AMD Stream processor

[nemoo]

what does it do?

[gristle]

what does it do?

looks like it can help process data from specific programs

[DotPainter]

It does graphics mainly. But the main point is that the architecture of the new GPU is designed to be used with an API that allows for general purpose processing to be done on the cards. The other APIs that it supports are of course Direct X and Open GL. This hardware only supports general purpose programming if you use the CTM API, which is AMDs version of the Cuda API discussed here (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?postid=4005927#post4005927) and includes a link to AMDs CTM API documentation.

[DrBalthar]

Well my biggest hope is that AMD will bring some sanity back to the GPU industry by geting power usage back in line. Things are getting way out of hand there. Do not know if CTM really helps there though. I guess they try to go the CELL way here.

[Tlock]

This major push to going with GPGPU definitely has it's pro's and major con's. The pro is very obvious that a developer gains exponential gains in performance. But the CON in my opinion a MAJOR problem that developers can't develop using a standard API like OpenGL or DirectX. Until then this feature will be reserved for speciality applications that will be built for a specific family of video cards rather than an OS or Processor. Until the video card companies come together and agree on this like Intel and AMD do for processors, this will never go much farther (but we will see some, probably mostly in the Mac world which only supports a select few video cards) than researchers and scientists. Look at the SSE issues AMD and Intel have cause AMD is slow to adopt this new technology that Intel creates. SSE3 is amazing but how many processors have AMD developed with support to date?

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