RapidMind
Encyclopedia
RapidMind Inc. was a privately held company founded and headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario
, Canada
, acquired by Intel in 2009. It provided a software product that aims to make it simpler for software developers to target multi-core processors and accelerators such as GPUs
.
at the University of Waterloo
. It received a seed round of financing (amount undisclosed) at the beginning of 2006, and raised its Series A round of $10 million Canadian in April 2007.
RapidMind was acquired by Intel on 19 Aug 2009. Intel continued to sell the RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform through 2010. The RapidMind team and technology was integrated into the Intel Ct
research project. The results of the combination were introduced in September 2010 as Intel Array Building Blocks (ArBB).
libraries, which provide types and operations used to express parallel computations. The programming model is primarily data parallel
, although it is sufficiently generic to express task-parallel
operations. The platform currently targets multi-core x86 processors, GPUs
(via OpenCL
), and the Cell processor
.
Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada. It is the smallest of the three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, and is adjacent to the city of Kitchener....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, acquired by Intel in 2009. It provided a software product that aims to make it simpler for software developers to target multi-core processors and accelerators such as GPUs
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
.
History
RapidMind was started in 2004 based on the academic research related to the Sh projectLib Sh
Sh is a metaprogramming language for programmable GPUs. Programmable GPUs are graphics processing units that execute some operations with higher efficiency than CPUs...
at the University of Waterloo
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
. It received a seed round of financing (amount undisclosed) at the beginning of 2006, and raised its Series A round of $10 million Canadian in April 2007.
RapidMind was acquired by Intel on 19 Aug 2009. Intel continued to sell the RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform through 2010. The RapidMind team and technology was integrated into the Intel Ct
Intel Ct
Intel Ct is a programming model developed by Intel to ease the exploitation of its future multicore chips, as demonstrated by the Tera-Scale research program.It is based on the exploitation of SIMD to produce automatically parallelized programs....
research project. The results of the combination were introduced in September 2010 as Intel Array Building Blocks (ArBB).
RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform
The RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform was RapidMind's primary product, and continues to be sold by Intel. It is exposed as a set of C++C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
libraries, which provide types and operations used to express parallel computations. The programming model is primarily data parallel
Data parallelism
Data parallelism is a form of parallelization of computing across multiple processors in parallel computing environments. Data parallelism focuses on distributing the data across different parallel computing nodes...
, although it is sufficiently generic to express task-parallel
Task parallelism
Task parallelism is a form of parallelization of computer code across multiple processors in parallel computing environments. Task parallelism focuses on distributing execution processes across different parallel computing nodes...
operations. The platform currently targets multi-core x86 processors, GPUs
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
(via OpenCL
OpenCL
OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors. OpenCL includes a language for writing kernels , plus APIs that are used to define and then control the platforms...
), and the Cell processor
Cell (microprocessor)
Cell is a microprocessor architecture jointly developed by Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba, and IBM, an alliance known as "STI". The architectural design and first implementation were carried out at the STI Design Center in Austin, Texas over a four-year period beginning March 2001 on a...
.