AMD Embraces Streaming, VR in Its “Biggest Ever” Graphics Software Update

Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition is designed to help developers and professional users create and share vivid visual experiences.

Graphics solutions developer AMD launched the next generation of its software suite for Radeon graphics yesterday, touting new features and improved performance for developers, gamers, and professional users of AMD graphics processing units (GPUs). The Crimson ReLive Edition is available in Radeon Software and Radeon Pro Software versions. The latter, which is designed for professional users including designers and content creators, promises performance improvements of as much as 30% in “key applications” including PTC Creo, Siemens NX, and Dassault Systèmes CATIA.


Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition provides year-over-year performance gains of as much as 30%, AMD reports.


According to AMD, the software has undergone “twice the OEM platform testing, three times more ISV certification testing, and 1.5 times more stress testing than the previous AMD professional graphics driver,” as well as 25% more manual and automated quality assurance testing. Radeon Pro software is certified on applications including Autodesk AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, 3ds Max, and Maya; PTC Creo; Siemens NX; and Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS and CATIA.

“It is the biggest software release that AMD has ever done for GPUs,” said Terry Makedon, director of software strategy for AMD.

Reliving Is Believing

The “ReLive” part of the name doesn’t just distinguish this version from 2015’s Crimson release, it also denotes the addition of the Radeon ReLive feature, an optimized screen recording and streaming application. (Don’t be fooled by the double capitals: It’s pronounced relive, as in “experience again.”)

“Not only is it a very interesting application for gamers that can capture all their kills and replay their gaming glory, professionals can also use the application to do things such as tech support and enterprise-level training,” said Makedon.

ReLive can capture professional workflows within CAD applications, visualization and prototyping software, and content-creation tools for collaboration, presentations, training, and tech support. It provides users with full control over video capture parameters, including customizable recording quality of up to 4K resolution. AMD describes it as a “lightweight” tool that has minimal impact on the frame rate of the application being recorded. The company’s SPECviewperf benchmark testing reports faster performance than capture tools Snagit and Camtasia in Creo, Maya, Siemens NX, and SOLIDWORKS.

ReLive functions include:

• ReLive Overlay, a hotkey customizable toggle that enables users to directly access ReLive features and settings while they are creating content
• Instant Replay, which can record and save as much as 20 minutes of recent desktop usage.
• Record, which offers multiple configurable settings such as quality, resolution, and recording bitrate.
• Screenshot, which captures the current systems environment in an image that can be saved in a configurable folder.

AMD posits that modern workflows demand this kind of visual tool, because more employees are regularly working remotely, and video communication is useful not only for training and communicating employees and other collaborators, but also in helping customers reach decisions.

VR and Beyond

AMD believes that “VR is quickly becoming mainstream,” and in response is including its LiquidVR technology in this release for professional applications including design and engineering. LiquidVR comprises Affinity multi-GPU support, which divides the VR display burden between multiple GPUs; MultiView and MultiRes rendering, which optimize rendering for low processing overhead and higher pixel density in the main viewing area; and TrueAudio Next dynamically derived audio, which employs real-time physics to create an immersive audio environment.

Other features in the Crimson ReLive edition include:

• An improved, more intuitive installation experience, that includes custom and clean install options. Makedon explained, “Applying the same fundamentals we have for Radeon settings, we’ve now made our installer extremely easy to use and very user-friendly.”
• AMD FreeSync technology enables users to quickly switch between applications using a menu of icons. Borderless full-screen mode makes for up to 24% lower click-to-response time.
• A new display connectivity manager that automatically detects bad HDMI cables and offers advanced display settings and diagnostics.
• Radeon WattMan power management technology, which was previously only available for the 400 series of products, has been extended to support many older AMD products as well.  
• Support for game engines including Unity and Stingray, which can be used in professional workflows for building information modeling (BIM) and CAD visualization, as illustrated below.
  
  
   
• Support for the AMD GPU-PRO hybrid Linux driver.
• Radeon ProRender, a physically based rendering engine that helps users create photorealistic images through plug-ins and native integration with various 3D content creation tools. Native application integration for Blender and Maxon Cinema 4D is expected to arrive in 2017; SOLIDWORKS is in beta.
• Radeon Loom software, which helps users create cinematic 360-degree video experiences in VR. Loom uses AMD’s open-source implementation of OpenVX to stitch together the output from as many as 24 cameras (in real time) or 31 cameras (offline). A beta preview of Loom is available on GPUOpen.com.

Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition and Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition are available for free download from AMD.