What happend to HSA Support w/ AMD APUs?

[JimC]

What happened to adding HSA support to AfterShot Pro 2 for use with AMD APUs?

This was discussed back in January 2014 in presentations and interviews. For example, this one with Rick Champagne:

https://www.facebook.com/CorelAfterShot ... 0771074245

You can even find press releases about it from both Corel and AMD. For that matter, you can find releases about Corel working with AMD to provide faster processing on AMD APUs as far back as 2012.

You can even find video demos showing the processing speed differences with Aftershot Pro using CPU only, CPU with OpenCL enabled, and processing speed with AMD APUs if you also enable HSA (with a dramatic increase in performance using HSA).

I've seen reviews showing benchmarks of the differences with and wthout HSA, too (with much faster bach processing of images when converting from raw while applying local conrast typoe filters, as compared to OpenCL alone).

Apparently, Corel provided an HSA Enabled Preview version of Aftershot Pro to AMD a long time ago, and it was also providled to CPU review sites (along with an HSA enabled versions of a JPEG decoder and an HSA enabled version of LibreOffice that demonstrated dramatically faster chart redraw times with it enabled.

Review sites were benchmarking AMD APUs with those HSA enabled applications, including benchmarks of image processing speed using the HSA enabled Aftershot Pro version (you can find some of those from early 2014).

But, I haven't heard a thing about HSA since Aftershot Pro 2 was released (even though Corel said it would support HSA in Aftershot Pro 2 over a year ago, before ASP 2 was released).

For my personal use, I could care less, as I'm using an Intel CPU wth an Nvidia video card.

But, I'm trying to help someone find an inexpensive upgrade to an older system using a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad (Q6600) CPU, that wants a new Motherboard, CPU and more memory, and they do not have a dedicated video card (using an older Intel G31 chipset motherboard with integrated Intel Graphics with the memory maxed out at 8GB using 4x2GB of slow DDR2).

I used to have a system like that with a Q6600 CPU on a G31M motherboard that I bought in 2008 and used for over 4 years until I upgraded to a new computer using a 'Core i7 3770 with a dedicted Nvidia video card (system in my profile); and the Q6600 is not the fastest CPU around by a long shot by current standards (even though it was considered good when it was first released back in 2007), even when compared to inexpensive, current generation Core i3 4xxx models, especially with the larger raw file sizes you have with some of the newer camera models if processing a lot of images.

Something like the AMD A10-7850K would make for an inexpensive upgrade for this user, with much better integrated graphics compared to the latest Intel Core i3 4xxx models.

But, with most benchmarks, one of the inexpensive Core i3 4xxx CPUs will outperform the AMD APUs at about the same price point for a Motherboard/CPU/RAM upgrade. Without HSA support in Aftershot Pro, I'm inclinded to suggest a Core i3 4xxx solution (or a Core i5 4xxx solution if their budget can be stretched some).

So, I'm trying to figure out where Corel Aftershot Pro is with HSA support for AMDs APUs like the A10-7850K that have that feature, and if it will be implemented anytime soon (as Corel said it would be in Aftershot Pro 2 back in January 2014).

If so, then an AMD APU solution might be a better choice for this user on a tight budget (as they're using Afershot Pro for image management/raw conversion/basic editing tasks, along with CorelDraw x7 for other graphics related tasks.

Some of the demos and benchmarks from early last year of an HSA enabled version of Aftershot Pro looked very promising (huge performance gains versus OpenCL alone).

So, an update on Corel's plans for implementing it would be appreciated.