At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD today introduced its next-generation stream processor, the AMD FireStream 9250.
Specifically designed to accelerate critical algorithms in high-performance computing (HPC), , AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot and consumes less than 150 watts.
Customers can leverage AMD's latest FireStream offering to run critical workloads such as financial analysis or seismic processing dramatically faster than with CPU alone, helping them to address more complex problems and achieve faster results. For example, developers are reporting up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes as compared to processing on the CPU alone, which supports their efforts to make better and faster decisions.1 Additionally, the use of flexible GPU technology rather than custom accelerators assists those creating application-specific systems to enhance and maintain their solutions easily.
The AMD FireStream 9250 stream processor includes a second-generation double-precision floating point hardware implementation delivering more than 200 gigaflops, building on the capabilities of the earlier AMD FireStream 9170, the industry's first GP-GPU with double-precision floating point support. The AMD FireStream 9250's compact size makes it ideal for small 1U servers as well as most desktop systems, workstations, and larger servers and it features 1GB of GDDR3 memory, enabling developers to handle large, complex problems.
The growth of the stream computing market has accelerated over the past few years with Fortune 1000 companies, leading software developers and academic institutions utilizing stream technology to achieve tremendous performance gains across a variety of applications.
"Stream computing is increasingly important for mainstream and consumer applications and is no longer limited to just the academic or engineering industries. Today we are truly seeing a fundamental shift in emerging system architectures," said Jon Peddie, president, Jon Peddie Research. "As the industry's only provider of both high-performance discrete GPUs and x86-compatible CPUs, AMD is uniquely well-suited to developing these architectures."
AMD plans to deliver the FireStream 9250 and the supporting SDK in Q3 2008 at an MSRP of $999 USD. AMD FireStream 9170, the industry's first double-precision floating point stream processor, is currently available for purchase and is priced at $1,999 USD.
