AUSTIN, Tex., Nov. 16 — Continuum Analytics, developer of Anaconda, the leading modern open source analytics platform powered by Python, today announced the availability of Anaconda on AMD’s Accelerated Processing Units (APU), giving Anaconda users a simple way to exploit AMD’s latest technology innovation for the most demanding data science applications with the simplicity of Python.

This combined technology is useful for advanced analytic workloads where communication overhead has previously made GPU acceleration challenging. These situations come up often when working with financial trading analysis, implementing graph analytics algorithms, and creating other complex data processing workflows. With a 2-1000x performance gain, Anaconda will enable data scientists to more easily tackle these traditionally compute-bound problems.

“Up until now, high performance computing has been largely inaccessible, requiring knowledge of low-level programming languages and workarounds to enable high performance computing,” said Travis Oliphant, Continuum Analytics CEO and co-founder. “With this collaboration, Anaconda helps democratize high performance computing for Big Data by bringing AMD’s APU to Python, the fastest growing open data science language.”

Continuum and AMD teamed up to enable Numba, a Continuum created just-in-time (JIT) Python compiler, within the Anaconda platform to support the AMD APU Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). The APU combines the specialized capabilities of both the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) to deliver increased performance and capabilities, expanding throughput by sharing data in memory and eliminating data movement. Typical applications that benefit from the increased throughput include scientific computing applications such as geospatial analytics and facial recognition along with business applications that involve machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence.

“Anaconda opens up the HSA architecture to the rich Python community that wants to leverage high performance computing capabilities of the AMD APU and innovative Numba technology,” said AMD senior director Compute Technology Solutions, Gregory Stoner. “Anaconda, plus AMD, delivers high performance computing to data scientists and developers.”

To learn more about Anaconda on AMD APU’s visit https://www.continuum.io/blog/developer/programming-amd-apus-numba.

About Continuum Analytics

Continuum Analytics develops Anaconda, the leading modern open source analytics platform powered by Python. Continuum’s Python-based platform and consulting services empower organizations to analyze, manage and visualize Big Data – turning massive datasets into actionable insights and business value. Built on proven open source technology and easily integrated within existing IT environments, Anaconda allows organizations to make critical business decisions based on their data quickly, easily, inexpensively, and with flexibility. Without having to worry about how to access their data, organizations can free up resources to solve actual problems. Continuum’s founders and developers have created or contribute to some of the most popular data science technologies, including NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Jupyter/IPython, and many others. To learn more about the Anaconda platform, training and consulting services, visit http://www.continuum.io.

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Source: Continuum Analytics