GPUOpen is our web site for developers, built upon the foundation of AMD’s commitment to openness and the belief that the freedom of industry standards drives innovation forward faster and further than proprietary technologies. The site is where we share all our game development and content creation software development tools and technologies, and earlier this year, we relaunched GPUOpen with a new modern look and a broad range of new and updated tools and effects.
Now, to accompany the recent launch of the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphic cards, we have dropped even more new content to help developers take advantage of everything our breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 architecture has to offer. Today’s release includes updates to our developer tools, new AMD FidelityFX effects, as well as new tutorials and videos.
For content creation software developers, we’ve released our new Radeon ProRender 2.0 SDK, the next generation of our open standards-based cross-platform rendering engine that now supports hardware ray tracing on AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphic cards, and along with the SDK update, new plug-ins for Autodesk Maya, Blender, and SideFX Houdini are available -- all with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
Create Wonder with New AMD FidelityFX Effects
Our first AMD FidelityFX effect was release in 2019 with a single effect, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), and since then our open-source image quality toolkit has grown significantly and is now used in 35 games and counting.
Earlier this year we added four new effects and now for the launch of the Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards three new effects are available:
- AMD FidelityFX Variable Shading: Helps developers easily integrate Variable Rate Shading (VRS) into their game and works by analyzing the luminance and motion of frames to help optimize rendering for optimal performance.
- AMD FidelityFX Denoiser: a spatio-temporal denoiser that helps improve the visual quality of real-time raytracing and other in-game effects.
- AMD FidelityFX Parallel Sort: an open-source header implementation that helps developers easily integrate a highly optimized compute-based radix sort into their game.
All these new effects are fully open source with an MIT license and are available now for developers to integrate into their games.
Learn More About AMD FidelityFX for Gamers
Learn More About AMD FidelityFX on GPUOpen
Introducing the AMD Radeon Developer Tool Suite
Along with the exciting new FidelityFX effects, one of the biggest updates we have released is our new AMD Radeon Developer Tool Suite that combines several of our powerful tools for developers into one simple and convenient package. Additionally, we have updated the tools within the suite to support our latest graphics cards and all the features that AMD RDNA 2 architecture brings to the table.
The suite comprises of:
- AMD Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP): a low-level optimization tool that provides detailed information on Radeon GPUs, now updated to v1.9 with support for Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards and DirectX Raytracing analysis.
- AMD Radeon Memory Visualizer (RMV): a tool that enables developers to gain a deep understanding of how their application uses memory for graphics resources. The latest v1.1 version supports the Radeon RX 6000 series and improves how aliased resources are displayed.
- AMD Radeon GPU Analyzer (RGA): an offline compiler and performance analysis tool for DirectX, Vulkan, SPIR-V, OpenGL, and OpenCL. The new v2.4 version now supports Radeon RX 6000 series.
- AMD Radeon Developer Panel (RDP): Supports RGP and RMV by providing the communication channel that delivers requests to, and receives data from, the AMD Radeon Software driver.
Learn More About the AMD Radeon Developer Tool Suite
Content Creation Developer Updates: AMD Radeon ProRender 2.0
AMD Radeon ProRender is our powerful rendering engine that lets creative professionals produce stunningly photorealistic images in content creation applications using AMD Radeon graphics cards. For developers, our Radeon ProRender SDK (part of the Radeon ProRender Developer Suite) has been updated to the next generation version 2.0.
Some of the new features of the 2.0 SDK include an improved rendering algorithm, support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing when used with AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards, and support for MaterialX. The Radeon ProRender SDK is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license to make it easy for developers to integrate into their applications.
Additionally, as implementation examples for developers and for end users looking to use the latest version, we have updated our open-source Radeon ProRender plug-ins for Autodesk Maya, Blender, and SideFX Houdini. These updated plug-ins now all use Radeon ProRender 2.0 as the default renderer with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing when used with AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards.
Learn More About AMD Radeon ProRender
Learn More About the AMD Radeon ProRender Developer Suite
Download the Updated Plug-in for Autodesk Maya
Download the Updated Plug-in for Blender
Download the Updated Plug-in for SideFX Houdini
Wait, There’s More!
We haven’t just posted a bunch of new and updated effects, tools, and SDKs for developers -- we’ve also updated our performance guide to help you get the best out of AMD RDNA 2, added some new Unreal Engine patches and features, and posted some new tutorials and videos. The videos listed below do a great job of clearly explaining all the new features and are a perfect introduction to everything we released today:
- DirectX 12 Ultimate: Introducing FidelityFX Variable Shading
- DirectX 12 Ultimate: DirectX Raytracing
- DirectX 12 Ultimate: Sampler Feedback and Mesh Shaders
- Radeon Developer Tool Suite
- Radeon Memory Visualizer 1.1
- Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing in Radeon ProRender 2.0
Alexander Blake-Davies is a Software Product Marketing Specialist for Radeon Software for Developers at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies, or opinions. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
ATTRIBUTIONS
© 2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, RDNA, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, and Maya are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Blender is a registered trademark of the Blender Foundation in the EU and USA. DirectX and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the US and other jurisdictions. Houdini, the Houdini logo, and SideFX are registered trademarks or trademarks of Side Effects Software Inc. registered in the USA and other countries. OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc. used by permission by Khronos Group Inc. OpenGL and the oval logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the United States and/or other countries worldwide Unreal and its logo are Epic’s trademarks or registered trademarks in the US and elsewhere. Vulkan and the Vulkan logo are registered trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.