Slashdot Log In
AMD RV790 Architecture To Change GPGPU Landscape?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday March 09, @03:32PM
from the continuing-the-leapfrog-process dept.
from the continuing-the-leapfrog-process dept.
Vigile writes "To many observers, the success of the GPGPU landscape has really been pushed by NVIDIA and its line of Tesla and Quadro GPUs. While ATI was the first to offer support for consumer applications like Folding@Home, NVIDIA has since taken command of the market with its CUDA architecture and programs like Badaboom and others for the HPC world. PC Perspective has speculation that points to ATI addressing the shortcomings of its lineup with a revised GPU known as RV790 that would both dramatically increase gaming performance as well as more than triple the compute power on double precision floating point operations — one of the keys to HPC acceptance."
Related Stories
[+]
Hardware: Facts and Fiction of GPU-Based H.264 Encoding 79 comments
notthatwillsmith writes "We've all heard a lot of big promises about how general-purpose GPU computing can greatly accelerate common tasks that are slow on the CPU — like H.264 video encoding. Maximum PC compared the GPU-accelerated Badaboom app to Handbrake, a popular CPU-based encoder. After testing a variety of workloads ranging from archival-quality DVD rips to transcodes suitable for play on the iPhone, Maximum PC found that while Badaboom is significantly faster than X264-powered Handbrake in a few tests that require video resizing, it simply can't compare to the X264-powered Handbrake for archival-quality DVD backups."
[+]
NVIDIA's $10K Tesla GPU-Based Personal Supercomputer 236 comments
gupg writes "NVIDIA announced a new category of supercomputers — the Tesla Personal Supercomputer — a 4 TeraFLOPS desktop for under $10,000. This desktop machine has 4 of the Tesla C1060 computing processors. These GPUs have no graphics out and are used only for computing. Each Tesla GPU has 240 cores and delivers about 1 TeraFLOPS single precision and about 80 GigaFLOPS double-precision floating point performance. The CPU + GPU is programmed using C with added keywords using a parallel programming model called CUDA. The CUDA C compiler/development toolchain is free to download. There are tons of applications ported to CUDA including Mathematica, LabView, ANSYS Mechanical, and tons of scientific codes from molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, and electromagnetics; they're listed on CUDA Zone."
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
OpenCL? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope all these new things will be compatible with OpenCL.
Reply to This
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
since OpenCL is just an abstraction layer like OpenGL and DirectX most modern hardware already does it just needs driver support
Re: (Score:2)
Surely not!
I'd heard it was recently ratified as an ISO standard...
Re:OpenCL? (Score:4, Informative)
I say HUH?
OpenCL is supported by Apple but also AMD and nVidia. The standard is being managed by a Not For Profit.
Compared to CUDA it is actually very open.
It is currently vapor ware but everything starts out that way for the most part.
OpenCL is more Closed BS than is CUDA or DX.
I just hope that it actually becomes a working standard.
Reply to This
Parent
nVidia rules (Score:3, Insightful)
Reply to This
Re:nVidia rules (Score:5, Informative)
Reply to This
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, they are all of the same base architecture, but aren't the same card. The 8800GT and the 9800GT are pretty close. Probably the biggest difference is some 9800GT cards are 55nm chips instead of 65nm. On the other hand there is a lot of difference between 8800GT and the GTX260. The GTX260 has 32 dedicated double precision processors that the 8800GT does not. My rough understanding is that those double precision processors are roughly equal to 1.5x a Q6600(quad core), or 6 cores. The GTX260 also comes with
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Waiting for: (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And because you love Rick Rolls, you clicked it anyway? ;)
Re:Waiting for: (Score:4, Funny)
Reply to This
Parent
That's a lot of pages supporting guesswork. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reply to This
also, seems to be guessing at the wrong thing (Score:3, Informative)
AMD's double-point floating point performance is already great. What they lack is the rest of it. The programming model is pretty bad compared to CUDA (nobody is using Brook+), and they seem to be basically waiting for OpenCL to fix that. The bottlenecks in most attempts to use AMD chips for GPGPU code are also not really the floating-point units themselves, but the rest of the architecture; it's hard to keep the ALUs fed with your data without a magic compiler, a better programming model, a better architec
Well, I hope they hurry up... (Score:2)
...because since I learned that BOINC now supports CUDA (but still has no love for GPGPU), I'm about to ditch my ATI cards for a few Nvidia ones.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
CUDA = an Nvidia-specific way to do GPGPU...
Personally I'm waiting for OpenCL, which would be to GPGPU what OpenGL was for 3D graphics when it was released - essentially a vendor and platform neutral general processing interface to the GPU.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey -- whatever it's called, I'm just about to make a purchase decision based upon the fact that my hardware isn't supported. Somebody needs to get coding. :P
LOLNO (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I know, the RV790 will be in the R600/R700 family and will work almost perfectly with existing R600/R700 code. While I have no guarantees on this, current talks with AMD employees haven't given off any indication that this chipset will be radically different from its cousins.
Reply to This
What I want from the GPU (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine if your VMed OS could believe that it had 100% control of the video card, but your video card would display on it's own 'surface', and still use full hardware acceleration for the process. As far as I can tell, video is the only serious stumbling block left in virtualizing the x86 architecture.
Reply to This
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
VirtualBox is supposed to have started solving this problem. It's beta and still experiemental but if it works well, then it's exactly what I've been looking for as it means I can finally run XP ina Vbox setup under a 64bit Gentoo Linux.
GPGPU= General Purpose GPU (Score:5, Informative)
General Purpose GPU's = massively parallel flops operations possible. ( Think matrix math, real time sims, lab testing, SETI, etc).
Still separate from a CPU, which has additional capabilities.
For the older folks, think of this as a math co-processor :) [ with it's own fan]
Reply to This
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My wife told me to add "fluid dynamics!"
(note: I often read slashdot comments aloud to her, and sometimes she throws back replies that I dutifully pass along)
Re:GPGPU= General Purpose GPU (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry to break this to you, but... *whispers* she's not real...
Slashdot readers having wives was already crazy... but they being interested in it too... Yeah, right...
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Apparently I'm behind on my acronyms... (Score:5, Insightful)
Reply to This
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is bad journalism on the part of the slashdot editors to force the readers to google for acronyms. Common, long-standing acronyms, like CPU, are one thing. But GPGPU should absolutely be defined in the summary. I find it hard to believe some people pay money for this site, and that "editors" get paid money for their "editing."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What in the screaming blue hell is a GPGPU?
I think you meant "screaming green hell"