GPU Audio SDK Released | 100+ Instances of Neural Amp Modeler on your GPU!

WATCH ON YOUTUBE GPU Audio SDK Released | 100+ Instances of Neural Amp Modeler on your GPU!

GPU Audio have released the long-awaited SDK, and it’s available now for free - offering you the opportunity to unlock GPU acceleration for your audio projects, productions, and software development needs. Through the use of these tools, you’ll learn how to implement your software ideas with access to the immense power of GPU processing to build the next generation of audio experiences.

The benefits of using the GPU Audio SDK include ultra-low latencies, multiple layers of processing, cross-platform support, and direct access to high performance DSP. In addition to that, end-users will have the ability to run applications of multiple software vendors simultaneously on the same GPU. Here are some more details:

Cross Platform Support

The GPU Audio SDK has cross-platform support* for Windows and MacOS; with integration for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs as well as Apple Silicon M1 chips and above. There's no need to write device-specific code for each platform, with each one running as low as 96 samples buffer or 96khz sample rate on all target platforms (which results in 1ms buffer).

A primary goal of this platform is to provide guarantees on backward compatibility. This enables developers, partners, and vendors to detach the update cycles of their products from the update cycles of the GPU Audio platform.

Getting Started

To get started, you’ll need the GPU Audio Platform installer, which can be found here. GPU Audio have supplied some supporting documentation there alongside some examples to get started with, listed below:

Gain Processor - simple example to get familiar with GPU Audio specific APIs and create first GPU-powered processor
IIR and FIR processor - examples of IIR filtering and FIR/convolution. These are integrated into terminal/console tests that can be used to process files and measure performance
NAM Plugin - Neural Amp Modeler with GPU acceleration of the real-time inferencing. We have provided everything to build a VST3 on Windows, with VST3 and AUv2 on MacOS.

Pro Audio Use Cases

Use cases for the SDK are unlimited, but could include: low-latency multichannel processing, dynamic spatial reverbs, room simulation, acoustic room correction, multi-channel sound synthesis, real-time inferencing of complex models and machine learning-enabled workflows (such as harmonizing multiple instruments) and more.

The first example of a Pro Audio use case included with the SDK is the NAM Plugin, mentioned above. The plugin itself is fairly CPU-intensive owing to its ML/NN basis, but with GPU acceleration the performance and overall number of simultaneous plugin instances running in real-time is much greater.

Using this SDK, users will be able to build their own GPU-powered NAM Plugin and run it in any DAW that supports VST3 or AUv2. More use cases and example projects will be included in the coming months.

Programming your GPU

The GPU Audio SDK is made up of four components: GPU Audio Component (the audio processing engine), Processor API (used to write processors that run on the GPU), Engine API (which is used to load multiple processors, define processing graphs, and initiate processing on the GPU) and the DSP Components Library (GPU Primitives).

The SDK uses C++ on the host side and the device side, and all supported GPU vendors have a C++ dialect for their code. Your software can be programmed using a C++ dialect that is the common subset of C++, CUDA, Metal, and potentially OpenCL.

The platform itself encapsulates the differences between a variety of GPU dialects through templates and a context object. The main difference to modern C++ is the additional keywords needed to decorate device memory spaces and GPU functions.

Developing for the Future of Audio

As the demand for higher-fidelity, multi-channel processing, and experiences grows, the use of GPUs for audio is a logical progression - and this SDK represents the first steps towards democratizing access to that previously untapped power.

Experiment with the world's most powerful DSP tools today, and be part of shaping the future of audio by downloading the GPU Audio SDK.

Get the SDK here: https://gpu.audio/sdk

* Specific platforms supported:

Windows: Nvidia and AMD GPUs, Windows 10 22H2, Windows 11

macOS: any Apple Silicon device (M1+), macOS 13, 14, 15