[TR] AMD counters CUDA with ATI Stream initiative - Overclock.net

dragosmp · 11-13-08

Quote:

AMD counters CUDA with ATI Stream initiative

by Cyril Kowaliski — 6:00 AM on November 13, 2008

Expect consumer software to start using Radeon GPUs for general-purpose computing in the very near future. AMD has announced a new round of stream processing initiatives aimed at bringing stream computing "from the desktop to the datacenter."

To start off, AMD has taken a page out of Nvidia's marketing playbook and tied a catchy name to its general-purpose GPU computing efforts: ATI Stream. Unlike Nvidia's CUDA, which is really a set of development tools, the ATI Stream label covers everything from GPU-based parallel computing to apps that use the graphics rendering pipeline in non-traditional ways.

That means that GPU-accelerated PDF rendering and GPGPU scientific computations both fall under the ATI Stream umbrella.
On the more concrete side of the endeavor, AMD plans to release a new Catalyst graphics driver on December 10 with the Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL) runtime built in. If you read our interview with AMD's Patti Harrell in June, you'll know CAL essentially bridges the gap between high-level programming interfaces (like Brook+) and Radeon GPUs. Right now, AMD supplies the CAL runtime DLL to developers, and those developers have to distribute it with their software—an iffy approach from a compatibility standpoint, since new driver releases could break compatibility with old CAL DLLs. From the Catalyst 8.12 release onward, AMD will include the CAL library with the graphics drivers.

Instead of waiting for third parties to take advantage of these updates and create consumer GPGPU apps for Radeon users, AMD will offer one together with the new Catalyst release. As far as we can tell, the new Avivo Video Converter will more or less mirror the functionality of the Elemental Badaboom video transcoder we wrote about recently, but with two key differences: it'll run on AMD GPUs, and it won't cost $30. While AMD hasn't given us a full list of supported input and output formats yet, the firm's presentation mentioned GPGPU-accelerated transcoding of MPEG-2 and 1080p H.264 video for use on handheld players, DVDs, and other devices. In the company's own benchmarks, the encoder cut HD video transcoding times from three hours to just 12 minutes on a system with a 2.6GHz Phenom X4 and a Radeon HD 4850. There's a catch, however—you'll need a Radeon HD 4600- or 4800-series GPU to use the tool.

The upcoming Avivo Video Converter. Source: AMD.

A third-party alternative will follow in the first quarter of next year. CyberLink plans to release an update for PowerDirector 7 that will go "beyond ATI Avivo Converter capabilities with multiple HD videos transcoding" and offer "enhanced video editing, effects creation, playback and transfer," in AMD's words.

Simultaneously with the Catalyst 8.12 driver release, AMD expects to introduce version 1.3 of its Stream SDK to developers. The new-and-improved development toolkit will bring "significant performance enhancements" to the Brook+ high-level programming language, and it will support Radeon HD 4350, 4550, and 4600 graphics cards plus a new high-performance computing card—the AMD FireStream 9270.
Due out later this quarter at $1,499, the FireStream 9270 will have 800 SPs, a 750MHz core speed, 2GB of 850MHz GDDR5 RAM, and typical power consumption of 160W. AMD says this card will be able to hit 1.2 teraFLOPS of single-precision computing power and 240 gigaFLOPS of double-precision power. Judging by the GPU specs, the FireStream 9270 may well be a souped-up flavor of the Radeon HD 4870.

source

lordikon · 11-13-08

That is awesome, now the key will be if companies will support it. I'm especially interested to know if Windows 7 will adopt either CUDA, ATI Stream, or both.

{core2duo}werd · 11-13-08

the only way GGPU tech is really going to go anywhere is if they can both agree to use the same technology to do it.

timw4mail · 11-13-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by {core2duo}werd

the only way GGPU tech is really going to go anywhere is if they can both agree to use the same technology to do it.

Programmers everywhere wish it could be like that

Nowyn · 11-13-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by {core2duo}werd

the only way GGPU tech is really going to go anywhere is if they can both agree to use the same technology to do it.

Yep, but i feel it won't have and in the end both companies will dish their GPGPU software and since DX11 will have some GPGPU capabilities, they will just use it.

guyladouche · 11-13-08

I was literally just reading up on Stream not a week ago--it's actually been long in the conceptualization phase, and I'm glad to see that it's working it's way to the end-users. I did download the Stream package from AMD's website, but I have no idea what to do with it, LOL. But I believe it's just a bunch of tools for programmers, and not any actual apps. I'm anxious to see how the new release of AVIVO using stream works out--the previous AVIVO for transcoding video files didn't do anything on the gpu like a bunch of ill-informed reviewers thought--but what's worse is that quality of the output file was awful, and AVIVO lacked serious options like bitrate and encoding options. I sincerely hope this isn't the case with the newer release using Stream. I'm so anxious to see how it works out! Anyone know of a leak of CCC 8.11...?

dragosmp · 11-13-08

The 8.11 can be found here.

I for one like the .pdf acceleration concept (as on the lappys it can be an issue) and the encoding part.

guyladouche · 11-13-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragosmp

The 8.11 can be found here.

I for one like the .pdf acceleration concept (as on the lappys it can be an issue) and the encoding part.

Oh, thanks for that--all I came across was some iffy beta releases on megaupload and such. But after reading through the 8.11 beta release on AMD's website, nothing is mentioned of Stream or AVIVO or anything like that--I'm guessing it won't be included until the final release of the 8.11's.

darksideleader · 11-13-08

yea it says 8.12 and onward.
meh why couldn't they include the 3800 series as well? same amount of stream processors as the 4670... more mem bandwith as well :P

ReoEagle · 11-13-08

Wait what?
CTM, then OpenCL, now their own proprietary stuff. This is just getting silly.
Maybe it'll be like nVidia, and work with both OpenCL and their own proprietary stuff.
Also they're development tools?
Since when is programming a modified C, that can also be compiled with outside tools such as Visual Studio a developmental tool?
And with the transcoding video thing... what? AVT has been known about for a while, and has virtually never been mentioned with Stream. And I thought that it was working with one DVD program currently, and rather well.

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[TR] AMD counters CUDA with ATI Stream initiative

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