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AMD has announced that it plans to release a free ATI Catalyst driver update that instantly unlocks new ATI Stream acceleration capabilities already built into millions of Radeon graphics cards, offloading tasks from the CPU so as to accelerate system performance.
It has been a busy time at AMD recently. On 7th October 2008 AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company of Abu Dhabi announced their intention to create a new global enterprise, The Foundry Company, aiming to address the growing global demand for independent, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing.

The Foundry Company intends to proceed with a planned capacity expansion in Dresden, Germany and to begin construction on a new state-of-the-art facility in New York state. Industry analysts see this as a very good move for AMD, as does its technology development partner IBM.

In the new announcement, AMD said that in December plans to release for download a free ATI Catalyst driver update that instantly unlocks new ATI Stream acceleration capabilities already built into millions of ATI Radeon graphics cards.

ATI Stream is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPU), working in concert with the system’s central processor (CPU), to accelerate applications beyond just graphics.

“GPUs make applications run better,” said Patricia Harrell, director of AMD’s stream computing group.   By means of parallel processing, this results in better balanced platforms capable of running demanding computing tasks faster than ever.

ATI Stream-enabled software titles for entertainment, gaming and productivity are being released or are under development by a growing list of independent software vendors (ISVs) including ArcSoft and CyberLink.

To give users immediate benefit from ATI Stream, AMD also plans to release in December a free downloadable version of its ATI Avivo Video Converter utility. This application enables transcoding of HD video up to 17 times faster1 than with the CPU alone, in tests performed using an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card