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."

Comments

Re:Yeah, Intel did that.

[drinkypoo]

Doesn't it matter that Intel's graphics are lame?

For most uses you don't need fast 3d graphics anyway. You just need the features. Or want them. Intel graphics will be enough to give Linux users their cutesy Xgl desktop with shadows and warping and blah blah blah and that will be enough to sell a bunch of intel cards solely because they have open source drivers. In fact my goal in future servers will be to get intel integrated graphics so that I can have the open source drivers.

On a desktop I don't care so much about whether drivers are open source or not. On a server, I care very much. I can use another desktop or desktop OS and get the same functionality, but I might not be able to conveniently jump over to another server.