Rightware, the leader in 3D user interface (UI) technologies and the provider of world’s most widely adopted benchmarking software, today announced public availability of Basemark CL, effective immediately. This OpenCL (Open Computing Language) benchmark product provides diverse performance measurement capabilities for device manufacturers, semiconductor companies and their ecosystem to test and optimize OpenCL implementations. The version launched today features tests targeted for desktop computers. An embedded profile version of the benchmark will be published at a later stage.

OpenCL by Khronos Group is the first open, royalty-free standard for parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and embedded devices. Proper use of OpenCL can greatly improve speed and responsiveness of applications in numerous categories from gaming and entertainment to scientific and medical software. Within these applications, OpenCL makes it possible to leverage the processing power of Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and other processing units for general purpose computation. By utilizing an efficient low-level programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.

Basemark CL features workloads that stress the OpenCL implementation in a realistic way, therefore yielding performance measurement data that is objective and relevant. With the help of OpenCL, it is possible to improve games, applications and user interfaces for instance by including physics-based animations and game-like elements.

"The ability to perform compute-intensive tasks in parallel, using virtually any processor present in the device opens the door for significant performance and functionality improvements. Basemark CL will provide an outstanding test platform for applications, games and user interfaces utilizing OpenCL as it will greatly improve the flow of getting things done, much faster and better," said Tero Sarkkinen, CEO of Rightware. "We’re pleased to equip our customers with this product, as we see the game-changing opportunity for OpenCL to become a significant standard within multi-core implementations."