A chat with AMD about Stream Computing

The Tech Report with AMD Stream Computing Director Patti Harrell about AMD's Stream Computing initiative. She first explains the evolution of AMD's general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing APIs and explains how this compares to NVIDIA's CUDA technology.

Since CUDA runs on GeForce 8 and GeForce 9-series GPUs, and Nvidia has showed mainstream general-purpose apps like video transcoding running on those cards, I asked Harrell whether AMD was doing anything similar. She replied that the Stream SDK supports Radeon HD 2900- and 3000-series graphics cards, and that mainstream apps are indeed in the pipeline:

We do have people who use [the Stream SDK] for some mainstream applications. Video encode is a really good example. And I think we're gonna see much more of that in mainstream consumer applications. Video encode, video game physics is another example, and some other consumer-level image processing would all be really well-accelerated on GPUs, and it stands to reason you want to use the GPU you already have in the system on your desk.

There's also some info on AMD's Fusion project, Harrell explains GPGPU computing is one of the big reasons why AMD invests in this technology. You can read the full interview over here.