ATI's Stream Computing on the Way

SQLGuru writes to tell us that ATI has announced plans to release a new graphics product that could provide a shake-up for high performance computing. From the article: "ATI has invited reporters to a Sept. 29 event in San Francisco at which it will reveal 'a new class of processing known as Stream Computing.' The company has refused to divulge much more about the event other than the vague 'stream computing' reference. The Register, however, has learned that a product called FireStream will likely be the star of the show. FireStream product marks ATI's most concerted effort to date in the world of GPGPUs or general purpose graphics processor units. Ignore the acronym hell for a moment because this gear is simple to understand. GPGPU backers just want to take graphics chips from the likes of ATI and Nvidia and tweak them to handle software that normally runs on mainstream server and desktop processors."

Did a double take on that title...

[DaveM753]

Not "Steam Computing"...

Stream eh?

[ZipR]

Perhaps they're following Valve's lead and are introducing 'episodic' computing.

GPGPUs...

[Guysmiley777]

General purpose graphical processing unit. If only there were some kind of unit that would process instructions centrally, it could be used for all sorts of things! We could call it... hmmm... a central processing unit? Naw, that just doesn't have enough zazz. Seriously, this is about as silly as trying to sell "physics acceleration cards". I don't want general processing to have to be stuck going through a PCI bus. Yuck.

Re:World beyond x86

[tomstdenis]

Except that GPGPUs are not a competitor for x86. Tell me how fast your C compiler will work on that nvidia or ATI card.

If you're gonna beef up and make more general a GPU you might as well all it a Cell ... oh wait. IBM did that.

NEXT!

Tom

Why would something like this be useful?

[lee1026]

So much as I understand it, a GPU works much more efficiently then a CPU because it is much more flatter then a CPU - whereas a CPU work very quickly on one thread at a time, a GPU can work on a bunch more threads a lot slower. But the GPU adds up to more flops. Okay. Now, as I understand it, a Pentium 2 generally performs 1/5 the amount of work that a modern single core CPU does. As far as I understand it, a pentium 2 requires very, very, little dies space to make if we make it with a modern process. Which means that if intel feels like it, they can release a chip with 100 very small cores on it if they wish. So if that chip is not considered to be valuable, then why would this be?

Re:Why not

[kfg]

Pond Computing, Lake Computing or Ocean Computing?

They lack gravitational potential energy. Yeah, you can try to play around with extracting energy from the temperature gradiants of a lake or ocean (ponds don't have any worth worrying about), but it's just easier to stick a turbine in a stream to make the computer go; and unlike my heavy piston on a rope floating in a leaky sand filled cylinder engines the Sun carries the water back up to the upper reseviour for you.

KFG