Intel to give HD4000 a performance boost

Chip giant Intel has announced new drivers for its HD4000 embedded graphics processor.

The HD4000 is the GPU found in Intel's Ivy Bridge-based third-generation Core processors, and the new drivers introduce support for the OpenCL 1.2 general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) language.

OpenCL 1.2 is the latest release of the parallel processing standard from the Khronos Group, and adds support for sharing media and surfaces with DirectX 9 and 11, enhanced image support, and various other improvements to security and performance.

While these improvements might benefit gamers, they are not the only people who will benefit from these drivers. Developers will be able to use this new power and integrate GPGPU support into all sorts of software applications.

The new 15.31 drivers — which are primarily designed for the impending fourth-generation Haswell Core refresh — not only supports the new OpenCL standard, but also brings with them a claimed 10 percent performance boost compared to the current 14.51 driver set.

The new drivers will, according to Intel, be out later this month, but no firm date has been given yet. If you want to keep an eye out for the drivers, then you can use Intel's driver update utility to check for their availability.