AMD today announced the AMD OpenCL Coding Competition, being run by software development TopCoder. This contest is intended to encourage the creation of applications that take advantage of OpenCL as well as the AMD Fusion accelerated processing unit (APU) architecture. The OpenCL Coding Competition is open to software developers with great ideas, and up to $50,000 in prizes will be awarded to winning submissions.

AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology (formerly ATI Stream) is a set of hardware and software technologies that support OpenCL and enable parallel compute-capable GPUs to work in concert with a system’s CPU to accelerate applications beyond traditional x86 graphics and video processing.

Developers and students who choose to participate will be asked to submit an abstract that outlines how they plan to use the latest generation AMD APP software development kit (SDK) with OpenCL support to create an accelerated application for the AMD Fusion APU platforms.

Contestants can choose to create an application in any category including, but not limited to, the following:

- Video Processing
- Image Processing
- Security
- Human Computer Interface
- Data Mining
- Gaming
- Physics processing
- Social Networking / Communication
- Other

In addition to the SDK, contestants will need the latest AMD Catalyst drivers that include the OpenCL runtime compiler. Released in May 2011, the latest AMD Catalyst drivers for Windows and Linux also bring new features, including expanded support for multi-display environments through AMD Eyefinity technology.

For full details and a complete set of Official Rules for the AMD OpenCL Coding Competition, visit http://community.topcoder.com/amdapp/