S3 delivers GPGPU

Chrome 400 chips get free software.

S3 Graphics has joined AMD and NVIDIA by providing support for the acceleration of general purpose tasks on theGPU.

S3 has announced the availability of S3fotopro, a GPGPU application for the enhancement of photos. The application is intended to operate on the S3's latest 'Chrome 400' series GPUs, and respective graphics cards.

The software uses a proprietary algorithm to analyse and automatically adjust macro and micro details within a picture to enhance the quality of the image.

S3 alleges that the algorithm running on the GPU enables the workload to be 'hundreds of magnitudes' faster than current market CPUs.

"S3 Graphics continues to develop and bring to market cutting edge technologies that use the power of the GPU to meet new demands in emerging computation-intensive markets. Application processes that required days can now be completed in seconds using a GPGPU product like ours," said Michael Shiuan, VP of Hardware Engineering at S3 Graphics.

"Markets that can benefit from S3 Graphics GPGPU technology include High-Performance Computing (HPC), HD video transcoding/encoding, scientific, engineering, medical, imaging, physics, and many other areas," said Dr Ken Weng, GM for S3 Graphics.

While S3fotopro can be seen as a demo for technology showcasing, it bodes well that S3 has already grasped the concept of GPGPU programming, and that the company is already producing tools for developers to utilise the company's chipsets.