Based on a modern contemporary of the C language called C99, OpenCL is a framework that rapidly and easily assists developers in the creation of scalable applications. Imagine a single body of code that could just as easily run on a CPU, GPU, DSP, or any other execution engine; that is the promise of OpenCL. That promise has inched a little bit closer to reality as AMD yesterday announced that it has submitted the industry’s first x86 OpenCL development platform for certification with OpenCL’s overseers, the Khronos Working Group.

The inclusion of an x86 OpenCL platform in AMD’s Stream SDK 2.0 is significant as it will allow a developer to code against ATI’s graphics API for execution on any x86 CPU. Using the Stream SDK, a developer can freely choose to execute code on the GPU or CPU, without committing exclusively to one or the other. The processing workload could even be divided between the parts, which would give a single body of code more computational horsepower than ever before.

“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 SVP and GM of the AMD Products Group Rick Bergman. “AMD is supporting OpenCL with our ATI Stream SDK as an enabler of wider GPGPU adoption among developers and users.”

For a rough example of OpenCL’s power, we need only look back to a demonstration conducted at SIGGRAPH ‘08: