

With many universities in India now working actively towards adoption of OpenCL, the transition to the parallel computing era is ready for its next phase of development.