AMD Unveils FireStream 9170 For High-Performance Computing - InformationWeek

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday introduced a second-generation microprocessor and software system development kit for high-performance computing.

The AMD FireStream 9170 usages watercourse processing alongside the central processing unit in high-performance environments. is a relatively new paradigm to let highly efficient analogue processing.

In edifice the FireStream, AMD leveraged the double-precision floating point engineering establish in artwork processing units. AMD acquired GPU engineering in last year's purchase of ATI Technologies.

The FireStream 9170 characteristics up to 500 GFlops, or 500 billion floating point trading operations per second. AMD's second-generation watercourse processor is built with a 55 nanometre manufacturing procedure and consumes less than 150 Watts of power. The processor is a single-card merchandise with 2Gbytes of onboard GDDR3 memory to calculate big datasets without central processing unit traffic. Asynchronous direct memory entree supplies information flowing without interrupting the watercourse processor or CPU.

The FireStream SDK enables software system developers to entree application scheduling interfaces and specs for public presentation tuning at the last degree of the processor, and for rapport with future chips. The SDK is also available to develop third-party tools.

The AMD FireStream 9170 is scheduled to transport in the first one-fourth of adjacent twelvemonth at a terms of $1,999.

AMD and competing Intel other than in gaming, supercomputing, and medical imaging.

Intel bes after an eight-core processor, code-named Larrabee, which will present high-performance graphicals and ran into high-performance computing needs. AMD, on the other hand, programs to let go of in two old age Eagle, a notebook platform that have a dedicated GPU and a separate GPU core within the central processing unit itself. The latter program is an indicant that AMD is steaming ahead to incorporate ATI's engineerings into mainstream processors.