Conclusion
AMD's Stream technology is here, but oddly enough, not a whole lot has changed in terms of immediate GPGPU progress.
Our tests have once again shown that the parallel processing capability of the GPU is a hardware feature that can, in the right scenario, significantly boost performance. But that's nothing our NVIDIA CUDA analysis hasn't already told us.
What we do have now is the second of the two graphics giants pushing GPGPU technologies forward. With both now utilising the OpenCL programming language, and both pledging support for Microsoft's forthcoming DirectX 11 Compute Shader, we should expect - at long last - wider adoption of GPU-acceleration in everyday computing tasks.
Unlike NVIDIA, AMD has provided a freeware application that allows users to realise the performance advantage of GPU acceleration at no additional cost. Avivo Video Converter is in its early days, and although a little rough around the edges, it makes for quick-and-easy transcoding and freeware software is always welcome.
We'd expect a slew of GPU-accelerated applications in 2009, and with DirectX 11's Compute Shader in Windows 7 and OpenCL support in Mac OS X 10.6, there's little reason to doubt it. Until then, GPU-accelerated goodness may only be available in small quantities.
The importance of AMD's arrival, however, is that the advantages of GPGPU should someday be openly available to users of Radeon or GeForce graphics cards.
