AMD Launches FireStream Processor

By: Michael Stevens
Staff Writer
Published: Nov 9, 2007

The hybrid chip by AMD will utilize high-performance features.

AMD has officially announced a new advancement in graphic chip technology in its latest efforts to boost the adequate power of its most advanced high-end processor, also known as the FireStream 9170 Stream Processor.

The hybrid chip will utilize the same theory behind graphics processing units, tapping into "massive parallel processing power" and leveraging it in order to cater to the demanding high-performance computing (HPC) market.

While regular home users won't be missing anything, companies that regularly perform complex computations (i.e. scientific and oil and gas industries) will definitely find the FireStream 9170 processor to be useful.

So far, this is only a paper launch as there is no physical product released yet although AMD has already released a software development kit to various businesses who want to take full advantage of the FireStream 9170 when it is released sometime in Q1 2008.

FireStream 9170 is the first stream GPU with double-precision floating point technology in the world. AMD has cited that a single card solution with 2GB of memory will be able to deliver 500 gigaflops of computing power.

For gamers wanting more of a realistic gaming experience, GPUs and their parallel processing technology pack a powerful punch. The highest quality processors can execute as many 360 billion floating point (FP) operations per second.