Sunnyvale, Calif. - AMD announced the AMD FireStream 9170 Stream Processor and an accompanying Software Development Kit (SDK) designed to harness the massive parallel processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU).
AMD's release is an integrated hardware and software development solution that meets the needs of the high-performance computing (HPC) market. AMD plans to deliver theFireStream 9170 and supporting SDK to market in the first quarter of 2008.
The AMD FireStream 9170 will be the world's first Stream GPU with double-precision floating point technology tailored for scientific and engineering calculations.
Priced at an MSRP of $1999, it features up to 500 GFLOPS of compute power, rivalling many of today's supercomputers, and providing dramatic acceleration for critical algorithms. This second-generation Stream Processor is built with 55nm process technology and consumes less than 150 watts of power. In addition, the reduced heat dissipation allows it to function in dense design configurations.
The FireStream 9170 is a single card solution with 2GB of onboard GDDR3 memory to compute large datasets without CPU traffic. The asynchronous direct memory access (DMA) ensures data can flow freely without interrupting the stream processoror CPU.
The AMD FireStream SDK is designed to deliver the tools developers need to create and optimize applications on AMD Stream processors. Built using an open-platform approach, the AMD FireStream SDK enables developers to access key Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and specifications, enabling performance tuning at the lowest level and development of third-party tools.
Building on AMD's Close to the Metal (CTM) interface introduced in 2006, the Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL) provides low-level access to the GPU for development and performance tuning along with forward compatibility to future GPUs. Also available are third-party tools from RapidMind and Microsoft. In addition, AMD is now a charter participant in HP's new HPC Accelerator Program.