ATI to announce "Stream Computing" on September 29

Fresh off its approved merger with AMD, ATI apparently has some tricks up its sleeve and will reveal its hand at a special event in San Francisco on September 29. ATI is hyping something called "Stream Computing," which uses GPGPU (general purpose graphics processor units) to run normal code on graphics hardware. GPGPU (couldn't they have come up with a better acronym?) is something that's been bouncing around the computer science community for a little while now, and may be on its way to becoming feasible -- The Reg says this technology has the potential to kick up performance by a factor of 10 and possibly as high as 30 in some computing applications (like, say, running a huuuuge freakin' Excel 'sheet). Now that may be true, but it's like those floating point specs that Apple is always parading around -- those numbers may hold water in the lab for very specific applications, but mere mortals probably won't see that performance difference anytime soon.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 2:11PM]

So does this mean I can use a graphics card to bump up my CPU?

[mackswift Posted Sep 21st 2006 2:13PM]

And they're also reporting that AMD's 4x4 plan is delayed as well. More then likely they're speeding up their quad core plans to counter Intel's Quadro release in November.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 2:25PM]

dammit, I totally read that as STEAM Computing...

with the low fossil fuel prices these days I wouldn't mind shoveling some coal for the GPU Boiler.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 2:22PM]

this is kinda like what PeakStream is doing. i was pretty stoked when i heard about that, but the price tag insane. not for nothing, you have to code it yourself. if i'm gonna see this built in, i might need a moist towel... i think whats even more exciting than this is that now we know its not a stagnant venture and that they are working to bring the cpu and the gpu closer.

i'll take that towel now...

http://www.peakstreaminc.com/

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 3:12PM]

I can think of a number of AI algorithms that can easily be parallelized so I am looking forward to this product. I just hope that they provide good programming tools because researchers' time is too valuable to waste trying to figure out how to program a beast like this one.

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http://smart-machines.blogspot.com

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 3:09PM]

For anyone that actually wants to see this type of thing in action and has a modern (I believe any X1XXX type ATI card) check out ATI's video transcoder tool that transcodes on the GPU rather than the CPU. It really is quite impressive (the performance, not necessarily the application which seems to have stopped being developed). Managed to transcode a 2 and half hour movie in about 22 minutes using an X1900.

The app is called AvivoXCODE and seems to still be available here (the post also seems to allude to this working on ANY ATI card but I'm pretty sure it needs to be one with the AVIVO technology built in.)

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33838764

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 4:14PM]

As far as I know, AvivoXCODE doesn't use your graphics card at all. It's just fast because Ati ist either very good at multimedia-coding or because Ati chose to disable some quality-improving features of the codec. I guess it's a little of both :)

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 4:39PM]

You have an source for that? I mean I'd believe you and stuff but having like a 5x improvement in transcoding speed doesn't just come from a little optimization...

Here's are mine:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=15707

And um, like countless more articles claiming the same.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 3:59AM]

This is, what I think is one of the biggest selling points for Vista, but now that ATI is going to make it possible to load some of the work on to the video cards without the need of a new OS, I don't see a big reason to upgrade to Vista.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 4:42PM]

With a growing number of consumers ripping DVDs, doing video chat, and editing digital photos and videos, there will be a need for these floating point intensive tasks.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 4:51PM]

could this be where they announce more news about the R600 rumored to come out this quarter? Rumor has it that it will be a DX10 GPU card but who knows. I'll be waiting.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2006 6:57PM]

A better acronym for sure would have been GP2U :)

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 3:32AM]

Maybe gpgpu is eieio in some other language.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 25th 2006 9:08AM]

Jim Gray and others have been doing research on using the GPUs in graphics cards for solving computational intensive problems long before ATI began hyping about. The following link is a recent research publication by Jim and his team into using GPUs to sort massive amounts of data. It's titled GPUTeraSort: High Performance Graphics Coprocessor Sorting for Large Database Management.

http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-2005-183 out

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 30th 2006 2:02AM]

AMD Torrenza platform news:

ATI pioneers new Stream Computing technology
http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=910519&highlight=

Folding@home uses ATI stream computing
http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=910520&highlight=

ATI launches enterprise stream computing initiatives
http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=910521&highlight=

Will 4x4 follow suit?