AMD HAS ANNOUNCED the arrival of its next-generation stream processor, the Firestream 9250. Advanced Micro Devices previewed the latest version of its high-performance chip package, the FireStream 9250. It breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany. Chips in the FireStream line offer much faster performance for mathematical calculations than other processors. FireStream can take a single instruction and execute it using multiple sources of data in parallel.
The proc takes advantage of AMD's GPU expertise to augment the processing power of your rig's CPU with an additional 8-gigaflops per watt of processing from this 150 watt processor. A 55x performance bump, say developers, when compared to crunching financial analysis code, for example, on a CPU alone. The 9250 Stream fits into a single PCI slot and includes double-precision floating point hardware performing at more than 200 gigaflops. The processor and supporting SDK are due for release in Q3 for $999.
The stream processor, which features 1GB of GDDR3 memory, uses second-generation double-precision floating point hardware to deliver more than 200 gigaflops of number crunching power and it's compact size should see it used in small 1U servers as well as desktop systems, workstations, and larger servers.
The card allows users to pass critical workloads away from the main CPU and early developers have reported speed increases of up to 55 times whilst crunching financial data compared to using the CPU alone, apparently.
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