OpenCL is an ad hoc standard managed by the Khronos Group for handling parallel programming on multicore CPUs and graphics processors. It was originally developed with help from Apple Inc.

The news comes on the heels of the release at Siggraph of parallel graphics tools from Intel, Nvidia and others.

OpenCL marks a step in a long journey. Top computer scientists have been working for more than a year to define a new programming model needed to harness tomorrow's many-core processors.

AMD submitted conformance logs from its Microsoft Windows and Linux CPU beta releases to the Khronos for certification. The company plans to roll out a complete OpenCL development tool for both CPUs and GPUs before the end of the year as part of the next release of its Stream SDK.

"By supporting multi-core CPUs and GPUs with our OpenCL environment, developers can efficiently write cross-platform applications for heterogeneous architectures with a single programming interface," said Rick Bergman, general manager of AMD's products group, speaking in a prepared statement.