AMD FireStream 9250 Breaks the 1 Teraflop Barrier

[malware]

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), mainstream and consumer applications. Leveraging the GPU design expertise of AMD's Graphics Product Group, AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot, for unmatched density and with power consumption of less than 150 watts, the AMD FireStream 9250 delivers an unprecedented rate of performance per watt efficiency with up to eight gigaflops per watt.


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. 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.

Driving broad consumer adoption with open systems
AMD enables development of the FireStream family of processors with its AMD Stream SDK, designed to help developers create accelerated applications for AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL and ATI Radeon GPUs. AMD takes an open-systems approach to its stream computing development environment to ensure that developers can access and build on the tools at any level. AMD offers published interfaces for its high-level language API, intermediate language, and instruction set architecture; and the AMD Stream SDK's Brook+ front-end is available as open source code.

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.

"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."

Accelerating industry adoption
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 customers, including ACCIT, Centre de Physique de Particules de Marseille, Neurala and Telanetix are using the AMD Stream SDK and current AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL or ATI Radeon boards to achieve dramatic performance gains on critical algorithms in HPC, workstation and consumer applications. Currently, Neurala reports that it is achieving 10-200x speedups over the CPU alone on biologically inspired neural models, applicable to finance, image processing and other applications.

AMD is also working closely with world class application and solution providers to ensure customers can achieve optimum performance results. Stream computing application and solution providers include CAPS entreprise, Mercury Computer Systems, RapidMind, RogueWave and VizExperts. Mercury Computer Systems provides high-performance computing systems and software designed for complex image, sensor, and signal processing applications. Its algorithm team reports that it has achieved 174 GFLOPS performance for large 1D complex single-precision floating point FFTs on the AMD FireStream 9250.

Pricing and availability
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 competitively priced at $1,999 USD. For more information about AMD FireStream 9250 or AMD FireStream 9170 or AMD's complete line of stream computing solutions, please visit http://www.amd.com/stream.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[btarunr]

Here's the edge that AMD has over NVidia, an x86 license. If only the potential of Stream Processors are tapped in the AMD Fusion, we have an incredibly powerful CPU. All they need is a translation layer between x86 and FireStream, x86 commands will then be handled by Stream Processors. Phenom X320 anyone?

 

[From_Nowhere]

1 Teraflop...Neat... I wonder of that makes it "Vista Capable." (Just kidding)

That's also a low price compared to its predecessor



Oh and:
A Phenom X320 you say? What about a Phenom X320 Black Edition?

 

[Exceededgoku]

Oh and:
A Phenom X320 you say? What about a Phenom X320 Black Edition?

What!? They have a special version for black people now?! Why can't I buy a non black edition???
Haha
These are good times for AMD, I think we are about to see a massive revival stunt .

 

[pentastar111]

What!? They have a special version for black people now?! Why can't I buy a non black edition???
Haha
These are good times for AMD, I think we are about to see a massive revival stunt .

WHAT??

 

[lemonadesoda]

Exciting news... but I'm not impressed. (Now I'm disappointed). The PS3 runs at 220 gigaflops for $400. AMD want $999 for the same power, but without any other "PS3" features.

A regular Q6600 Quad manages 30 Gflops: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_2007/c_sandra_cpu_mflops.png (7.5 Gflops per core).

That means the Firestream is A LOT FASTER, about 5x faster. NOT 55x. Perhaps it's "55x faster" than a shiddy AMD single core?

 

[Ripper3]

IT wastes less power than the PS3, at 150W, can be used with pretty much any PC with a PCI slot, and probably runs cooler, and might be more stable than the PS3 (don't forget you pay for a lot when it comes to these sorts of things).
Oh, and not forgetting that, even if it is a quick setup, installing a GP-GPU into a PCI slot and installing software for it, is probably quicker than setting up a PS3 for these sorts of operations, if you already have the rest of the computer setup (which most company might have, as they might jsut buy this and slot it in, replacing the 9170).

That 55x increase in performance over a CPU isn't specific, no, but don't forget that translating GFLOPS into real-world performance isn't a direct comparison. For one thing, that CPU could have been loaded with other processes, the application could be optimised for GPUs, etc.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Exciting news... but I'm not impressed. (Now I'm disappointed). The PS3 runs at 220 gigaflops for $400. AMD want $999 for the same power, but without any other "PS3" features.

A regular Q6600 Quad manages 30 Gflops: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_2007/c_sandra_cpu_mflops.png (7.5 Gflops per core).

That means the Firestream is A LOT FASTER, about 5x faster. NOT 55x. Perhaps it's "55x faster" than a shiddy AMD single core?

Lets see, the article states 1 Teraflop per second (that's 1024 Gflops). So in your logic that really makes it worth ~ $1900 (4.65 x $400 for the 220 gigaflop/s PS3). In theoretical number crunching those numbers also put it at 1024/30 = 34 times more powerful than the quad core Intel. The 55x number they stated was only on financial analysis codes although you're right that they don't state which CPU they are using to compare numbers. I just hope AMD finds a way to integrate this into mainstream computing that will see some real world results for us 'average' users.

 

[Exceededgoku]

WHAT??

Lol I think you have to watch Uk tv to understand it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jxjuoG9uYQ

Also as far as I know the Cell can only perform simple computations quickly, is that true? I really don't know anything about this sort of tech. I mean are they able to do the same complexity of data?

 

[turtile]

Exciting news... but I'm not impressed. (Now I'm disappointed). The PS3 runs at 220 gigaflops for $400. AMD want $999 for the same power, but without any other "PS3" features.

A regular Q6600 Quad manages 30 Gflops: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_2007/c_sandra_cpu_mflops.png (7.5 Gflops per core).

That means the Firestream is A LOT FASTER, about 5x faster. NOT 55x. Perhaps it's "55x faster" than a shiddy AMD single core?

The PS3 uses a GPU. According to your article, it is over 133x faster than a single Q6600 core and over 33x faster than all four.

You can't compare it to the PS3. You're not only buying the hardware (which is optimized and much more reliable) but software. The PS3 is sold by the millions while this card will sell much less. If the PS3 sold the same amount, it would cost a lot more.

 

[Ripper3]

Oh wow, I haven't seen balls of steel in so freaking long! That is a classic one.

Beertintedgoggles, that is very true, didn't even notice that, heheh. Good catch there, and it really does make the GP-GPU much more valuable. Huge increase in performance-per-watt and performance-per-$ to the PS3.

 

[panchoman]

cant wait to see this combined with the firesteam gpu's which also are suppossed to be hitting over 1 teraflop, it would be a really powerful system!

 

[MilkyWay]

None of this matters, i will only get excited when i see some real world performance. Basically down on paper the Phenoms should waste the Intel competition not that it really worked that way did it?

Remember the hd2000 series it was great on paper way better than some of the Nvidia stuff yet it failed in real world terms.

This could be good especially since it can run in any board with a pci slot.

PS3 oh please that is a console this is a piece of pc hardware go compare it to a wii or an xbox 360. People say oh the CELL processor is powerful it has x amount of this and x amount of that but in reality it is stuck with the gpu and other hardware because you cant simply upgrade a PS3. On its own the CELL is useless because its not programed for any other software other than PS3 games and some linux OS.

 

[johnnyfiive]

Go Amd Go.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

Congrats on the best workstation gfx card AMD!

 

[btarunr]

Exciting news... but I'm not impressed. (Now I'm disappointed). The PS3 runs at 220 gigaflops for $400. AMD want $999 for the same power, but without any other "PS3" features.

How many GFLOPs does Intel give you for ~$1200 that you pay for a QX9770?

FireStream is more of something aimed to compete with NVidia Tesla which have the same 'inviting' prices.

Congrats on the best workstation gfx card AMD!

AMD FireStream is not a graphics card, for the know.

 

[Solaris17]

so tell me exactly what this is?

like in relation?

i know its not a grafx card but is it like a math co-processor?

or is it like a physx card?

or is it a physx card that acts as a co-processor?

 

[lemonadesoda]

Lets see, the article states 1 Teraflop per second (that's 1024 Gflops). So in your logic that really makes it worth ~ $1900 (4.65 x $400 for the 220 gigaflop/s PS3). In theoretical number crunching those numbers also put it at 1024/30 = 34 times more powerful than the quad core Intel. The 55x number they stated was only on financial analysis codes although you're right that they don't state which CPU they are using to compare numbers. I just hope AMD finds a way to integrate this into mainstream computing that will see some real world results for us 'average' users.

Lets see that again. The article states 200 gigaflops for DP. All other benchmarks I gave were DP. You cannot do "financial math" with SP. Or rather... you can but you shouldnt. And certainly dont mix SP with DP benchmarks. That's worse than apples and oranges. It's like comparing the number of bananas with the number of bunches of bananas.

And 1 teraflop = 1000 gigaflops. WTF did 1024 come from? A math bug? Working in SP?

How many GFLOPs does Intel give you for ~$1200 that you pay for a QX9770?

NOBODY creates number crunchers with overpriced QX9770. You use a DP/MP xeon system. You can quite easily stick 2 quad xeons in a cheap workstation mb and have a very flexible system.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~samw/research/papers/ipdps08.pdf

 

[Viscarious]

And 1 teraflop = 1000 gigaflops. WTF did 1024 come from? A math bug? Working in SP?

You cant be serious. Where do you get your information?

 

[btarunr]

You cant be serious. Where do you get your information?

FLOP (floating-point operation) is not a data figure (or function of 8 (8, 16, 32, 64, 128.....1024....8192)). 1000 GFLOP = 1 TFLOP just as 1000 Megawatts make a TW.

 

[lemonadesoda]

You cant be serious. Where do you get your information?

Please dont take this personally, but ROFL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix

 

[btarunr]

so tell me exactly what this is?

like in relation?

i know its not a grafx card but is it like a math co-processor?

or is it like a physx card?

or is it a physx card that acts as a co-processor?

Your machine relies entirely on CPU for running apps, with the visual part taken care of by the GPU(s). A HPC device such as NVidia Tesla or ATI FireStream can be used as massive boosts to raw computational power (like you're doing a big research on a small budget), you don't need to hire a supercomputing firm that eats into your research budget big time. All you need is to buy either a...

1. Nifty little HPC Card (The size of a 8800 GTX) that you can install right into your workstation.
2. A HPC system that has several cards running in tandem that you can connect to your lab's network.
3. A whole stack of 1U or 2U sized rack-mount systems with several GPU's each so one good rack packs the power of a >100-PC cluster.

...based on your requirement.

Then, you obtain SDK's from either ATI / NVIDIA. NVIDIA gives you the CUDA libraries that you can use your current IDE's to develop apps that run on these 'things' listed above. I'm sure AMD is working on one too.

Coding is not rocket-science. You code your apps (or buy/obtain licence of apps) that exploit these HPC setups.

Voila! You don't waste 10's of thousands of dollars of research budget on hiring supercomputers. You just buy these things once and your lab keeps them forever. Remember, hiring supercomps are extremely expensive, one session itself costs 1000's of dollars. Unless you really need the 1000's of TFLOPS, you should stay away from those things.

Therefore, HPC setups such as FireStream or Tesla can be extremely useful in Universities that don't own a supercomp.

 

[Solaris17]

cool thanks

 

[lemonadesoda]

^^ good answer.

The Ageia Physx is a similar card. It is basically *just* a math coprocessor too. Thing was... to try to make it a mainstream product, Ageia developed their SDK for games physics. I looked into the Physx for doing JUST math, for financial math in fact. Unfortunately, the SDK and math libraries were designed for a different purpose, and it wasnt that accessible for other applications / financial math. Possible in theory, but would have required writing one's own SDK components.

Other products in this area are:

Clearspeed http://www.clearspeed.com/

Spursengine SE1000 (for video, not general math) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpursEngine

Cell Broadband Engine http://www.mc.com/microsites/cell/

 

[btarunr]

I sooo wanted the CELL to come to the desktop. If only Windows supported PPC, it would have been possible. Afterall, the CELL is based on the PowerPC machine architecture.