ATI Stream Computing: From the Desktop to the Datacenter

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
The gang at PC Perspective have the low down on ATi’s stream technology, its goals, key aspects and advantages. While AMD/ATi did released new drivers earlier today, stream applications will not be enabled until next month when the Catalyst 8.12 drivers are released.

AMD claims to have 2 million HD 4000 series GPUs in the market creating a pretty large user base for ATI stream compatible applications. As of today, stream applications are NOT enabled with publicly available drivers but that will be addressed in the next revision of Catalyst coming in December. Once that update is ready, all 2 million of the Radeon HD 4000-series cards should be stream compute ready and will be able to download the new Avivo Transcoder for free as well.
 
ATI has no business in the datacenter until the clean up their drivers and do something about that monstrosity of a control center
 
ATI has no business in the datacenter until the clean up their drivers and do something about that monstrosity of a control center

I agree. They have a lot of features on the control center... however not all of them work. they need to make it more or less intelligent, it can sense your card and disable certain options.
 
huh, and here i was thinking how fast and clean the new ati control center was compared to nvidia's mess and the hell i went through getting sli to even work under vista with my 6800's

:)
 
agreed - I recently switched from an nvidia card, and ATI's drivers/control panel are a breath of fresh air to me.
 
Bleh, looks like Stream is the same type of low level API like CTM (<- FAIL) and it will depend on other tools to make development easier.

OTOH, if there are free and useful programs that use it, I'm all for it! :D The video encoder better be a lot better than Badaboom.
 
The video encoder is insanely fast based on previous iterations. The problem is that I can't tell VirtualDub or something else to use that method of accelerated encoding. Hope that changes, else it's just a quick way to turn raw uncompressed or high quality files into compressed material with no transformations at all. Which is good.

But I'd rather get that going from something like VirtualDub, or feed an AviSynth script into it. Blah.


ATI's been up to CPGPU stuff since before Nvidia started PR bombing the internet with their CUDA stuff, it's just that ATI.. isn't PR bombing the internet with their stuff.
 
ATI's been up to CPGPU stuff since before Nvidia started PR bombing the internet with their CUDA stuff, it's just that ATI.. isn't PR bombing the internet with their stuff.
CUDA isn't just a lot of PR. The reason it is used in so many projects is because it has a great SDK and is the easiest parallel programming language/toolkit. People are choosing it over fragile (Brook) and messy (CTM) alternatives. Maybe Stream will change that, maybe not.

GPGPU extends back a little further than you seem to remember. People were using primative shaders (shock, on nvidia chips since those were the first out) to craft solutions to narrow problems. :p
 
Bleh, looks like Stream is the same type of low level API like CTM

AMD hasn't used CTM in awhile (since R580 days). They currently use CAL (which is like CTM, but slightly better) and Brook+. Brook+ will eventually be replaced by OpenCL and DirectX's compute shader after they are finally released. "Stream" is just a naming scheme, nothing new.

But it should be pointed out that low level languages like CAL/CTM will always be needed to "power" (for a lack of a better term) higher level languages like OpenCL.
 
AMD hasn't used CTM in awhile (since R580 days). They currently use CAL (which is like CTM, but slightly better) and Brook+. Brook+ will eventually be replaced by OpenCL and DirectX's compute shader after they are finally released. "Stream" is just a naming scheme, nothing new.

But it should be pointed out that low level languages like CAL/CTM will always be needed to "power" (for a lack of a better term) higher level languages like OpenCL.

[edit] I'd like to make clear that I'm assuming OpenCL will replace Brook+, that may not be the case though.
 
I hope that I can use the 2.4 Teraflops on my HD 4870 X2 for something else like converting videos. If this can convert videos much faster than my quad core then I won't be getting the Core i7 at least for another year.
 
ATI has no business in the datacenter until the clean up their drivers and do something about that monstrosity of a control center

Not to through your argument off any but...Have you ever noticed what video chip is in damn near every commercial server? You know, the real servers that live in DATACENTERS?

Well, that's where any real server admin will chime in: There is almost nothing BUT ATi video chips. They are all old slow ones, but still, nothing but ATi (ok, m,aybe a few Intel integrated chips here and there). Granted they do not do streaming processing, but for heavens sake, at least be accurate in your ranting.
 
Transcoder for free is two steps ahead of Nvidia regardless of any other considerations. budaboommyass did not work well to start with let alone warrant paying for
 
ATI has no business in the datacenter until the clean up their drivers and do something about that monstrosity of a control center

Sounds to me like you haven't even used an ATI card for a few years at least.
 
Sounds to me like you haven't even used an ATI card for a few years at least.

Last time was about 9 months ago.
Spent a WEEK trying to get a new work laptop working.
Finally ended up going with base windows drivers, no ATI ones.

As soon as I installed the ATI control center, it would literally BREAK .NET so I couldn't compile apps in Visual Studio, or run SQL Enterprise Manager. The driver itself was buggy and the screen would just shutdown every 30-60 minutes.

Talking to other people in the industry, they've had similar issues.
Looking at the number of driver issues here in the ATI forum, seems im not the only one.

Personally at home, ive owned 3 ATI solutions. a 9800 pro (which crashed every 15-30 minutes) an original AIW card (which worked pretty good, except for crappy install/drivers - imagine that) and a Laptop with a 9700 built in that has been absolutely flawless for 4 years. So of all the times ive used ATI products, only has been positive.

So yeah, ATI can stay the hell away from my datacenter at work, thanks.
 
I would run ATI cards all day long if I had the option, never have had a problem with any desktop ATI card I have ever owned. (Started with a Radeon 9600 Pro -> x1800xt -> x2900xt, and will be getting an HD 4870x2 after christmas) The Mobility ones I have owned, one of which was a Sony Viao with a mobility radeon 9600 (I think) never wanted to work right, but at the time, i could only get drivers from sony, who changed them around to fit the system, and totally screwed them up.
 
Not to through your argument off any but...Have you ever noticed what video chip is in damn near every commercial server? You know, the real servers that live in DATACENTERS?

Well, that's where any real server admin will chime in: There is almost nothing BUT ATi video chips. They are all old slow ones, but still, nothing but ATi (ok, m,aybe a few Intel integrated chips here and there). Granted they do not do streaming processing, but for heavens sake, at least be accurate in your ranting.

QFT... 8MB Rage XLs everywhere! :D

Perhaps nv just has nothing in that market to compete with, Intel server chipsets lack integrated gfx (?), and the Rage is a proven, stable chip?
 
Back
Top