BIG DATA
AMD highlights integration between Quad-Core AMD Opteron and Microsoft products
At Microsoft TechEd Developers conference, AMD demonstrates commitment to software developers through Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors and Visual Studio 2008 integration: AMD today announced it is demonstrating platforms based on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, including features designed to help Microsoft Windows application developers optimize their software applications through tools in upcoming software products from Microsoft Corp. The technology demonstrations at the conference in Barcelona, Spain show new integration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. Ongoing collaboration throughout product development has ensured that Visual Studio 2008 tools will produce optimized code when compiling for Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. This hardware/software collaboration is designed to ensure that software developers will enjoy improved instruction selection, optimized register allocation and enhanced 128-bit floating-point performance. “The Microsoft Visual Studio suite represents key building blocks in the Windows software development tools stack and is widely used by the Windows development community. This is why Visual Studio support for AMD processors is so important to us- it provides a highly productive environment for our customers to connect their hardware and software,” said Earl Stahl, vice president of Software Development at AMD. “The hardware/software collaboration is vital across the entire Microsoft Application Platform, so we are also working to ensure that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are optimized for Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors.” Engineers from AMD and Microsoft worked side by side to ensure Visual C++ would have code generation improvements for Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. Other integration improvements include SSE4a and Advanced Bit Manipulation (ABM) intrinsic functions included in Visual Studio 2008 and optimum code generation for Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. “Microsoft and AMD share a common goal of providing software developers with the tools they need to be successful. We’ve worked together to establish the software and hardware link between Visual Studio 2008 and Quad-Core AMD Opteron,” said S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation. “This hardware/software combination provides tools that mainstream software developers need to do their jobs more efficiently to meet the demands of today’s global computing community.” Onsite at the TechEd Developers Conference, AMD will host two sessions designed to provide developers with tips to improve x86 and x64 performance with native code when using Visual Studio 2008 as well as best practices to fully utilize multi-core processing in managed code. TechEd attendees can visit AMD booth #A-1. For coding tips, sample code and downloads of software development tools and libraries, please visit its Web site