AMD Cayman Architecture analyzed at RealWorldTech

Posted on Thursday, December 16 2010 @ 1:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
David Kanter from Real World Technologies published an in-depth analysis of AMD's new Cayman GPU architecture, you can read it over here.
The major trend in graphics is programmability and targeting highly parallel, general-purpose workloads. Historically, AMD has focused on gaming performance. However, DirectCompute and OpenCL are beginning to take hold and create the seeds of a software ecosystem. AMD's new Cayman architecture is a gradual and evolutionary step towards more general purpose hardware and a cautious embrace of GPU computing. While primarily a graphics processor, Cayman has made some fundamental microarchitecture changes to improve programmability and performance. In this article, we explore the Cayman architecture including the new VLIW4 SIMD, dynamic power management and other enhancements. Our report concludes with a preliminary assessment of the Radeon 6970 and 9650 graphics cards and projections for frequency, power and performance of future compute products.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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