The Mac Observer

Skip navigational links

You're viewing an article in TMO's historic archive vault. Here, we've preserved the comments and how the site looked along with the article. Use this link to view the article on our current site:
AMD Announces OpenCL Compatible Teraflop Graphics Card

AMD Announces OpenCL Compatible Teraflop Graphics Card

by , 4:10 PM EDT, June 16th, 2008

At the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden Germany on Monday, AMD announced its FireStream 9250 graphics card which breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision computations. The card occupies a single PCI slot and draws 150 watts.

Developers have reported up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes compared to processing on the CPU alone.

"In keeping with its open systems philosophy, AMD has also joined the Khronos Compute Working Group. This working group's goals include developing industry standards for data parallel programming and working with proposed specifications like OpenCL. The OpenCL specification can help provide developers with an easy path to development across multiple platforms," AMD said.

OpenCL is an open standard that Apple has developed that allows developers to treat CPUs and GPUs on equal footing from an API standpoint. As a result, applications will be able to access the computational power of modern GPUs, typically capable of hundreds of gigaflops, in parallel with the CPU.

"An open industry standard programming specification will help drive broad-based support for stream computing technology in mainstream applications," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "We believe that OpenCL is a step in the right direction and we fully support this effort. AMD intends to ensure that the AMD Stream SDK rapidly evolves to comply with open industry standards as they emerge."

OpenCL is expected to be part of Apple's next OS X release, Snow Leopard, scheduled to ship in about a year, according to Apple.

AMD said that it plans to deliver the FireStream 9250 and the supporting SDK in Q3 2008. It will be priced at US$999.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Comment on this Article

Comments are currently closed. Please email the author instead.


Recent Headlines - Updated November 21st

Fri, 7:07 PM
Games - Soccer Sim Championship Manager 2010 Released for Mac
6:47 PM
Games - EA Publishes Original Monopoly for iPhone
6:15 PM
News - Original Apple I on Ebay for $50K, w/Letter from Steve Jobs
6:11 PM
Games - New iPhone Games: Secret of the Lost Cavern Ep 1, New DJ Nights, More
5:47 PM
Games - Star Trek D-A-C Game Headed to the Mac Next Month
4:57 PM
Product News - TidBITS Releases “Take Control of Syncing Data in Snow Leopard”
4:26 PM
John Martellaro's Blog - Particle Debris (week ending 11/20) Stationery Pads Go Poof
2:59 PM
Free on iTunes - Musée du Louvre, Art Lite, SketchBook Mobile X and More.
1:50 PM
Deal Brothers - Acer P215H bmid 21.5” Widescreen LCD Monitor:  $139.99
11:24 AM
TMO Appearances - Jeff Gamet Shares More Holiday Gift Ideas on MacJury
10:43 AM
Product News - Cocktail 4.5 for Leopard Adds QuickLook Cache Clearing
10:06 AM
News - Hack Enables Mac OS X 10.6.2 on Netbooks

The Mac Observer Reader Specials

  • __________
  • Buy Stuff, Support TMO!
  • Podcast: Mac Geek Gab
  • Podcast: Apple Weekly Report
  • TMO on Twitter!